In his column at the Chicago Tribune, Clarence Page says that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has displayed dual political personalities -- naughty and nice -- when he talks about the poor on the campaign trail. It does not bode well for his potential as a presidential nominee.

... Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School in late November Gingrich attacked child labor laws as "truly stupid" and blamed income inequality on policies that protect unions and bureaucracies, "crippling" children in the poorest neighborhoods by putting them in failing schools.

The hit against child labor laws is novel even for Naughty Newt, although it's not his first display of a fascination with the child and family politics of the Charles Dickens era. As speaker of the House in the mid-1990s, he suggested in another unscripted moment that we bring back orphanages as an alternative to welfare payments to unwed mothers. That's Gingrich. Always thinking.

Riding high in the polls during a recent campaign stop in Iowa, Gingrich elaborated on his youth jobs idea. He suggested that poor children only be put to work in nonhazardous "three- or four-hour-a-day" jobs, such as "assistant janitors," librarians or "greeters in the school office." Unfortunately, Naughty Newt continued to paint poor kids with a broad, stereotypical brush.

Read Clarence Page's entire column at the Chicago Tribune.

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