Newt's waterloo

National Review, Jan 27, 1997

LIKE the battle of Waterloo, Newt Gingrich's re-election as Speaker of the House was a damned near-run thing. Unlike Waterloo, it may not end Newt's war.

The principal charge against Gingrich -- that the admixture of partisan money in the funding of his "Renewing American Civilization" chautauqua and his failure to admit it to Congress require him to step down -- is absurd. His history course was in fact less partisan than most history lectures in the Ivy League. And even if that were not so, an ordinary citizen who committed the original tax infraction would be told by the IRS not to do it again, as even the New York Times conceded. Gingrich is no ordinary citizen but a national leader who has said politicians ought to be held to a higher standard. Still, his misdeeds merit only a reprimand.

Equating Gingrich with his former target, Jim Wright, is grotesque. Wright raked in illegal campaign contributions by selling a phony book, and ran the House with a gross and heavy hand: one of his aides, John Mack, had gone to jail for beating a woman with a hammer and slashing her with a steak knife. When John Mack issued a quorum call, you went. The issue in the current case, as Gingrich correctly said, was not the Speaker's character, but whether the Democratic Party could dictate the GOP's leadership. It is astonishing that even GOP malcontents were prepared to go along with this. Still, Gingrich won -- and a majority is the best repartee. He is now entitled to press ahead with an agenda that reflects the balance of (mainly conservative) support he received from his party.

There should now be a halt to Republican fretting. Kate O'Beirne's suggestion, pre-uproar, that Gingrich voluntarily step down in order to regroup, was shrewd advice at the time. But he made a different decision, and he has now received the backing of almost all his party. But if the victory is to stick he needs a change of course.

He has been an ineffective leader for nearly a year, since the debacle of the government shutdowns. Apart from a few moves that were defensive or tactical -- the Defense of Marriage Act, the ban on partial-birth abortions -- little appealing to conservatives has come out of the House that Newt built. (Welfare reform as it evolved was as much a project of the Republican governors as of Congress, and it is questionable how appealing it will prove.) At the end of its term, the 104th Congress shifted from passivity to retreat, endorsing a blizzard of timid bills, such as one raising the minimum wage.

Gingrich's feebleness was partly owing to the trauma of being defeated by Bill Clinton; partly a delayed effect of his patronage of liberal Republicans, partly a malign consequence of his view of the world. Newt Gingrich's mind is divided against itself, half devoted to Tocqueville and the Founders, half to Tofflerian pseudo-think. (If three more nervous Republicans had betrayed Newt, the Third Wave of politics would have been exceedingly short.) That said, however, few Republicans have his combination of energy, imagination, and (among Republicans, at least) charisma. What he needs to add to these qualities is self-discipline and a greater attention to conservative principle. Given these, there is no reason why the Republican revolution should not be relaunched.

A bellwether will be the fate of the Canady bill on affirmative action (see above, p. 8). Opposing affirmative action is both popular and just -- an issue wrapped and delivered into Republican hands. If the Speaker fails to open it, he will confirm conservative fears that he is a tactician merely -- and an erratic one at that. Fortunately, liberals have given him every reason to fight them.