After sexual harassment allegations sent Herman Cain’s presidential campaign into damage control mode, I was really hoping that the now-vacant frontrunner position would be filled with an actually viable candidate.

I’ve had enough of entertaining ridiculous flights of fancy from the Republican candidates: Rick Perry can’t name the third government agency he would eliminate, Michele Bachmann thinks the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, Rick Santorum has based his entire campaign on anti-gay conservative morality, Ron Paul condemned a hypothetical uninsured man to death and Herman Cain can’t pronounce “Uzbekistan.” Even if I were a hard-core conservative, these are not the kind of people I would want running the country.

So when Cain’s hold on the lead started to slip, I began to look forward to hearing from a candidate who had something sensible to say. Someone whose foreign policy held water, whose tax plan was viable, whose platform wasn’t radically right-wing. Someone who wasn’t a trip back to the ‘50s.

Someone like Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney, perhaps.

But no, it wasn’t to be. The candidate who is rising to fill the power vacuum at the top is none other than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is currently polling at 28 percent, according to Public Policy Polling. He might be slightly less fanatical than Cain or Bachmann, but somehow I’m not reassured. Instead of the moderate presidential composure or radical crazy-eyed conservatism that we’re used to from Republican candidates, Gingrich is just kind of… bland.

During his time as House Speaker, Gingrich’s clashes with President Bill Clinton led to a government shutdown in 1995, much like the one we narrowly avoided earlier this year. Can we really afford someone in the White House who’s willing to bring the government to a grinding halt? I think we’re in enough trouble as it is.

Gingrich’s presidential campaign has so far been unremarkable: he was largely a non-contender during the debates, often being passed over in favor of Perry and Romney. He’s flip-flopped on foreign policy, supporting a no-fly zone in Libya but then condemning United States involvement, and has spoken out against torture but doesn’t think that waterboarding qualifies. He generally seems to be more concerned with nebulous looming specters than actual concrete issues, and is willing to condemn the communist-liberal-socialist-secular-fascist enemy but is less able to specify how. Part of that might be the lack of attention his campaign has received until recently, but perhaps not.

The thing I find most worrying about Gingrich, however, is not his shaky policies or the fact that his head looks like a cantaloupe, but rather the fact that he is not once but twice divorced and has engaged in numerous extra-marital affairs. This is the same guy who led Clinton’s impeachment proceedings and claimed gay marriage was a “temporary aberration.” He’s a pro at talking out of both sides of his mouth: preaching family values while simultaneously leaving his wife, who was diagnosed with cancer, for a younger woman.

He has, however, justified this lack of fidelity. “There’s no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he told CNN in March.

That’s right: Newt Gingrich cheated on his wives because he loved America too much. How’s that for presidential?