What is it about politics that makes some people lose all perspective?

Today's two examples come from near -- and far.

In the United States, we have Exhibit A, also known as Newt Gingrich.  

Exhibit B comes from Afghanistan: one Hamid Karzai.

Gingrich wants to be president, but he has no shot.  Karzai is a president, but if he's not careful, he will be shot.

Of course, one doesn't enter politics without a healthy -- some might say overinflated -- ego. The best politicians are, by nature, risk-takers. Where others hold back, they charge ahead.  It takes them to great heights sometimes but also brings great falls: see Clinton, Bill, and Nixon, Richard. 

(Thursday brought another reminder:  Former Illinois Gov. Rod Rod Blagojevich left Chicago for Colorado, where he'll be serving a sentence on corruption charges in federal prison.)

And ego certainly applies to Gingrich. Times staff writer Paul West on Thursday summed up Gingrich's motivation for staying in the GOP presidential race:

At 68, the former House speaker is making what figures to be his last fling at elective politics.  But it is his sense of himself as an epic figure that may well be what's keeping him going.

Gingrich hopes for a brokered convention, something that hasn't happened for decades but that appeals to the historian in him.  It may be a figment of his imagination, but it's a harmless fantasy -- unless you're Mitt Romney and hoping to wrap up the nomination.

Karzai, on the other hand, is playing a much more dangerous game.  On Thursday, Times staff writer Laura King reported from Kabul that the Afghan president "had demanded a quicker end to the Western combat mission and a pullback of NATO troops from rural areas."

Karzai's office said he told visiting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that by year's end, U.S. troops should be garrisoned only in large bases, abandoning outposts in rural districts like Panjwayi, the scene of Sunday's shooting deaths. 

"Afghanistan's security forces have the capability to provide security in the villages of Afghanistan," said a statement from Karzai's office.

Which makes one wonder what country Karzai thinks he's living in. Especially because the Taliban announced Thursday that not only was it suspending talks with the United States on the war but that it would be "pointless" to engage in any talks with the Karzai government.

Karzai's response?

The president also called for a significant acceleration of the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, saying NATO should wind down its combat role in 2013 instead of 2014. "Our demand is to speed up this process, and authority should be given to Afghans," the presidential palace's statement said.

Perhaps Karzai could take a lesson from Gingrich and read up on his history.  Here's a name he might want to check out: Najibullah.

After the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, Najibullah was president.  Forced from office during the ensuing civil war, Najibullah took refuge in the U.N. compound in Kabul for four years.  But in 1996, the Taliban seized power. 

A Times' story from Friday Sept. 27, 1996, records his fate:

The bloated, beaten body of the man who also once headed the hated Afghan Communists' security service was strung up from a lamppost outside the presidential palace, reports said.

The Times' Doyle McManus wrote Thursday that given recent events, President Obama needs a Plan C for getting out of Afghanistan.  So Karzai may get his wish for a sped-up withdrawal.  

But if that's the case, Karzai's name just might end up listed next to Najibullah's in the history books of the 21st century.

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Photo: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, meets with Afghan President Hamid Karza in Kabul on Thursday. Credit: Mohammad Ismail / EPA

So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

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Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

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Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

What happens when you’re the front-runner? Everybody else gangs up on you.

Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate looked like something of an ordeal for Rick Santorum, the sudden but perhaps tenuous front-runner in the national polls.

Mitt Romney accused Santorum (accurately) of voting to fund Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere” and said he wasn’t a fiscal conservative. Ron Paul accused him of being a hypocrite for supporting “No Child Left Behind,” the education program of President George W. Bush. And CNN’s moderator John King demanded that he explain his controversial position opposing birth control.

All that ganging up, not surprisingly, put Santorum on the defensive.

When he defended his position on birth control, he was passionate and effective -- in part by changing the subject to the problem of single-parent households.  “How can a country survive if children are being raised in homes where it's so much harder to succeed economically?” he asked. (“Just because I’m talking about it doesn’t mean I want a government program to fix it,” he added.)

On his record in Congress, though, Santorum said he sometimes voted for bills he didn’t agree with because his party’s leaders wanted him to.

On his vote in favor of the Bush education bill, he said: “It was against the principles I believed in.... I made a mistake.” The reason for that vote against his own conscience? “Politics is a team sport.”

Not a great moment. Many Republican voters are looking for a principled conservative alternative to Romney, not another Bush-era compromiser. For a while, Santorum has looked like that alternative. But on Wednesday evening, Romney and Paul forced Santorum to admit that he was not only a member of Congress -- America’s least favorite profession -- but one who sometimes bent his principles when party politics demanded. They took aim at the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservatives and appeared to score a blow or two.

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Photo: Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, left, and Mitt Romney participate in a debate sponsored by CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona at the Mesa Arts Center on Feb. 22. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

If you want keen observations on Campaign 2012, you'll want to read the columns by my colleague Doyle McManus.

For example, in Sunday's column, McManus pointed out that the drawn-out and increasingly negative Republican presidential race will take its toll on Mitt Romney among independent voters.

Lo and behold, on Monday The Times reported on new poll results:

President Obama for the first time has opened a sizable lead over his most likely Republican opponents, thanks to growing support among independent voters, according to a new Pew Research Center poll….

Obama led [Rick] Santorum by 10 points among registered voters nationwide (53%-43%) and led [Mitt] Romney by 8 points (52%-44%). Obama’s lead over Newt Gingrich, who has faded in the GOP race, was 18 points (57%-39%). In previous polls in November and January, Romney and Obama were roughly tied. Obama has moved up because of support from independent voters, 51% of whom now back him against Romney, a gain of 11 points since last month.

Now, had you read McManus, you would have already had that information, gleaned from an insider: 

"The long primary fight is driving independent voters away from Romney," the Obama campaign's senior strategist, David Axelrod, told me last week.

The question, though, is why?

I mean, it's strange, really, how an entire party can be driven to political suicide by a small number of fervent "true believers."

Democrats saw it many years ago with George McGovern. Republicans went through it before with Barry Goldwater.

And here we are again. The Republican Party of today appears increasingly tone deaf when it comes to appealing to independent voters, much less swaying any Democrats.

Take this statement from House Speaker John A. Boeher on Monday, regarding the Republicans’ acceptance of the Democrats' goal of extending the payroll tax cut for middle-class Americans:

"This is not our first choice," said Boehner and his leadership team, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), in a joint statement. "But in the face of the Democrats’ stonewalling and obstructionism, we are prepared to act to protect small businesses and our economy from the consequences of Washington Democrats’ political games."

Sorry, John, you lost me at "not our first choice." 

Now, I'm sure many Americans will appreciate the Republicans' efforts on behalf of small businesses -- whatever that means -- and they'll also appreciate how hard it must be to put up with those stonewalling Democrats, who have the nerve to want to keep a tax break for regular working folks.

And I'm also sure that Sarah Palin and Santorum and the other tea partyers who live in what is apparently a parallel universe will vote Republican in November, even if that means voting for Romney.

But the race is won in the middle, where the independents hang out, and nothing the Republicans are doing right now has much appeal to those folks.

But don't take my word for it.

Just read Doyle McManus.

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Photo: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns in Portland, Maine. Credit: Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press

Get ready for Santorumania.

Rick Santorum was expected to do well in Missouri on Tuesday, but Minnesota and Colorado were question marks; after all, Mitt Romney won both of those states in 2008.

As of about 8 p.m. Pacific time, though, it looked as if the evening could turn into an unexpected Santorum sweep.

The former Pennsylvania senator was on track to win in both Missouri and Minnesota, and Colorado -- purportedly a Romney bastion -- looked close.

Three consequences:

Romney's standing as the presumptive nominee has taken a blow.

Newt Gingrich's standing as the conservative alternative to Romney has taken a blow too. Gingrich was running fourth in Minnesota; he wasn't even on the ballot in Missouri.

And Santorum, for the first time in this campaign, has a chance to establish himself as a serious contender.

So the Republican race is still open -- at least until Super Tuesday on March 6, with its seven primaries and three caucuses.

The overall beneficiary: President Obama. The Republican campaign, a festival of negative campaigning, has made all the GOP candidates look worse.

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Photo: Rick Santorum waits backstage before a rally Tuesday in Minnesota. Credit: Ben Garvin / Getty Images

No doubt about it: Mitt Romney’s 14-point victory in Florida’s Republican presidential primary election on Tuesday was impressive.

Not only did it come by a convincing margin, it came in the biggest, most diverse and most important state. And Romney won after what may have been the most punishing two weeks of his political career -- a period during which he was hit by charges of “vulture capitalism,” forced to release income tax returns and reveal investment accounts in the Cayman Islands, and lost a primary election in South Carolina to Newt Gingrich.

How did Romney win on Tuesday? The old-fashioned way: negative advertising. Against an extravagantly vulnerable opponent like Gingrich, it’s hard to blame him.

The next phase in the GOP race is what you might call the “Pressure Primary”: Romney and his backers will push Gingrich to give up for the good of the party. Never mind what Romney said on Tuesday night about tough campaigns being good practice; no politician enjoys a campaign as bitter as this one.

But Gingrich isn’t likely to quit now, even though Romney can continue to outspend him. The former House speaker is 68 years old; this is his last plausible shot at a presidential campaign. Besides, Gingrich is right: This campaign has only visited four states so far. As the signs at his election night rally in Orlando proclaimed, there are still “46 states to go.”

The next few states -- Nevada, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Arizona and Michigan -- look mostly like Romney country. (Gingrich isn’t even on the ballot in Missouri.) But that doesn’t matter; Gingrich and his aides say they are looking to Super Tuesday on March 6, and even beyond. “We’re going to contest every place, and we’re going to win,” Gingrich promised.

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Photo: Mitt Romney celebrates his Florida primary election win at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla. on Jan. 31, 2012. Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

You can say one thing about the Republican candidates for president: They’ve been debating each other for so long that they can now swap stinging personal attacks without getting visibly angry.

Mitt Romney was on the offensive in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday evening. He needed only a little prompting to accuse Newt Gingrich of shilling for Freddie Mac, one of the government-backed mortgage firms that conservatives loathe, and of being soft on illegal immigration. “Our problem is not 11 million grandmothers,” Romney said, responding to Gingrich’s reluctance to deport foreign-born grandparents.

Gingrich seemed a little hesitant to climb into the ring. Asked about his statement earlier this week that Romney “lives in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island bank accounts,” the former House speaker said the charge didn’t merit repeating in the solemn dignity of a CNN debate.

That gave Romney an opening. “Wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t make accusations someplace else that they weren’t willing to defend here?” he asked. OK, Gingrich replied, have it your way. “I don’t know of any American president who had a Swiss bank account,” he said.

The winner? There wasn’t one -- not onstage, at least. Rick Santorum turned in a good performance, criticizing both Romney and Gingrich for their past support of government-mandated health insurance, but he’s running a very distant third in Florida. Ron Paul slammed both front-runners, too, but he’s running fourth. The polls in Florida show Romney and Gingrich neck and neck. If anyone won Thursday evening, it may have been Barack Obama.

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Photo: Newt Gingrich, left, and Mitt Romney participate in the Florida Republican Presidential debate Jan. 26 at the University of North Florida. Credit: Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images

The theme of Monday's Republican presidential debate was a classic dramatic device: role reversal -- or, to be snarky, cross-dressing.

Mitt Romney lost in South Carolina last week, we're told, because he wasn't combative enough. So his mission in Florida, it appears, is to turn into Killer Mitt. Romney spent much of his time in Monday's debate throwing big roundhouse punches at Newt Gingrich. "You can call it anything you like," Romney said of Gingrich's $1.6-million contract with Freddie Mac. "I call it influence peddling."

Gingrich won in South Carolina by being ferocious -- so his goal in Florida is to be relatively mild. Gingrich now wants to show us Presidential Newt, a statesman who won't descend to mud-slinging. "I have never, ever gone and done any lobbying," he said solemnly, an assertion that reporters will spend weeks picking apart. As for Romney's specific charges, Gingrich said he wouldn't even bother to rebut them; anyone seeking that kind of muck would have to go to his website, newt.org.

It was an uneven contest. Romney seemed tentative in the role of attack dog. Gingrich, who glories in his skill as a debater, used every tool in his kit. When Romney accused him of lobbying in favor of the expensive Medicare prescription drug program, Gingrich turned the issue around, courageously telling Florida's armies of senior citizens: "I am proud of the fact that I publicly, openly advocated Medicare Part D."

How confident did Gingrich look? So confident that, for the first time in memory, he didn't bother to attack the moderator or the news media.

Rep. Ron Paul and former Sen. Rick Santorum were also present, but they hardly got a word in edgewise. As far as the elite national media are concerned, it's a two-man race now: Killer Mitt vs. President Newt.

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Photo: Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich participate a GOP debate held at the University of South Florida on Jan. 23. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

On Thursday evening, the gloves came off.  For the first time in this year’s long march of Republican primary debates, every contestant behaved as if this were his last round in the ring, his last desperate chance to survive the competition.  CNN?  It looked more like WWF.

Mitt Romney attacked Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Gingrich attacked Romney, Santorum and CNN. Santorum attacked Romney, Gingrich, and Ron Paul. Congressman Paul was an oasis of relative civility, although he did find time to attack the Republican congressional leadership, the Federal Reserve and Medicare.

It was as if the success of Gingrich’s truculent attitude in the last debate -- the belligerence that won a standing ovation when he faced down Juan Williams of Fox News -- infected all four  remaining candidates with a new fighting spirit. 

When CNN’s John King asked Gingrich about his ex-wife’s charge that the former speaker had asked her for an “open marriage,” Gingrich quickly turned the crowd against CNN. “I’m tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama,” Gingrich said to cheers.

When King asked Romney about his record as a venture capitalist, the former private equity mogul replied: “I’m going to stand and defend capitalism.... We’re going to stuff it down [Obama’s] throat.” More cheers.

Santorum went after Gingrich. “Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich,” he said. With Gingrich, he warned, Republican voters will always be “worrying about what he’s going to say next.”

Gingrich came right back. “I think grandiose thoughts,” he agreed proudly. “This is a grandiose country..... Long before Rick came to Congress, I was busy being a rebel.”

In the middle of the debate, Gingrich released his tax returns. That forced Romney to promise that he would release several years of his returns -- three months from now, once most of the primaries are done. Would he follow his father’s example and release 12 years’ worth? “Maybe,” Romney said with a nervous laugh.

Who won? Actually, they’re all getting better at this strange form of combat; you could make a case that all four survivors did well enough to stay in. So it was strangely reassuring that, at the end of Thursday’s bout, King announced another debate -- one week from now, in Florida.       

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Photo: Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, left, and Newt Gingrich are seen during the debate at the North Charleston Coliseum on Jan. 19 in South Carolina. Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

The best news for Mitt Romney in New Hampshire's presidential primary Tuesday wasn't the number of votes he won. It was the number of his opponents who stayed in the race.

Romney's vote was just about what most polls predicted, about 39%. That gave him a big margin over second-place Ron Paul, who won about 23%, and third-place Jon Huntsman Jr., who won about 17%. Romney even came in first among voters who described themselves as "very conservative," according to the exit poll. He didn't top the 40% that once looked possible, but it was a strong showing nonetheless.

Even better for the former Massachusetts governor, though, was the peculiar effect of the New Hampshire vote on the rest of the field: They all saw reasons to stay in the race.

Paul said he was "nibbling at his [Romney's] heels." Huntsman called his third-place showing "a ticket to ride." Rick Santorum, who finished fourth, cried: "On to South Carolina!" Newt Gingrich, who limped in fifth, said he was confident that his message would sell in the South -- as did Rick Perry, who didn't compete in New Hampshire at all. None of them dropped out.

So Romney retains his most precious asset: the fragmentation of his opponents. As long as Paul, Huntsman, Santorum, Gingrich and Perry continue to divide the not-Romney vote five ways, the Republican race can end only one way: with Mitt Romney's nomination.

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--Doyle McManus, writing from Manchester, N.H.

Photo: Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney celebrate as his victory in the New Hampshire primary is declared in Manchester. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press