Is Newt bipolar?

Let me tell you how the Democratic smear machine is going to come after Newt Gingrich if he wins the Republican nomination.

Among the sludge they will shovel his way is that he is mentally ill. Specifically they will try to make the case that he is bipolar.

In fact, it has already begun.

To his credit, Gingrich has not hidden the fact that his mother suffered from such problems. He has spoken about it frequently, unashamedly and with compassion. He even wrote a foreword to a book, "Duct Tape & WD40," by his brother-in-law, David Brown, on the subject, revealing: "Our mother had experienced both depression and bipolar disorder and we all had to come to grips with the fact that someone you love can find themselves overwhelmed by impacts you do not understand, cannot predict, and may not be able to change."

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"My mother had bipolar disease, and I'm as interested in the whole issue of mental health, which is all brain-science related," Gingrich said in a recent interview. "You realize, for example, the impact of depression, which is a major undercurrent of our health problems. So if you could just understand depression, biologically, the savings would be enormous."

Normally, you might expect Democrats and the social activists in the Big Media to treat a subject like this with some delicacy – even compassion. Of course they would if the candidate in question were one of them. But this is Newt. And he is vying to face Barack Obama. The stakes are high. This is for all the marbles. And so, mark my words, they're going to be asking the question of whether Newt has all his marbles.

Let's face it: The way Gingrich's mind works has been a concern even to some of his closest friends and allies.

"House Republicans used to joke that Speaker Gingrich suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder (truthfully, when they said it, not everyone was joking)," wrote former Rep. James Rogan, R-Calif., in "Catching Our Flag,"his memoir about the Clinton impeachment effort. "The synapses of his brain fired at too high a rate, making it harder for him to focus on any single topic for too long, and harder for his troops to follow him into multi-front battles. By the time we absorbed his newest powerful idea, Newt was off on 10 new topics, all brilliant and all worthy of immediate focus. The practical problem was that nobody could keep up with the most peripatetic mind in Washington."

The mental health of a would-be president is certainly fair game. It's not enough for a presidential candidate to say that he's taking his meds every day to control his depression. And Republicans should be prepared for it. It's better to deal with all the contentious issues that might face a candidate before he gets the nomination. By dealing with it now, in fact, it has the effect of immunizing the candidate against the nasty suggestions later.

For instance, had the issue of constitutional eligibility been raised in the primaries of 2008, we might have avoided a choice between two candidates with questions about their status as "natural born citizens." As it turned out, the Democratic smear machine, which includes most of the media, focused attention only on the Republican candidate – the one whose history was well-known.

So Gingrich, like all major presidential contenders, should make public his medical records – something, by the way, Obama has never done. Curiously, the media never demanded it. Neither have they demanded any documentation about his birth, his adoption, his travels, his education, his employment records, his citizenship status or much of anything else that would be of vital interest to the public.

Democrats get a pass on such matters. But, make no mistake, Gingrich, or whoever the Republican nominee might be, will not.

Personally, while I have big problems with some of Gingrich's positions on the issues, his past behavior and arrogance, I won't lose any sleep over his mental health. Remember who is in the White House right now. Could we possibly do worse?