The ex-House speaker and current GOP presidential candidate has been married three times. His relationships with his second wife, Marianne Ginther, and with his current wife, the former Callista Bisek, both began as extramarital affairs.
Mr. Gingrich has benefited from the timing of when these dalliances became public. It was only during his 2000 divorce from his second wife that his attorneys acknowledged the relationship with Ms. Bisek, a congressional aide more than 20 years his junior. In 1997, Gingrich had pushed for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment due to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; if Gingrich’s own affair had been public at the time, his position as a leader of the impeachment forces would have been greatly undermined.
Like Senator Vitter, Gingrich has implicitly admitted his failings, and then declined to discuss them in detail.
“There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There are certainly times I’ve fallen short of God’s standards,” Gingrich told Focus on the Family founder James Dobson in a 2007 interview.
