WASHINGTON OUTLOOK : Will Gingrich Learn to Dampen the Fiery Rhetoric Before He Combusts?

Buried deep in Newt Gingrich’s remarkable speech to the Republican National Committee earlier this month was a throwaway comment that helps explain the anxiety rippling through some GOP circles over his performance as the most high-profile House Speaker this century.

Just before Gingrich launched his attack on Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the media and anyone else who had questioned his book deal with a company owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, the Speaker allowed that Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour had also advised him that the book would be “a big distraction, lots of noise.” Barbour’s advice never seemed so prescient as during the next several minutes, when Gingrich, as if unable to control the flow of hollow-tip words tumbling from his lips, emptied both barrels at his critics.

Gingrich’s eruption over the book deal (capped by a biting reference to Hillary Clinton’s prowess at cattle-futures trading) dominated the news the next day, eclipsing all attention on the party’s first meeting since its triumphant victory last fall.

The message from the session was not Republicans gathering to consolidate their gains and plan for 1996--nor even Gingrich making the case for their legislative agenda. As on many other mornings in this torrid political winter, the story the next day was Raging Newt: Gingrich outraged, intemperate and lashing out at his enemies.

That’s exactly what is worrying some of the people who plot the GOP’s fortunes for a living. These GOP strategists fear that through a combination of media focus and Gingrich’s own self-aggrandizement, the debate in Washington is increasingly about the merits of Newt rather than the merits of retrenching government. “It’s all becoming a referendum on Newt, which he is not going to win,” said one conservative Republican consultant.

Like President Clinton before him, Gingrich is painfully learning that self-discipline is the agent of natural selection in modern national politics--the critical element of success. The reason is simple: At a time of endemic cynicism about politicians, the cost of mistakes now vastly exceeds the rewards for success. Clinton proves the rule. During his first two years in office, Clinton moved into law a massive deficit-reduction plan, a sweeping crime bill and a large tax cut for the working poor. But surveys found that many of the voters who turned away from the Democrats last fall instead remembered his failed health care initiative and the imbroglio over gays in the military.

As an opposition leader, Gingrich demonstrated enormous tenacity in charting and executing a long-term plan to ideologically polarize the electorate, discredit the Democrats and design a new conservative agenda. And he has held together his Republican members to quickly pass congressional reforms and a version of the balanced-budget amendment promised in the “contract with America.” But since the Republican victory last fall, hardly a week has gone by--and sometimes hardly a day--without Gingrich carelessly setting off a distracting new brush-fire.

Gingrich has been unable, or unwilling, to put behind him the dispute over his book deal--despite advice from some leading Republicans to cut the cord by dropping the book altogether. Like Clinton with C. Lani Guinier, Gingrich either failed to read the incendiary writings of his choice for House historian or failed to understand their meaning. And his addiction to enunciating policy on the fly (another trait he shares with Clinton) has placed other House members in the awkward position of publicly repudiating Gingrich pronouncements on issues such as ending welfare benefits for legal immigrants.

Gingrich, in fact, issues so many pronouncements on so many subjects that the sheer volume has actually insulated him from some potential self-inflicted wounds. Gingrich has taken his share of borderline hits--like a newsmagazine cover that portrayed him as Scrooge. But if anything, he has been given a relatively free ride on the ideas that he tosses off like so many gum wrappers.

Take just two examples. At a Ways and Means Committee meeting early this month, Gingrich casually suggested that government provide tax credits for poor people to buy laptop computers as a way of plugging into the Information Age; as Michael Kinsley pointed out in a recent New Yorker magazine essay, the cost of such a new entitlement--which Gingrich quickly disowned--might be as much as $40 billion.

In his speech to the RNC, Gingrich sweepingly asserted that social intervention can only help individuals in need, not entire groups of people: “You can’t help a class,” he said, in support of the argument that one-to-one private charity works better than government social programs. Is that assumption valid? In 1959, before Medicare and the expansion of Social Security, more than 35% of senior citizens lived in poverty; today the figure is 13%. And since the federal government began distributing food stamps three decades ago, stunted growth (a key indication of chronic malnutrition) has dropped by more than half among low-income children.

At the moment, neither Gingrich’s rhetorical slips nor ethical tangles--not even the book deal--threaten his position. But cumulatively they demonstrate an absence of restraint and deliberation that has some Republicans wondering whether Gingrich can evolve from guerrilla warrior to national leader. After all, understanding how to blow up bridges doesn’t necessarily qualify you to build them.

The biggest surprise about Gingrich’s speakership has been his thin skin. As his RNC speech demonstrated, he appears genuinely astonished that Democrats would question his integrity. But Gingrich, as much as any other single actor, has shaped the modern political environment in which attacks on ethics and character are a conscious tool of partisan strategy.

“I don’t think I dish it out,” Gingrich said the other day, when asked if he was better at leveling criticism than taking it. That from a man who labeled Woody Allen’s affair with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter a “perfect model of Bill Clinton Democratic values”; who used the words “corrupt” and “thugs” to describe the House leadership under Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. and who said in 1985 that Democrats opposing aid to the Nicaraguan Contras “could wear an ‘I despise America’ button.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) best captured the irony in Gingrich’s present predicament when he acidly commented: “You live by the sword, you die by the sword in this town.”

Insiders in the House leadership and the RNC are cautiously optimistic that Gingrich (even if at the point of a sword) is learning the difference between his old and new role. In the past week, Gingrich has shared the spotlight: He was notable by his absence in the GOP commentary on the State of the Union Address. And friends say “he realizes he has to temper his rhetoric,” as one put it.

But caution isn’t bred in Gingrich’s bones; for years, as one Republican consultant notes, his style has been to “throw stuff on the wall and see what sticks.” Understanding the need to change, and curbing the coruscating impulses that carried him to the speakership, are very different things.

The balanced-budget amendment victory last week should dampen the murmurs of discontent about Gingrich. But if the Speaker keeps opening questions about his judgment and character, even legislative victories won’t permanently suppress the doubts. Just ask Bill Clinton.