By MARTIN SCHRAM, Scripps Howard News Service

Come with us, Mr. President. We want to introduce you to some savvy potential advisers who are being ignored in Washington. They can help you get out of the mess you and your team just created for yourselves.

On television and in social cyberspace, the talking heads were all a-Twitter Tuesday night over what Newt Gingrich just said.

Or rather, didn't say.

It is so very 20th century, but the GOP presidential debates have shown us that television can still create powerful political waves -- video waves -- that candidates can catch just right and ride to victory.

Unless they become so enamored of their swift success that they start preening and posturing -- and lose their balance, their board and their wave.

In 1988, we who get paid to cover politics thought it was big news when Bob Dole, having lost New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary, was asked by NBC's Tom Brokaw if he wanted to say anything to the victor, George H.W. Bush.

"Yeah, stop lying about my record," the Kansas senator responded with the doleful candor that was his trademark.

Did you also notice the apparent error in your new 2012 calendar?

Mine claims January 1, 2012 was "New Year's Day." But after turning on the TV news, I'm thinking it must have been Labor Day. Because the down-and-dirty political attacks we've come to expect in a fall presidential campaign are already assaulting our ears.

Iowa's 2012 Republican caucuses gave us either two winners or no winners at all, as in Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum virtually tied and Ron Paul finished just a whisker behind them. And in the only total that really matters, but was little mentioned, all three received seven of Iowa's Republican convention delegates.

Some new years begin with pundit prognostications that are yawningly predictable. Yet, on rare occasions, we've witnessed New Year's predictions that seemed wishful but impossible -- yet startlingly become true.

In 17 years as a dictator, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, had himself celebrated as the "Dear Leader" of those he ruled. In the outside world, he became known for his nuclear posturing, his fondness for fine wines in a nation beset by famine, and a cartoonish countenance resembling boxing promoter Don King on a bad hair day.

(Begin italics) 'Twas two weeks before Christmas, and all through Romney's house, All the creatures were stirring, even the wireless mouse.

"Beat Obama" plans had been hung by the chimney, free of cares, The nomination, they were sure, soon would be theirs.

But on the 24/7 news there arose such a chatter, That Romney couldn't figure out what was the matter.

Ari Fleischer, eight years away from his White House perch, hasn't lost his flair for expressing himself. As we learned after his fellow conservatives at the Newsmax website announced the everlastingly goldilocked Donald Trump will host their Dec. 27 Republican presidential debate: