Start the Revolution
House Speaker Newt Gingrich points the way as the Republicans get their turn to govern
Dick Gephardt, once a Democratic presidential candidate, always considered a sure bet to be speaker of the House, could not sleep. It was his job to hand over control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, and he was having trouble figuring out how to do it. In the middle of the night, he sat down in his living room and suddenly understood what he had to say. "It was what everyone was thinking, and it couldn't be left unspoken." So the next day, Gephardt simply said it: "With resignation but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of Democratic rule of this House. With deepest respect, you are now my speaker, and let the debate begin." The mostly Republican crowd went wild.
Witnesses at a royal coronation, Democrats and Republicans both knew they were watching a historic change of congressional power. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole slipped in to watch history happen; so did Ted Kennedy. For Speaker Newt Gingrich, it was a moment "bigger than us all." For disoriented Democrats, who never dreamed this day would come, it seemed as though a bunch of aliens had moved into the House. The Democratic side of the chamber, which never had enough seats, suddenly had room to spare; the Republican side was standing room only. The GOP congressional newcomers chanted "Newt, Newt, Newt" as their leader took center stage. The Democrats were the ones shouting about the tyranny of the majority.
The new minority party, in fact, is mostly irrelevant to Gingrich's plans. "I won't respond to Democrats at all," Gingrich told U.S. News. "Sam Walton [the late Wal-Mart founder] told me that if you focus on the customers, the customers take care of the competition." And so the Republicans' strategy is to secure their conservative political beachhead with a string of victories aimed at middle-class consumers: a balanced-budget amendment, welfare reform, tax cuts, downsizing government, legal reforms and Social Security tax refunds.
One-man show. It is Gingrich's strategy, and Gingrich's show: Even the newly Republican Senate seemed a sideshow to his center ring. In a typically lengthy and sometimes off-the-cuff speech (some Gingrich allies privately fretted about his loquaciousness), the new speaker was part New Dealer, part management consultant, part historian, musing on everyone from Franklin Roosevelt to Abraham Lincoln to Henry Clay to management guru W. Edwards Deming. He reached out to the Democrats--more than anyone expected and more than some of his GOP flock would have liked. Yet in typical Jekyll-and-Hyde fashion, Gingrich's olive branch came minutes after a slash-and-burn press conference in which he lashed out at Democrats as "narrow and foolish."
The first day of the Republicans' first 100 days produced a package of internal reforms approved by large bipartisan margins. (Gingrich calls Democratic attempts to fight some proposals "negative and defensive," and says: "I would have looked cheerful and patriotic and bipartisan and waited for the Republicans to make a big mistake.") And the first bipartisan congressional leadership meeting with President Clinton brought amiable nods of agreement and vows of cooperation. Yet while there was a truce of sorts on some items--the line-item veto and an end to Congress's habit of giving thestates things to do but no money to do them with--it didn't last long.
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