Getting Ready for '08?: Newt and Rudy's Skeletons Could Fill 10 Closets

— -- While Newt Gingrich was rabidly leading the 1998 crucifixion of Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the former House speaker himself was consorting with a young congressional aide behind wife No. 2's back. His mistress later became wife No. 3. The real question, as Bill Maher asked incredulously, is that "someone f***ed Newt Gingrich?!" All kidding aside, the hypocrisy is mind-numbing. While he was gallivanting around D.C. ruining his wife's life, he was arrogantly justifying his own indiscretions while holding the former president to a much higher standard.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the Georgia Republican told Focus on the Family founder James Dobson in an interview last week.

Gingrich drew a line back then between his own philandering and that of Clinton by taking the moral high ground in defending America's rule of law: "…I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials." Poppycock.He was an out-of-control, power-drunk Republican who ruthlessly and mercilessly rendered judgment on his Democratic rival in an effort to shift the political landscape. And he succeeded. Clinton was impeached by the House that year, but he was acquitted by the Senate in '99.

So now Newt Gingrich, the same guy who broke the news to wife No. 1 that he was leaving her as she was recovering from cancer surgery, wants to be our next president, and he's trying to come clean in an effort to win the conservative vote. His strategy is to get the skeletons out, and out early. Between the affair, his multiple marriages and his embarrassing, scandalous fall from power, it's going to be an uphill climb. But at least we know that if Newt did become president, while he might very well continue his cheating ways, he swears he'd never lie about it under oath. Now that's integrity.

And then there's that other 2008 GOP hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Like Gingrich, Rudy's also got three marriages under his belt, but unlike Newt, he's been photographed in drag almost as much as RuPaul. Is this Rudy's idea of showing America that he can be as good a woman president as Hillary? He also must deal with the question of his relationship with his two kids, with whom he's estranged. Seems they don't like the way Pa treated Ma (wife No. 2, Donna Hanover) as he was dumping her for wife No. 3, Judy Nathan (man, you need a scorecard to keep track of these guys!). Again, as Maher joked, "the only Republican in this race who respects marriage is the Mormon," Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Andy Ostroy is editor and publisher of The Ostroy Report, a New York-based blog that aggressively combats the powerful right-wing spin machine, taking on Bush, the Republican Party and the conservative media.