THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 25, 1995 TAG: 9512250030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
At Fort Monroe in Hampton, the Army is helping develop a force to fight the battles of the next century. It also is helping House Speaker Newt Gingrich fight the political battles of today.
Over the past year, members of the House Republican leadership and their staffs have quietly circulated in and out of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe to study military planning and training methods. Phrases such as ``commander's intent'' have slipped into hallway conversations on legislative strategy. On one recent evening, a handful of young lawmakers talked late into the night at TRADOC's Hampton headquarters trying to adapt lessons in military planning to future strategies for the GOP.
How did a Virginia Army base become associated with the Republican revolution in Washington?
Harvey Perritt, a TRADOC spokesman at Fort Monroe, took pains to minimize the link after reports about it began to surface last week.
``These folks . . . have been here twice in the last 12 months,'' Perritt said. ``There have been more than 100 members of Congress or congressional staffers who have visited TRADOC installations, both Democratic and Republican, in the last 12 months. So you're looking at a real small part of the folks who've been coming and looking at us and wanting to know how we do business.''
He said the Gingrich group received ``basically general orientation briefings'' in visits of a day to a day and a half.
What does the Army have to teach a group of insurgent lawmakers trying to seize the levers of power in Washington?
It all has to do with change and the future, Perritt said. TRADOC's mission is to develop strategies for fighting the wars of the future and to indoctrinate the ranks in how to carry them out.
Gingrich never served in the armed forces but is the son of a military officer.
In addition, Perritt said, Fort Monroe has hosted Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the futurists whose ideas have been cited favorably by Gingrich.
The visitors ``want to look at how we develop doctrine, how we achieve consensus in the Army and how we develop our leaders,'' Perritt said.
Consensus? In a command-and-control outfit like the Army?
Sure, said Perritt: ``We want people to understand it and sign up to it, not just have it dictated to them.''
Back in Washington, Lt. Col. David Perkins, an armored officer on a military fellowship, works from a Capitol office helping the leadership run military-style ``after-action reviews'' to identify lessons learned from the handling of major bills. Laying out a green Army Field Manual 100-5 on his desk, the 38-year-old officer compares a draft GOP planning document to the three levels of warfare: strategy, operational art, tactics.
``Newt knows that twisting arms is not sustainable,'' Col. Perkins explains. ``He wants them to internalize what the plan is.''
Gingrich has used these methods to bring about a historic transformation of the House of Representatives. To an extraordinary degree, the GOP takeover has already allowed him to break down old fiefs that long divided the chamber. In their place, he has built a more disciplined fighting force, giving more control to the leadership while working to build a bottoms-up commitment to making sweeping changes in the direction of American government.
How successful Gingrich will be at enacting those changes is far from clear. The president and Congress remain at a standoff over the budget, which now encompasses most of the GOP agenda. Because of their failure to reach agreement on a temporary funding measure, the government went into its second partial shutdown of the fall last week.
Moreover, Gingrich's success in transforming the House and using it to drive the national agenda has been offset by a failure to convince the American people he is the leader they want. As the year ends, his personal popularity is scraping bottom.
But regardless of who wins the current battle, the character of the House has changed in ways that may influence the course of American government for years to come.
In previous years, the Democrats who ran the House frequently complained about how unruly it had become, with members free to ignore party leaders and act independently. Under GOP rule, committee chairmen - old barons who once jealously guarded their turf - have lost much of that clout. In their place, Gingrich has sought to empower and energize the rank and file, guiding them through a small cadre of people organized around the speaker.
At the top of the new command structure is a group with the military-sounding acronym SAG - the Speaker's Advisory Group. Gingrich compares them with former Speaker Sam Rayburn's ``Board of Education,'' which would gather in leather chairs in the speaker's hideaway for bourbon and politics each afternoon.
But Rayburn's group included tenured committee chairmen whose power sometimes rivaled his own. The half-dozen men who gather over cookies and soda in Gingrich's office share his disdain for the committee and seniority system that long dominated the House.
SAG has moved quickly to consolidate power and undercut the opposition. Like a new mayor at city hall, Gingrich has taken extraordinary control of the Capitol's daily operations, cutting Democratic staff and even lowly doormen.
Military metaphors are frequently heard. ``Shaping the battlefield'' is a favorite phrase of Gingrich, who like no other modern speaker has used the office as a bully pulpit and brought the Republican National Committee apparatus into the legislative process. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Wall Street Journal and
staff writer Bill Sizemore.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Newt Gingrich
by CNB