THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701040482
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: 62 lines
The day after tomorrow, Rep. Newt Gingrich will return to the halls of Congress and try mightily to remain speaker of the House of Representatives.
Most humans are fairly humble and tend to enjoy it when someone guilty of too much pride takes a fall. With Gingrich, his lapses have tumbled him so far, so fast, that the glee is magnified.
The Germans, ever efficient, have a single word - schadenfreude - that roughly describes the feeling of smug satisfaction at others' misfortunes. Gingrich's foes have been hosting a three-week schadenfreude festival. Pass the beer and pretzels.
But if you watch Congress closely - and that can be as perilous a hobby as breeding bumblebees - you might come to miss the Newt of '95. Especially if you consider the schedule for the 105th Congress.
A congressional aide, poring over his calendar, described it this way:
``Let's see. They come back the 7th of January, but just for a couple of days. . . . They're off much of February. Then they're back March 3rd through the 13th, I think for some budget stuff. Then they go out of session on the 14th, for the rest of the month.''
Compare that to the First 100 Days of the 104th Congress, when Gingrich, mandating 14-hour workdays, forced a vote on each item of the ``Contract With America.''
Few major initiatives survived a cautious Senate or a Clinton veto threat, but the surge of congressional energy led Newsweek to extol Gingrich as ``the most powerful speaker of the House since the legendary Sam Rayburn.'' There was a sense that something important was afoot, that Congress was accomplishing something.
In reality, members of Congress work hard most all the time - theirs is a rigorous life. But their dance card for the first months of 1997 makes that a tough proposition to sell - tougher still when you realize that it's the Republicans - Newt & Co. - setting the tempo.
It's likely that the GOP wants to hear Bill Clinton's State of the Union address in late January and get a look at his budget before they make their agenda clear.
Politics, unlike chess and checkers, can put the person who moves first at a disadvantage. The GOP learned that when they tried to cut the deficit by trimming the growth of Medicare. Clinton, by grandly miscasting the issue, beat them up unmercifully through the fall. This time, scalded, the GOP wants the president to move first.
In January of '95, Gingrich looked for all the world like a Visigoth at the gates of Rome. He arrived all ruddy and beefy and smelling of victory.
Tuesday, a chastened Gingrich will return to the House in a vapor of shame, having pulled the wool over his colleagues' eyes on questions of ethics. He tripped over sackfuls of hubris and pretty much deserves whatever he gets.
But whether Gingrich serves as speaker, or doesn't, means little out here in the provinces. What has meaning is the realization that the members of the House rewarded us for supporting them in November by taking off most of December, all but three days in January, and half of February and March.
Few of us will miss Gingrich if he is dumped because few of us pay that much attention to the nuances of government. But we might miss the sense of urgency he brought to the House in the winter of '95, a span of 100 days when Congress made us feel, for once, that our problems were more important than theirs. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary.