THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701110032
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: 69 lines
The Democrats' long-running campaign against Newt Gingrich was based largely on The Very Idea that Gingrich could: (1) Force their own Jim Wright to resign as speaker. (2) Force them out of their accustomed control of Congress. (3) Force their president to adopt major themes from the GOP agenda and pronounce them good.
But if revenge was the driving force, there also was calculation. Democrats knew they couldn't lose in laying siege.
If Gingrich was re-elected, he also would be tarnished and almost all Republicans would have to stand up for a man disliked and distrusted by a large majority of voters.
If he was rejected, the Republican ``revolution'' of 1994 would have lost its architect and engineer with the prospect that his replacement would be someone less able and even easier to dislike. (Newt's the Pillsbury Doughboy compared to Dick Armey, his glowering sidekick.)
To revenge and calculation add hypocrisy: Had a speaker of their own been in the dock, the Democrats could have rationalized that his sins were not so great.
Did the speaker turn tax-exempt funds to partisan purposes? Surely, but that's a commonplace flouting of the law by everyone from evangelists to eggheads to labor leaders. Did Gingrich mislead the ethics committee? Yes, but he didn't mean to, and says he's very sorry, and, besides, it was his lawyer's fault.
(This recalls Clinton partner Susan McDougal's defense against bank-fraud charges. Yes, her name did appear on damning documents, but only because she was a ditsy housewife who signed wherever her husband pointed.)
But if there's a run-of-the-mill ring to charges against Gingrich, his is not a run-of-the-mill office, nor solely a party office. The speaker stands in line of succession to the presidency.
As he himself stated in bringing down Jim Wright, the speaker ``has to meet a higher standard of public accountability and integrity'' than does a typical member of the House. And as he argued for toughening recommended sanctions against two such members, he said ``we are here to repair the integrity of the United States House of Representatives.''
Gingrich's politics has always tended to picture opponents as morally deficient as well as wrongheaded. Has a mother killed her children? Well, said Newt, look to the Democrats' social policies.
Gingrich will continue as speaker, but he's a little bit of a ruin, a monument on a side street. And not, as he would have it, because of oversights and naivete. Shrewd himself at calculation, Gingrich knowingly pushed against legal limits.
When The New York Times almost two years ago asked if he wasn't treading near the edge of the law, Gingrich responded: ``Whoa. Goes right up to the edge. What's the beef? Doesn't go over the edge. Doesn't break any law. Isn't wrong. It's aggressive. It's entrepreneurial. It's risk-taking.'' A tax lawyer, queried at long last by Gingrich, disagreed.
A more telling distinction between ethics preached and ethics practiced was Gingrich's acceptance of a $4.5 million advance on a book he planned to write for a publishing house owned by a tycoon with major interest in pending communications legislation. After taking bipartisan heat, Gingrich took a $1 advance and held it up and grinned for the press cameras.
Hounded as he has been by Democrats, Gingrich's own deeds proved himself worthy of close scrutiny. His apologies for pushy manners rather than trashy deeds underline the point. The Georgian who smashed a Democratic monopoly in Congress, and who proved a greater agent of change than Bill Clinton, now seems to embody politics as usual.
As his small base of public support continues to shrink, power will be dispersed within the House and shifted toward Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who has a more grown-up view of getting on with business. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.