ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250070
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
FOR THE next two years, a couple of plump, graying baby boomers, each with a gift for gab and an addiction to overusing the talent, will again be Washington's most prominent figures. That was confirmed by House Republicans last week in agreeing to re-elect Newt Gingrich speaker when the 105th Congress formally convenes in January.
Gingrich and Bill Clinton may not be more alike than different. But they are certainly more alike than conventional political mythology would have it.
According to that mythology, the two are not merely political rivals in opposing parties, but representatives of conflicting extremes: the guileful liberal, the heartless conservative. The dualism in this view virtually requires demonization of one or the other, and that certainly has happened.
In 1994, the Gingrich-led Republicans demonized Democrat Clinton, and in the doing wrested control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in 40 years. In 1996, Democrats demonized Gingrich. Though they failed to pick up enough House seats to regain the majority, that was partly because GOP candidates were more successful at distancing themselves from Gingrich this fall than were Democrats from Clinton two years before.
The fact of the matter, of course, is that neither man is the personification of virtue. (On the contrary, among their similarities is a reputation shadowed by allegations of ethical misconduct.) Nor is either man evil incarnate.
They are, rather, career politicians, brighter than most, who in their respective ways are trying to drag their parties into an accommodation with the changes wrought by the end of the industrial era and the dawn of a new, information-based economy.
For Clinton, this effort goes by the label "New Democrats," among whose priorities is weaning the Democratic Party from its traditional reliance on bureaucratic and programmatic liberalism. For Gingrich, the label is sometimes called "New Paradigm." Among its priorities is supplanting the reactionary and negative impulses - isolationism, nativism, racism - of some elements in the Republican Party with an optimistic emphasis on making use of the opportunities created by the new information age.
Not that Clinton and Gingrich are tweedledee and tweedledum. Clinton's efforts to body-surf the Third Wave tend more toward the ad hoc and empirical, Gingrich's toward the overarching and theoretical. Clinton is the son of an older, Democratic South of farms and small towns; Gingrich, of the newer Sunbelt South of Republican suburbs.
Moreover, a New Democrat is still a Democrat, and must take some heed of traditional Democratic constituencies - labor, the cities, racial minorities and, increasingly, women. A New-Paradigm Republican is still a Republican, who must pay some attention to GOP constituencies - small business, the religious right and, increasingly, Southern white males.
The problem is that, for a time, Clinton and Gingrich assumed they could get away with representing their party's traditional constituents while neglecting the "New" attached to their causes. Indeed, nowhere are the two middle-aged boomers more alike than in the underlying error that rendered their respective demonizations all the easier - a smug overestimation, born of hubris, of the presumed mandate that electoral triumph had awarded them.
In Clinton's case, the classic example is bungled health-care reform. His refusal to seek compromise and his reversion to government-knows-best liberalism undid the effort and contributed to his repudiation in the '94 congressional elections. In Gingrich's case, the classic example is the budget impasses and government shutdowns of '96. These invited second thoughts about the "Republican Revolution" and reminded Americans that there's much they like about federal involvement in such areas as health care and environmental protection.
Their chastening has driven both toward humbler stances, another experience they share. But beyond merely avoiding partisan excesses, Clinton and Gingrich would do well to seek common ground in their New Democrat and New Paradigm enthusiasms.
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