
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, December 1, 1994                   TAG: 9412010067
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A18   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE GOOD THING ABOUT GINGRICH

NEWT GINGRICH could turn out to be the most powerful speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at least since Sam Rayburn in the middle of this century, and perhaps since Joe Cannon 40 years before that.

This could be good for the country.

Rayburn, the Texas Democrat who was speaker for most of the years from 1940 until his death in 1961, is the more recent but in some ways less apt model. Much of Rayburn's power stemmed from his closeness to Democratic presidents - obviously not the case with Gingrich. Within Congress, Rayburn (as well as the presidents with whom he was allied) frequently was thwarted by a seniority system that kept baronial power in the hands of Southern Democrats more conservative than he.

Cannon, the Illinois Republican who was speaker from 1903 through 1911, is more distant in time but may offer a closer parallel to Gingrich. Cannon's power stemmed from his control within Congress. For seven years "Speaker Joe" ran the House as the highly partisan leader of Republican loyalists. Though he remained speaker for another year, the effective end of the Cannon regime came in 1910, when Republican progressives rebelled and joined with the minority Democrats to change the rules by which Cannon had exercised personal and partisan control.

Merit, effective enterprises have discovered, is preferable to seniority as a basis for appointment. Since Rayburn, seniority has given way to election by the majority-party (that is, until now, Democratic) caucus as the means for determining committee chairs. But that did not prevent the rise of senior Democrats to a power independent of the speaker's. Rayburn's successors discovered that trying to control House Democrats was like trying to herd cats; speakers of recent years have been more negotiators than hard-charging leaders.

Gingrich, by contrast, apparently will have the Republican caucus in his pocket when the new Congress convenes in January. He apparently can, and plans to, pick committee chairmen loyal to him (or, more charitably, his ideas) without regard to other claims, including seniority.

This is, in part, a product of his skill at political manipulation and self-promotion. But it is the product, too, of a near-unity of purpose among House Republicans, a consensus born both of their newfound majority status and of Gingrich's role in nationalizing the issues that proved so potent for the GOP on Election Day.

The agenda of Gingrich and his allies is flawed, deeply so in our view. Not just flawed, mean. But love him or leave him, give the speaker-to-be this much: In concentrating so much House power in his own hands, Gingrich is reversing a decades-long drift toward diffusion of congressional accountability.

This prospect comes on top of the "Contract With America," devised by Gingrich, on which House Republicans sought and won election. This platform also is flawed, but also creditable as a device for clarifying accountability.

Gingrich still has more moderate Senate GOP leaders to deal with, not to mention a Democratic president. But for the policies he'll pursue, the next speaker is making clearer to the American people whom to credit - or blame.

by CNB