Eyes on Capitol Hill Focus on Right Angle : Media: As GOP takes over, notebooks are open, cameras are rolling and microphones are extended. Coverage sets pace for a less camera-shy Congress.

Call it the sound bite heard around the world.

Actually, there will be a whole world war’s worth of sound bites--and an army of microphones, cameras, network anchors and radio talk show hosts deployed to record them--when Gen. Gingrich and his Republican minutemen launch what they hope will be the second American revolution today, the opening day of the 104th Congress.

Granted unprecedented access by the new GOP leadership, the media will be out in extraordinary force to record both the history and the histrionics of Day One in the House Republicans’ ambitious 100-day timetable to reinvent government according to the principles of their campaign manifesto, the “contract with America.”

The major television networks will broadcast their evening news shows live from the Capitol on opening day, and the Rush Limbaugh show will be setting up temporary studios in the personal congressional suite of Newt Gingrich, the Georgian who will be officially elected House Speaker today.

“We’re going crazy. . . . This is like a State of the Union, a presidential inauguration and opening day all rolled into one,” said a House staff member involved in the logistics for the television coverage--most of which will focus on the media-savvy Gingrich as he becomes the first Republican in more than 40 years to lead the House.

Even after the novelty wears off, however, the Republicans are promising that much of the new openness will remain as television cameras are allowed into all committee hearings for the first time and a new on-line service is inaugurated to give anyone with a computer and a modem instant access to legislative texts and congressional speeches.

“A lot of people, including my boss, are uncomfortable with the idea of letting the TV cameras into the committee hearings because it goes against the grain of the way things have always been done around here,” a senior GOP committee staff member conceded. “But they’ve accepted it because they also realize that we’re in the majority now only because we promised to go against the grain and change the way things are done.”

Master of the talk radio and televised photo op formats, Gingrich has a deeper appreciation than any Speaker before him of the fact that the medium is the message. But to help massage it and ensure that it continues to get out, his new leadership team has hired John Garbett, a Hollywood executive who had worked for director Steven Spielberg, to help coordinate media services in the House.

The Hollywood touch will be much in evidence on the first day. While the Capitol Hill police provide security for the lawmakers, at Gingrich’s request the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers will be on hand to deal with any extraterrestrial threats--as well as to provide entertainment for lawmakers’ children.

The festive atmosphere, however, is likely to be misleading. After all the pomp and circumstance of the morning swearing-in, the new GOP leadership is promising to keep the House in session--all night if necessary--to pass a series of highly touted reforms aimed at streamlining the congressional bureaucracy and making lawmakers live by the same employment laws that they pass for private-sector enterprises.

Although of little practical importance to the voters who elected them, passage of the internal reforms will amount to the symbolic opening shot in the legislative revolution that the GOP hopes to bring about.

“The American people will see more reform . . . on the first day than they have seen in decades,” predicted Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “At the end of the day, people will marvel and say, ‘Look at what they have already done on only the first day,’ ” added incoming House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.).

Leaving as little as possible to chance on the first day of the session, House Republicans, who are unaccustomed to presiding over the floor and managing debates, have been rehearsing for several weeks, boning up on their parliamentary procedures and practicing their opening day lines in a mock debate in which Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) played the adversarial role of incoming Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

Their real test, however, will come not on opening day but in the weeks and months to follow as the Republicans seek to enact a sweeping series of reforms aimed at dismantling Democratic social programs and rebuilding them according to a GOP blueprint more conservative than anything that even Ronald Reagan sought when he was President.

“Sure, it’s going to be a daunting task,” a GOP leadership aide acknowledged. “But we have got to deliver if we want this show to continue beyond its first congressional season.”