Clinton, GOP Offer Peace, and Clenched Fists

President Clinton and the new Republican leaders of Congress proffered olive branches to each other but simultaneously clenched their fists amid strong signs that the post-election cease-fire may prove fragile and fleeting.

Though both sides vowed to work together on a broad range of issues, including welfare reform and government streamlining, each laid down markers that seem to make collision inevitable.

In press conferences Wednesday, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), soon to become Senate majority leader and Speaker of the House, declared their intention to move quickly to pass a balanced-budget amendment, limit welfare benefits and reform the political system.

Gingrich also spoke of a middle-class tax cut and Clinton, adapting quickly to a hostile new climate, indicated that he might cooperate in this area--but only if a way can be found to pay for it through spending cuts.

It was a clearly chastened Clinton who emerged Wednesday morning to survey an utterly changed political landscape and to wonder what he can salvage of his damaged presidency. Buoyant Republican leaders, trying unsuccessfully not to gloat, spoke with voices of authority that they had never before known.

Dole said that Tuesday’s GOP groundswell was a clear vote of no confidence in Clinton’s agenda but he reassured the President in a telephone conversation that Republicans in the Senate “want to work together where we can.”

Clinton, smiling wanly at a press conference, said of voters: “They sent us a clear message. I got it.”

He accepted responsibility for the voters’ harsh verdict on the Democrats’ performance over the last two years but asserted that much of the popular anger was directed not at him but at an arrogant Congress dominated for 40 years by Democrats.

“With the Democrats in control of both the White House and the Congress, we were held accountable yesterday and I accept my share of the responsibility in the result of the elections,” Clinton said.

He added later in the news conference: “I believe that a lot of these things that we saw yesterday were the culmination of many years of trends, as well as a dissatisfaction with the last two years.”

A senior White House aide, glumly analyzing Tuesday’s results, said voters clearly concluded that the American political process was paralyzed.

“Something had to happen and it had to be big,” the aide said. “And it was big.”

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, meeting with South Korean officials in Seoul, felt compelled to reassure his hosts that the course of American foreign policy will not change because of Tuesday’s elections.

“There is a strong continuity in American foreign policy,” Christopher said in a hastily rewritten public speech. “I want to assure this international audience that we intend to go forward in the spirit of bipartisanship. . . . Our policy toward Asia and particularly toward Korea has strong bipartisan support.”

Tuesday’s electoral earthquake left behind a political landscape transformed almost beyond recognition. After controlling the House without interruption for 40 years, Democrats surrendered the lower chamber with a loss of at least 51 seats in Tuesday’s balloting, with seven elections still too close to call.

In the Senate, the Democrats lost six open seats that the party now holds, saw two incumbents (Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania and Jim Sasser of Tennessee) defeated, and failed to capture a single seat now held by Republicans.

The Republicans concluded election night with a 52-48 advantage in the Senate and swelled their margin by another vote on Wednesday, when conservative Democratic Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama switched to the GOP. In announcing his decision, Shelby declared that “there is not” room in the Democratic Party any longer “for a conservative Southern Democrat such as myself.”

While at least 33 Democratic House incumbents were defeated, not a single Republican incumbent was turned out of office. Republicans will hold at least 229 seats in the House next year, with the potential for further gains as the last races are decided.

Topping the list of defeated Democrats is House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.). Foley conceded defeat Wednesday afternoon to George Nethercutt, a Republican attorney who, like many GOP winners, had never previously held public office. With 99% of the vote counted, Foley trailed Nethercutt by 2,174 votes, 50.6% to 49.4%.

The defeat of Foley--who became the first House Speaker denied reelection since 1860--offered an emphatic coda to a GOP sweep.

In addition to Foley, Republican challengers took out such other prominent Democrats as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks of Texas, 34-year veteran Neal Smith of Iowa, former Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois and House Intelligence Chairman Dan Glickman of Kansas.

Democrats lost 10 governorships that their party now holds without capturing any that Republicans now control. Among the Democratic governors toppled were two of the party’s best known figures: New York’s Mario M. Cuomo and Ann Richards of Texas.

The combined loss of at least 59 seats in the House and Senate was the most since 1958 when Republicans lost 60 en route to losing the White House two years later. It exceeded even the losses that Republicans suffered in the 1974 Watergate election, when the GOP lost 43 House and three Senate seats.

Though Republicans repeatedly insisted that they intend to work with Clinton, party leaders also made clear that they interpret the results as an unambiguous repudiation of the President and his agenda--a position that may inherently limit the opportunities for cooperation.

“It can’t be dismissed as anti-incumbency because we didn’t lose any (incumbents),” Dole told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “It was an anti-Clinton agenda, or anti-Clinton vote.”

Both Dole and Gingrich said that Republicans would move ahead quickly with the agendas that Senate and House Republicans respectively laid out during the campaign. The House plan is contained in the more detailed form of a “contract with America” that drew intense attack during the campaign from Clinton and Democrats.

On Wednesday, Gingrich said that the Republican House would bring to a vote within the session’s first 100 days central items in the contract plan, including “a vote on term limits; a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget; the line-item veto; litigation reform; welfare reform; an effective, enforceable death penalty; beginning to phase out the marriage penalty in the tax code” and lowering Social Security taxes on higher-income seniors.

Gingrich said that the GOP also will move quickly on congressional reforms, promising “the opening thing the first day” to pass legislation requiring Congress to abide by the laws it passes.

In an appearance Wednesday morning in his home district of Cobb County, Ga., Gingrich unveiled a previously unseen conciliatory tone toward Clinton. Gingrich told reporters that “it would be foolish to seek to go out and embarrass the President” by proceeding first with measures that would prompt vetoes by Clinton or put the Administration in a defensive crouch.

“We should start in a positive way and not assume there will be vetoes,” he added.

But, he said, Clinton ran against the items in the Republican contract and the voters decisively rebuffed him. “The American people chose,” Gingrich said. “So the contract in my mind is not negotiable.”

Dole was less specific about his priorities, saying that Senate Republicans had only “talked in general terms” about such issues as a balanced-budget amendment, welfare reform and ethics reform. Asked in one television interview if Gingrich’s “contract” would drive the Senate Republican agenda, Dole--who has previously sparred with his brash counterpart in the House--quickly answered: “I think it’ll more drive the House agenda.”

Clinton said at his news conference that there are items in the Republican contract that he could live with--the line-item veto, political reform, revisions to the tax code and welfare reform--but that he would not do anything that he believes would endanger the economic recovery, such as tax cuts without compensating reductions in spending.

But compromise even in those areas may be extremely arduous. On welfare, for instance, it will be difficult for Clinton to swallow the demands, popular among Republicans, to cut off all aid to young women who bear children out of wedlock.

“I’m not going to compromise on my convictions,” Clinton said Wednesday.

For all their paeans to bipartisanship, Republicans sent the same blunt message. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a leader among conservatives and a likely rival of Dole’s for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination, said Republicans would be willing to deal with Clinton--so long as he moves toward their positions.

“I am not willing to compromise meeting the President halfway and going in the wrong direction,” Gramm said. “Why should we want to go halfway in the wrong direction?”

But the reality is that Clinton does not know what direction to turn now.

Clinton said that he wants to take “a long nap,” let the Republicans revel in their victory for a few days, then travel to Asia to try to boost U.S. trade.

And after a long political strategy session at the White House Wednesday, one aide commented: “The question was, where do we go from here? I don’t think we know. And that’s what frightens me.”

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

* DIVERSITY AT TOP: Dole, Gingrich. Will GOP chiefs speak with one voice? A19

* ROADMAP FOR CONGRESS: GOP ‘contract’ gives glimpse of where Congress is headed. A20

* NATIONAL RESULTS: A12-A20, A22