This time last year, Newt Gingrich bestrode the narrow political world like a colossus. The exhaustingly productive first hundred days of the 104th Congress had concluded, and opinion was unanimous: It was a triumph of ideological vigor and political logistics. Gingrich and the Republican House had done what they had promised when the Contract with America was unveiled six weeks before the November 1994 elections: They brought ten different substantive items to the House floor for a fair vote, and passed nine of them. An astonishing 302 votes on different pieces of legislation were taken overall. The theme of the moment was “promises made, promises kept,” and the man universally considered responsible for keeping those promises was Newt Gingrich.
The master of the universe in 1995 has become the invisible man of 1996. Gingrich is lying low, and has been since January. With his national popularity ratings at around 30 percent and his name supposedly synonymous with Republican excess, his friends counseled him to get out of the line of fire.
That was wise counsel if you think Gingrich’s political value depends on his personal popularity. But it doesn’t, it never has, and it won’t (at least, not for the foreseeable future). It is time for Gingrich to come out from hiding and do what he has always done best: Rally the faithful, articulate the agenda for his movement and his party, and help frame the national political conversation in a way that will clarify the stark choice facing the United States in November 1996.
To be blunt, Gingrich’s personal popularity is beside the point (though we certainly understand why he may not feel that way). He is speaker of the House, not a candidate for president. He needs the votes not of 50 million, but of 120,000. If he is a polarizing force in American politics, that quality is intrinsic to Gingrich himself and to his achievements in building the new conservative majority. Furthermore, Congress has long been an unpopular institution, and a few months of Republican activism weren’t going to transform the national hostility toward the House of Representatives — hostility that has spilled over onto Gingrich as its leader.
But Gingrich is not just speaker. He is the national political figure most associated with the ideas of the “revolution” of 1994 and the governing agenda that has yet to be implemented. It needs to be implemented, and it’s going to take a far longer time than he may originally have thought at the height of the enthusiasm in early 1995. That will take dogged persistence, the one quality we do know the American people admire in a politician (see Nixon, Reagan, Clinton). Gingrich certainly made some mistakes last year, but they didn’t come when he discussed policy. In that realm he was, and is, without peer. And Gingrich’s policy prescriptions are under threat from two opposing forces: a president who will say and do anything to get reelected, and a Republican presidential candidate who has yet to construct a clear case on his own behalf.
For months Bill Clinton has been letting fly at Republicans and conservatives while the GOP presidential candidates cannibalized each other to little purpose and left him alone. It is dispiriting to have one’s ideas labeled “extremist” without effective reply, and so the troops — Gingrich’s troops, also known as the Republican political base — are demoralized. Who can rally them? Who can remind them that Clinton can be beaten in 1996 as he was thoroughly trounced in the midterm elections of 19947 Who can lay out the case for a Dole presidency — for an era of Republican governance that would feature tax cuts, welfare reform, conservative judges, reduction in the size of government, and a balanced budget — first for his natural sup- porters and then more broadly to the country? Who can draw the bright lines between the two parties and the two philosophies? As we look around, the only person we see is Gingrich.
Is this risky for Gingrich, for Republicans, for conservatives? Sure. But what’s the alternative? Today we see the costs of Gingrich’s withdrawal from the national debate: Clinton getting a free ride, the Republican agenda on the Hill in stasis and dismissed as though it had been tried and found wanting, bickering among conservatives rather than renewed assaults on the liberal welfare state. Bob Dole is not going to fill this vacuum; indeed, he’d be better off worrying about how to run a good three-month campaign, from the Republican convention in August through the election in November. The four months before the convention present an opportunity to remind people why they voted for Republicans in 1994 and why they ought to vote Republican again in 1996.
Gingrich is certainly a quick study, and he surely understands when, how, and why he made mistakes last year. There were legislative mistakes — excesses of green-eyeshade, balanced-budget politics; going head-to-head with the president on the government shutdown. There were personal mistakes — off- the-cuff remarks about his supposed sistreatment on Air Force One. Now relieved of the burden of being the maximum leader of the Republican party — for that is what candidate Dole is, for better and for worse — Gingrich should forget about making himself more likable in the public’s eyes. That’s not going to happen, not for a while. Indeed, the fact that he is so unpopular should afford him a certain measure of freedom. Things aren’t going to get any worse. It is time for Gingrich to speak first on behalf of the sizable number of Americans — 32 percent, in one poll — who admire, respect, and look up to him. They need him. And many other Americans, whatever their doubts about Gingrich personally, could benefit from hearing his arguments and seeing a revivified Republican party in the House. Certainly, this would help the Dole candidacy. And without it, the ideas Gingrich brought to the fore in 1994 are at risk.
