THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501070061
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
SOMEHOW, cresting the last rise on I-95 on Tuesday, at that point where the Washington Monument comes into view, it seemed natural to expect a vastly altered D.C. skyline.
There would be a huge, Goodyear-blimp-sized face of Newt Gingrich looming over the city like some 300-foot, gray-haired Godzilla, breathing the fires of Republican redemption over a town laid waste by 40 years of thunderdumb Democratic congresses who conspired with a mixed bag of presidents to leave the rest of us flat broke, furious and afraid to leave our homes at night.
For weeks, Newt Gingrich's man-in-the-moon face had grinned out from TV screens and news magazines, his jowly promise of a new day in Washington impossible to escape. By December he was getting more TV time than Santa Claus and more headlines than O.J. Simpson. Newt-fever spread faster than butter on a hot griddle.
From the highway, though, it looked like the same old Washington. And when Newt arrived at the Capitol a couple of hours later, he rode not in a flaming chariot, but in the backseat of an ice-green Chevy Suburban.
The man who would change Washington looked terribly . . . normal. Whether he can change the face of government remains to be seen. But for three glorious days last week, he and the people who believe in him certainly put a new face on the city that government calls home.
Newt Gingrich's army of followers swarmed over Capitol Hill's hotels, restaurants and power centers like a relentless infestation of carpenter ants, elbowing aside those brash and oh-so-trendy Clintonite Democrat kids that we've heard so much of for the past two years.
For three days they enforced a new social code on The Hill, a heartland-America look and feel that would send a shiver of cold-steel terror through the spleen of an L.L. Bean marketing director. Busloads of Republicans decamped at the Capitol Wednesday morning, not a goosedown coat or a pair of Birkenstocks among them. Wing-tips ruled.
At least a third of the women wore furs: long, glamorous, politically incorrect mink farms draped from their unashamed forms, coats that seemed to scream ``Money is OK. Wealth is not a crime.''
Change of attitude was apparent in the Capitol Hill parking lots. Buicks, in smoke gray and navy blue, clogged the lots nearest the House side. A Buick is the car for up-and-coming Republicans. Hondas and Toyotas are out. GM is in again.
The only Nikes and Birkenstocks seemed to be on the feet of the Poor People's Congress protesters who were demonstrating on the Capitol steps as the GOP Guard sauntered in to watch Newt take charge.
As the PPC's executive director droned into a microphone, a guy in a black-felt prairie hat and high-shined black dress cowboy boots cracked to his wife: ``Huh, hey, Carol, you'd think he'd be out looking for a job if he's so poor.''
For that day, at least, the Republican mainstream had the forces of cultural conscience on the run. Liberal protesters were so scarce that the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, Zero Population Growth and Friends of the Earth ralliers had to join forces for one massed picket. They never got more than 70 shouters together at one time. A few feet away, dozens of TV news-cams were lined up to do interviews with the new political elite. Few of the cameras ever turned toward the protesters. They all left shortly after lunch.
Outside the rarefied air of Capitol Hill, there were scant signs that Newt Gingrich & Company would force a deep cultural change in the city. Restaurants didn't feature sandwiches named after him. (What would a ``Newt burger'' do to a healthy appetite?) Red meat was still way down on the bottom of most menus.
Asked how the Republican influx would affect his trade, a hot-dog vendor outside Union Station said ``No matter to me. They all get hungry, they all eat and the money's all the same.''
One Pennsylvania Avenue bookstore had a window display of Gingrich's recommended reading, and a clerk said sales were brisk. A paperback version of the ``Contract with America'' was selling for a respectable Republican price of $14.95, even though they've been offered free in TV Guide and every decent newspaper in the country. Another Gingrich favorite, Alvin Tofler's ``Politics of the Third Wave'' was moving, too.
Still, the National Review had to battle for shelf space with Time and Newsweek, and more people seemed to be buying the Washington Post than the arch-conservative Washington Times.
Not far away, at Union Station and Dupont Circle shops, the Gingrich books were nowhere to be seen. Cappuccino and croissants were still the favorite work-break treat there. Off the Hill, Washington is still not a meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes kind of town.
Washington was built on a drained quagmire and its residents often behave like they're under the influence of some odorless, tasteless swamp gas that still bubbles up silently from far beneath the pavement. It is a cosmopolitan international center that has the third-highest murder rate in the free world. It has wonderful restaurants with notoriously lousy service (waiters here seem to believe that getting you a seat and some silverware is worth a 15 percent tip. If by some grand accident you get food and a glass of water, they expect 20 percent.)
It is a city whose streets have become so tough that the black middle class is fleeing to the white suburbs, causing a drop in population. The city administration, without laughing, disputes the population figures by claiming the census failed to accurately count the thousands who were sleeping in the park and on steam grates.
The Republican newcomers aren't likely to be asking them to shove over to make room.
Brad Peniston, a resident of the trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood, said the departure of all those young Democrats - 5,000 are expected to lose their jobs - might change things on the Hill, but not in the daily life of the city.
``Democrats,'' Peniston said, ``tend to live on Capitol Hill and Dupont Circle. A friend called me, a Republican who is moving here for a job, and asked about places to live. I told him about this area and he said, `No, we've been told we're better off living out in Virginia.' I think the Republicans are going to be heading for the suburbs.' ''
Georgetown is out. Fairfax is in.
The cultural chasm was wide in the off-hours, as well, when the Newtonians went looking for fun. Hotel lobbies and elevators were crammed with people looking to share cab fare to the country-western fest at the Renaissance Hotel Wednesday night.
``You goin' to the big bash?'' one asked as the elevator churned to ground level: ``C'mon along,'' he offered. ``You might as well. We're taking over the whole damn country.''
Nobody was heard asking for directions to the Kennedy Center, where the hippie-era rock opera ``Tommy'' was playing. The Who are out. Lee Greenwood was in town.
When Newt arrived Tuesday he'd laughed to reporters that the GOP was hosting the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for an afternoon of ``family values'' entertainment. ``Any of you who have kids know how important that is,'' he joked.
Nobody was impolitic enough to point out that the chop-socky Power Rangers toys are imported from some very un-Republican sweat shops in China, and their TV show is filmed in Japan with bad English dubbed over the script.
It just wasn't a day for raining on the Republican parade. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
AP
Newt Gingrich was everywhere, even in the Capitol's Statuary Hall on
Wednesday.
by CNB