SCENES FROM A SPEAKERSHIP

Glancing over a spreadsheet,Gingrich is furious at the way Thomas has computed ihe 30 percent cuts the Speaker has ordered in the $ 223, million budget of the 19 House committees. The cutswhich are being disputed by several committee hairmen — including Transportation and Infrastructure’s Bud Shuster — are central to Gingrich’s determination to control and streamline the House. He is cofivinced that the Ways and Means Committee, to take one example, can fashion welfare and tax legislationas effciently with a budget of $ 10 million as it has with $ 16 million. But it appears to him that Thomas has derived the cuts from false assumptions and that he has been unfair to Bud Shuster. Shuster complained to Gingrich in an “urgent alert, … .Bud to Newt” memorandum early this morning.

Gingrich and Thomas have a complex relationship. Only a year and a half apart in age, they came to Congress in the late seventies,. became friends, and shared an apartment for a time. But two years ago, when Gingrich was the Republlcan whip in a Democratic-controlled House, he tried to remove Thomas as the ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee for being too accommodating to the majority party.

Thomas bested Gingrich’s candidate for the post and David McClintick, a former reporterJbr the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Indecent Exposure and Swordfish, which examine crises inside a major corporation and aJbderal spy agency, respectively. He followed Newt Gingrich for several months this yearJr a work-in-progress on the 104th Congress. thereafter mended his ways. Now that the Republicans control the House, Gingrich has surprised insiders by appointing Thomas chairman of Oversight, even though the post’s power has been considerably diminished; he is now, for all intents and purposes, Nussle’s subordinate.

“You’re getting to your numbers, but you’re getting there by lying and cheating Bud Shuster!” Gingrich shouts.

“No, sir! No, sir!” Thomas says, flabbergasted and uncharacteristically deferential. “That is not true!” “You do this every time!” Gingrich stands and moves away from Thomas.

“Those are good numbers,” Thomas insists. But he promises to review them. He and his staff leave Gingrich, Armey, and Nussle in private. Armey finally speaks, suggesting that Gingrich might want to let Thomas and the committee chairmen try to resolve their differences before the Speaker invests the prestige of his offce in any dispute.

The Speaker, whose temper cools as quickly as it flares, acknowledges that Armey may be right.

The Republican high command — Gingrich, Armey, Whip Tom Delay, and John Boehner, who chairs the Republican Conference comprising the full GOP House membership — gathers three hours later at a huge table in the Speaker’s conference room overlooking the Mall. They try again to resolve the disputes that sparked the clash between Gingrich and Thomas. Aided by computers, Thomas and his staff have clarified their budget plan, and Gingrich realizes his anger was in error. Shuster will have to live with a reduced budget. However, the results fail to satisfy another chairman, Don Young, who heads the natural resources committee.

A bearded former trapper and boat captain from Fort Yukon, Young is one of only a few Republicans out of 230 in the House who did not sign the Contract With America. “I’m not a joiner,” he explained. He is believed also to be the only member of Congress to carry a buck knife in his boot.

Instead of conforming to the 30 percent budget cut that Gingrich has decreed, Young is demanding an 18 percent increase, in part because his committee has expanded responsibilities, having absorbed parts of two other committees since the last Congress.

“Damn it, Newt, I told you I was gonna go out and do this job,” Young says. “I’m gonna have all these hearings. I’ve got all this travel. We’ve never traveled before. It only looks like a lot because the old committee never spent any money.”

“But this is a huge increase. Why do you need a $ 2 million increase?”

Young seethes. “I can’t do the job without it. You won’t let me do the job.”

“Well, we’ll find somebody who can do the job, Don.”

“Don’t threaten me!”

“Don’tyou threaten me!” Gingrich shouts.

“I’ll have to cancel all my hearings!” Young declares.

Both men rise to their feet at opposite ends of the table. Dick Armey and the other leaders try to calm them. “You have asked for too much money, Don,” Armey says. “Everybody else has cut by a third. You cannot justify this increase.”

Young leaves the room. Gingrich still wants to compromise with the complaining chairmen, but the other leaders insist that he back the cuts — which he ordered. The Speaker reluctantly agrees, his anger ebbing.

“This is not the pleasant prt of being Speaker,” Gingrich says.

The pleasant part of being Speaker occurs that evening when the House, with Gingrich presiding, approves a bill limiting certain lawsuits. The vote is 325 to 99, with 99 Democrats joining 226 Republicans in voting yes. It is the twelfth consecutive bill in the Contract With America to pass the House.

Try to look a little less student-like and radical and you might be on the noon sweep on CNN,” Newt Gingrich tells the students of “Renewing American Civilization,” his 20-hour college course. They are chatting over breakfast in a sleek cafeteria as rain drenches the campus of Reinhardt College in northern Georgia for the seventh consecutive weekend. CNN’s Bob Franken and a camera crew have been permitted access to the breakfast. “They’re trying to do a background package,” Gingrich says, munching strawberries and cantaloupe in atonement for past pancakes and sausage. “We’ll be at Day 50 next Wednesday. Everybody and their brother is trying to figure what does this mean?”

“I think there’s a great sentiment in the country right now to return to something that works, something you can grab hold of,” says Terry Terrell, 46, a compact, curly-haired former Navy pilot and writer for aviation magazines who is enrolled in “Renewing American Civilization.”

“We’re not returning to anything — we’re stepping into the future,” counters Janet Sanders, 33, a pre-law student. Formerly a Las Vegas dancer, now married to one of the Oak Ridge Boys, the honey-blonde Sanders drives to Reinhardt from Nashville every Friday evening to take the course. “The framers of the Constitution, while fearing tyranny, were also fearing mobocracy,” she says, continuing a previous breakfast conversation. “If we step into the Third Wave, as the Toffiers suggest we are going to do, will the Constitution need to be redrafted?”

“Not redrafted, maybe modified,” Gingrich says.

“Would it call for a constitutional convention, or could we do it by amendment?” asks Sanders.

“I don’t think we know yet. If you remember [pollster Daniel] Yankelovich’s argument — there is a difference between public opinion and public judgment.

What you’ve got to do is design a system which does not worship public opinion, but which is ready to have a dialogue that creates public judgment.”

“So how do you preserve the stability?” Sanders asks.

“I think you have to have a long dialogue,” Gingrich says. “I’m finding myself right now in the debate between six- and twelve-year term limits. Exactly based on your concern, think about how long it takes to reach a judgment rather than have an opinion, and then how long it takes to learn to lead a free people. And my guess is that the people who favor six years totally underestimate and undervalue the diffculty of leading people. It’s verY hard to educate leadership in four years, which is what you would have with a six-year term — at the end of your fourth year you’d have to be a leader. That’s too short a growth curve to deal with the world. It’s a direct repudiation of republican government. It’s mobocracy. The founding fathers wanted republican government.”

“How necessarY do you think term limits are if the population exercises their right to vote?” Sanders asks.

“Term limits are a very crude effort, which I support, to rebalance the system. Sometimes in life, you can’t make fine gradations. They’re the only club that people have figured out. From city council, to county commissioner, to the state legislature to the federal government, you have a class of incumbent politicians that is sickening the system — incumbents rigging the game for their own survival.”

“Doesn’t the very idea of[career politicians go against the notion of government of the people?”

“No, in fact, I would argue that it’s silly to think you won’t have career politicians.”

“Well, I would argue that the whole intent of our Constitution — the reason we have elected officials — is so people like us can go to Washington — ”

“None of the Founding Fathers would have believed that. Not that people like you shouldn’t go, but the minute you go, you become a career politician.

This is a very important point. The purpose of elections is to choose between a series of competent people. It is not to pick ignorant amateurs who don’t have a clue about a free society. It’s a very important difference. Look at who wrote the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin was in politics his whole,adult lifetime.”

“Well, that’s a very inside-the-Beltway thing to say, that ignorant amateurs — I would dare say that Dr.

Frist or Fred Thompson — ”

“Dr. Frist is a professional politician,” Gingrich says. Bill Frist, a Nashville heart surgeon, and Fred Thompson, a Nashville lawyer, were both elected to the Senate in 1994.

“By virtue that he just won an election?”

“No, by virtue of the fact that he systematically mastered the requirements of the profession.”

“So, he was an ignorant amateur until he got into the race?”

“No, no. The concept of the ignorant amateur is very important. The concept that you can spontaneously spew up 535 well-meaning citizens who will randomly show up in Washington and magically do good, totally undervalues how hard it is for a free people to work together. It is a totally misleading myth.

Bill Frist did exactly what he did to become a surgeon.

He sat down and, in a highly disciplined, intelligent way, said, look, I want to be an effective citizen, and effective senator. I don’t want to just go and babble. How does an effective citizen learn how to do this? There is a profession of public leadership, justias there is a profession of military command. Every one of the Founding Fathers was a professional. None of them were amateurs who showed up on Tuesday and said, I have this inspiration, let me just do it, because my creative juices are flowing. All of the Founding Fathers would have repudiated that model and said, that’s exactly whatyou meant by “mobocracy.” That’s the mob.”

moral crisis equal to segregationequal to slavery,” Newt Gingrich called the welfare system at his January swearing-in. Despite growing consensus that something must be done, the Republican welfare bill is proving to be the most inflammatory and divisive component of the Contract With America. In addition to proposing the most radical changes in governance since the 1930s, the bill has aroused the pro4ife lobby, which worries that the measure’s goal of discouraging out-of-wedlock births might have the unintended effect of increasing abortions. A Democratic amendment to strike an “illegitimacy” provision is attracting profife Republicans, including the influential Henry Hyde. But the Gingrich-controlled Rules Committee bars the amendment from floor debate, knowing that if it passes, the bill will lose the support of members who believe that curbing out-of-wedlock births is a key to transforming welfare.

The floor battle is rougher, the tactical calculus trickier, than at any time since the crime bill last fall.

Passing the welfare bill itself isn’t the most immediate of Gingrich’s worries. His team first must pass the “rule” governing debate on amendments. Controversial bills sometimes founder on their rule, and Hyde and his allies oppose this rule because it bars the “abortion” amendment from debate. If they pass the rule, the Speaker’s men then must defeat a Democratic ” substitute” welfare bill; approval would cloud the fate of the Republican measure. Then they must defeat a “motion to recommit,” which opponents of bills usually offer at the end of debate. If approved, the recommital motion sends the bill back to the committee that drafted it, effectively killing the bill. Only if Gingrich overcomes those obstacles can he bring the welfare bill itself to a vote.

At noon, with Gingrich across town speaking before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Whip Tom DeLay’s count shows the Republicans narrowly losing the rule and the Democratic substitute bill, offered by Nathan Deal of Georgia, gaining support. The whip team has pushed Republican members as far as it can.

Gingrich aide Jack Howard calls his colleague Leigh Ann Metzget in the Speaker’s car and asks that she make sure he returns from his speech in time to huddle with undecided Republican members before the vote.

By 1:30 Gingrich is working the House floor. By 2:00 he and Majority Leader Armey are behind the closed doors of Armey’s adjacent offce listening to Cliff Stearns, Jay Dickey, John McHugh, and a half dozen other pro-life members who believe the welfare bill may foster abortion. The meeting is tense but strangely subdued, more like an academic seminar than the more typical pep rally. Gingrich and Armey tell the dissidents that the abortion amendment has less to do with curbing abortion than with Democratic tactics for defeating the centerpiece of the Contract With America. One of the amendment’s cosponsors, Democrat Pete Stark, they say, is the quintessential rich liberal elitist up to no good.

“Pete Stark isn’t pro4ife,” Armey asserts. “He’s just trying to kill our welfare bill. Ask yourself whose agenda he’s furthering with this amendment.”

A television set glows with the muted image of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, who is outside on the floor stem-winding the Democratic side of the rule debate to its climax, claiming that the Republican bill “will throw millions of innocem children out on the street.”

When Gephardt finishes, Rules committee chairman Gerald Solomon concludes the debate for the Republicans.

A bell sounds in offices throughout the House side of the Capitol summoning members to vote. The undecideds in Armey’s offme give no hint of their decisions and return to the floor, which is filling with members and the whip teams of both sides.

The Speaker, who normally votes only when the count is close, inserts his card and presses “yes.” The electronic scoreboard shows a ded heat as the numbers mount. It’s clear that Gingrich’s and Armey’s private entreaties were only partly successful. Stearns and McHugh vote yes on the rule, Jay Dickey no.

Gingrich corners Marge Roukema of New Jersey, who has just voted no. Roukema is the senior female Republican in the House; in 1989 she backed Gingrich’s opponent in his race for whip. Now, it isn’t clear why she opposes the rule. Could it be she just wants some attention? After an extended conversation with Gingrich, she switches to a yes.

The Speaker also confers with Jay Kim, the Korean-American from California, who has voted no on the rule because he is concerned about the fate of immigrants under the welfare bill. Gingrich promises to address the immigration issue later, perhaps in a separate bill. Kim switches to yes.

Dick Armey listens to his fellow Texan, Joe Barton.

“I’ve never voted against right-to-life in my career,” Barton laments.

“And you’re not doing it now,” Armey counters, contending that a vote for the rule isn’t a vote against right-to-life. “A bunch of us are just as pro- life as you are and we’re for the rule without the amendment.” But Barton doesn’t want to mar his 100 percent score with the National Right to Life Committee. He votes no.

Gingrich’s entire senior staff works the floor — chief of staff Dan Meyer; senior floor aide Leonard Swinehart; Jack Howard, who specializes in welfare and crime; Arne Christenson, who handles budget and appropriations; and Ed Kutler, who concentrates on health care and liaison with the governors — along with Armey’s staff and the regular whip forces. Jack Howard has managed to preserve three yes votes from among two dozen conservative Democrats angry at Republicans over a budget and appropriations controversy.

Don Young, the Alaskan with the buck knife, has been courted by the Democrats on the rule vote but returns to the Republican fold at the last minute.

When time expires, the yes’s lead the no’s 217 to 211. Six Democrats are absent from the chamber, enough to tie and thus defeat the rule if they all vote no.

Standing next to the podium, Len Swinehart quietly tells Speaker pro tempore Michael Oxley of Ohio, “Put down the gavel — let’s get this over with.” In the past, the House has been leisurely about bringing votes to a close. At the beginning of this Congress, however, Newt Gingrich made clear he would enforce the prescribed time limit of 17 minutes.

Oxley complies, with what has been known since ancient times as a “quick gavel,” and the vote is closed.

The approval of the rule is one of the narrowest victories to date in the 104th Congress. Some 15 Republicans, most of them conservative pro-lifers, opposed the rule. Had it not been for the three Democrats who supported it, and the Republicans who switched under pressure from Gingrich and Armey, the rule would have been defeated, sending the welfare bill, its future very much in doubt, back to the Rules Committee.

The next major test of the respective strengths of the two sides — the vote on the substitute bill offered by Democrat Nathan Deal — comes tomorrow after several amendments are debated. If Gephardt can get all 204 Democrats and the independent socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont to support the substitute, he will need only 13 Republicans to pass it. For the first time in the 104th Congress, the Democrats smell blood.

The next day, a dozen Republican governors, including John Engler of Michigan, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, and William Weld of Massachusetts, await Gingrich in the basement of the Washington Court Hotel. They are upset with him. They feel he has promised more welfare reform than he is delivering on the House floor next week, and they plan to tell him so. The welfare bill on the floor of the House does not provide as much independence as the governors want. Many conservatives still want to micro-manage welfare from Washington. It has been decided in recent days that food stamps will not be sent back to the states in the form of block grants at all.

“[ did the best I could — I can’t control all my people,” Gingrich tells the governors after listening to their complaints. “This all may be moot. I think we may lose the bill. We nearly lost the rule, we could lose on the Deal substitute, we could lose on the motion to recommit, we could lose on final passage.” This is a revelation to the governors.

“Newt, are you serious?” asks Tommy Thompson.

“We’ve got a real problem — I don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Gingrich replies.

“What are you going to do to solve it?” Engler asks.

“I don’t know ifI can solve it.” The dynamic of the room changes from unhappiness with some aspects of a bill the governors thought a sure winner to fear of losing a bill that in many ways is satisfactory.

“What can we do to help?” Thompson asks.

“You can come over to the Hill and tell your state delegations that this is critical, that you need their help.” The governors cancel a crowded slate of previously scheduled meetings and workshops through the afternoon.

“Who should we see first?” Thompson asks.

“Hyde. You need to see Henry Hyde. If we lose Henry Hyde, we lose it all.” Gingrich explains that it’s unclear how Hyde, who nearly defeated the vote on the rule yesterday, will go today.

Henry Hyde has never seen so many governors in one place — certainly not in his suite of offices in the Rayburn Building. One of he courtliest men in Congress, Hyde greets Engler, Thompson, Jim Edgar of Illinois (the only one Hyde knows personally), Kirk Fordice of Mississippi, Fife Symington of Arizona, Terry Branstad of Iowa, and Mike Leavitt of Utah.

John Engler takes the lead in explaining how active the governors have been in the fashioning of the welfare legislation and how important they consider its passage.

“I think the bill will pass,” Hyde says.

“We’re concerned that it will get hung up on this abortion thing,” one governor says, “and I say that as a pro-life governor.” Hyde reflects. “Well, I can tell you that I will vote for the bill. You can count on it.” The excitement among the governors is palpable.

Republican party chairman Haley Barbour, who is the governors” host, slips out to a telephone and calls Newt Gingrich, whose assistant pulls him from a strategy session of the Republican leadership.

“Henry says he’s going to vote for it,” Barbour says.

“Well, find out where he’s going to be on the mo- tion to recommit.” Barbour returns to Hyde’s inner office. Hyde de- clines to say flatly how he will vote on recommital — in other words, he’s agreed to vote for the bill if it comes to that but has not guaranteed that he will not vote to kill it right before then. “It won’t be a problem,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about it.” Barbour calls Gingrich back: “He won’t say for sure, but says it won’t be a problem.” Back in the meeting with the governors, Barbour says to Hyde: “A lot of people are looking to you for leadership on this.” “I’ll help with some people,” Hyde says.

Encouraged, the governors disperse to call on their own congressional delegations.

An aide bursts in on Gingrich. “Governor Engler is on the floor. How do we get him off?.” Rules strictly bar outsiders from the House chamber, even VIPs, when the House is meeting.

“What’s he doing?” Gingrich asks.

“He’s beating the s — out of Upton.” “Over welfare?” the Speaker says.

“Yeah.” “Let him do it.” Fred Upton is a moderate Republican congressman from Engler’s state of Michigan, who has estranged himself from the new Republican leadership because of a penchant for working on bipartisan projects with the Democrats, who are now urging him to vote for their substitute measure.

The governors and Henry Hyde prove crucial in returning straying Republicans to the fold. While the Democrats are solid for the Democratic alternative, only one of the GOP members who voted against the rule votes for it, and it goes down 228-205 at 7:30 p.m.

Newt Gingrich is given the results by telephone in New York.

Having been assured of the result by Armey and DeLay when the effects of the governors” lobbying became clear, he decides to keep a long-standing speaking engagement.

He speaks in Manhattan again Friday morning, and then returns to the Capitol in time for the vote on the motion to recommit and the bill itself in the early afternoon. The motion fails. The bill passes. charles, Prince of Wales, has a Character Prob- lem. He whines. He complains. Baring the scars of emotional trauma, he traces his woes to the doings of others, and, so doing, erodes his own case. If he reaches the throne, he may never possess it. He will “.

never, to many, be King. In this he resembles Bill Clinton, his counterpart and contemporary, who, three years into offce, has not yet been President.

What does the Prince share with the not-quite-the-president, beyond mothers fond of the races, and marriage to ironwilled blondes? Both belong, it appears, to a Lost Generation done in not by war, but by peace. Born post-war, and postatom, their wars were either cold or small. Post-Depression, they were spared true privation.

Post-penicillin, post-polio, they were borne by medicine past the infectious diseases that had borne off the old, and the young.

They had in on a tide of materi- al plenty: inventions, gadgets, and toys. Born safe — born healthymthey were not yet born happy: Into the void cleared by the absence of exterior challenge flowed an intense preoccupation with the self. The generation with the least to complain of became the most intensely self- pitying, the most easily frightened, the most readily razed.

In the absence of real ills, small ones became giant, or were invented completely. The generation without Noemie Ethery is worhinott a study of the, sellin, g 2fi political finrilles called Sex, War and Wives.

struggle invented the Midlife Crisis. The Identity Crisis. The Crisis of Meaning. Age was a crisis. So were Relationships.

Normal transitions became awesome hurdles, consuming acres of newsprint. Finding oneself became a life’s work. Given the world, the boomers turned inward, defining external events by their personal impact.

War is a metaphor for trial and challenge. It is also a marker, to define generations. It separates Charles from his forebears, who lived through the bombings; separates Bill from Jack and Ike. Near the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasions, which drained the young blood of three nations, the rock musician, Kurt Cobain committed suicide at 27, having found a soft life too trying to bear. When Andy Rooney remarked that other young victims could have made use of the years he discarded, he was scolded by Anna Quindlen, then the doyenne of the New York Times Op-Ed page, for failing to appreciate the stress placed on the sensitive by the strains of American life.

Quindlen’s place on the Op-Ed page itself was a sign of the Times, as a one- time forum for policy matters becomes an encounter session for the sensitive and not-so-very-young. Flora Lewis once wrote of international politics; Quindlen’s beat was to discuss herself. With Frank Rich, and others, she was invited by the Times” boomer publisher to turn the page into a support group where boomers dissect their impressions, only marginally connected to events.

The differences here merit discussion, for they concern the mood of the age. Lewis, and others, had

David McClintick, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Indecent Exposure and Swordfish, which examine crises inside a mojor corporation and a federal spy agency, respectively. He followed Newt Gingrich for several months this year for a work-in-progress on the 104th Congress.