If I were a Democratic strategist, I would extend my tongue and lick my eyeballs at the prospect of running a campaign against Newton Leroy Fink-Nottle Gingrich in 2012. And they are doing just that:

“I like Barney Frank’s quote the best, where he said ‘I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican party,’” Pelosi said in an exclusive interview Friday. “That quote I think spoke for a lot of us.”

Pelosi didn’t go into detail about Gingrich’s past transgressions, but she tipped her hand. “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi said. “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

Pressed for more detail she wouldn’t go further.

“Not right here,” Pelosi joked. “When the time’s right.”

I’ve repeated this anecdote before, but it’s really appropriate right now. Back in 1994, or perhaps early 1995, after the GOP swept the House, I teased one of my Capitol Hill roommates, who worked for a Democratic member, about his having to get used to saying “Speaker Gingrich.” He was unflappable on the topic. He said something along the lines of, “We’re not worried. We know he’s screwing around on his wife. If he pushes too far, we’ll lower the boom.”

I was young, and I was startled by this. Of course it was true, as we later found out. He’d been canoodling with Callista, who is now the third Mrs. Gingrich, since 1993. We may never know how many punches he pulled as Speaker because he knew he was compromised personally, and he knew that his opponents knew. Or, actually, we may one day learn exactly that.