Verbal Slings and Arrows Pierce Washington Civility : Politics: The war of words escalates as debates turn bitter. Some cite rising nastiness as a reason to retire.

“I’d like to take an Uzi in there and spray the place,” muttered the man in the elegant dark-blue suit, a steely look of hatred in his eyes.

The speaker was no wanna-be terrorist but a United States senator--a furious Democrat exiting the Senate chamber one recent evening after another fruitless debate with Republicans who are intent on transforming the country’s social welfare programs.

With breathtaking frequency these days, venomous rhetoric and vicious invective are polluting public dialogue in Washington--not only in speeches and press conferences but even during private high-level meetings, from the West Wing of the White House to the marbled warrens of the Capitol.

Such loaded words as fascists, dictators, extremists, terrorism, blackmail and even crybaby regularly punctuate the debate. Shoving matches, tie-pulling, temper tantrums and finger-wagging lectures no longer shock. No one seems immune from such churlish behavior.

“It’s like a bunch of kids,” fumed Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin (R-La.). “We need to put a stop to it.”

All the accumulated sore feelings are threatening to derail the negotiations to resolve the budget stalemate between President Clinton and the Republican Congress. If it turns out that the yearlong avalanche of vituperation--often resulting from long-nursed personal grudges--plays a part in prolonging the budget gridlock, there will be no dearth of villains.

“This partisanship, often rancorous, has taken over the debate,” conceded Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

The arrival this year of a GOP majority in Congress--and the bitter departure of senior Democrats--exacerbated the situation. On the cusp of the wave are an uncommonly outspoken Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and an unusually large class of zealous freshmen in both the House and the Senate who care less about decorum than they do about the issues at hand.

“Maybe it’s Newt Gingrich’s style coming home to roost. He was basically an outsider using excessive rhetoric, and now the Democrats are using the same technique,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University here.

Further contributing to the nastiness is the fact that Congress is deciding hugely important questions of whether well-established federal programs will live or die.

“It’s really unfortunate the way that the debates have gone,” said first-term Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.). “But a lot of that’s due to the extraordinarily high stakes involved.”

To be sure, searing personal animus, fueled by political rivalry and private ambitions, is hardly a newcomer to Capitol Hill.

In the last century, for instance, John Randolph, the noted Roanoke, Va., orator, described Henry Clay of Kentucky as “so brilliant yet so corrupt, . . . like a rotten mackerel by moonlight [that] shines and stinks.”

In 1850, Sen. Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a gun on a colleague, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, at which point Benton flung open his coat and cried: “I have no pistol. Let him fire! Let the assassin fire!” (Cooler heads prevailed, and both senators were censured.)

Six years later, Charles Sumner, an outspoken foe of slavery from Massachusetts, was beaten into unconsciousness by a cane-wielding Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina as he sat at his Senate desk--just three days after Sumner verbally assailed Brooks’ uncle, Sen. Andrew Butler.

But rarely, if ever, has the petty mean-spiritedness been so flagrant and pervasive as now. The bile seems to escalate with each uptick in the stakes as Democrats and Republicans clash over their contrasting visions for America.

During a November budget meeting in the White House Cabinet Room, Vice President Al Gore and Gingrich exchanged such heated words that several aides thought they might have to intervene and keep the men from lunging at one another, according to Democratic and GOP aides who were present.

The exchange occurred as Gingrich expressed his unhappiness at being attacked by Administration officials--most notably Gore, who had said in a speech the previous week: “This Congress led by Newt Gingrich and [Senate Majority Leader] Bob Dole is the most right-wing, extremist, anti-family Congress in the history of this country.”

The vice president responded by saying that at least Democrats had not suggested that Republicans were somehow responsible for the drowning of two small children in South Carolina by their mother--a reference to remarks that Gingrich had made along those lines.

“Newt,” Gore reportedly added, “I don’t remember you apologizing to us for saying we killed those two kids in South Carolina.”

It took soothing words from both Clinton and Dole to calm the disputants, according to aides.

The Speaker also was miffed at White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry for the way he criticized the Republican Medicare proposals. “Eventually, they would like to see the program die and go away,” McCurry had said, adding: “You know, that’s probably what they’d like to see happen to seniors too.”

Nor was Gore’s run-in with Gingrich an isolated incident. He accused the Republican majority in Congress of waging an anti-environment “jihad,” which prompted Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who chairs the House Science subcommittee on energy and environment, to call Gore “the one wearing the storm trooper uniform.”

The debate over Medicare has produced some of the more memorable, if regrettable, moments.

During a session of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Sam Gibbons (D-Fla.), a lawmaker who voted to create Medicare 30 years ago, stormed out of the meeting, angrily calling the Republicans “dictators” and “fascists.”

And then in a corridor confrontation that was captured by television cameras, Gibbons and Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) got into a heated discussion during which Gibbons yanked on Thomas’ tie, prompting Thomas to yell in protest. That faceoff was further enlivened as other members quickly formed a circle and began shouting at one another in a babble of cross-talk.

Among the Democratic utterances that Republicans found most offensive were those made by House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). Referring to the GOP legislative juggernaut, Gephardt said at one point: “Sometimes revolutions claim millions of lives.”

Gephardt also accused the Republicans of “trying to hold the whole country hostage,” “threatening to basically blow up the government” and engaging in “blackmail and bomb-throwing.”

During a nationally televised interview, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta likened GOP tactics on the budget to “economic terrorism.”

But the most memorable exchange took place behind closed doors at a late-night session in the White House Cabinet Room on Nov. 13, as the President and congressional leaders met in a last-ditch effort to head off a partial government shutdown.

Aides on both sides said that angry words flew after House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) told Clinton that the withering Democratic criticism of the Republican agenda “makes it difficult for us to work with the White House.”

The President flushed with anger and, with a rising voice, recalled that he too had worked tirelessly to reduce the federal budget deficit and to reform health care--programs that were bitterly denounced by most Republicans.

“These tough shots--I know what they are like,” Clinton said.

Rising to his feet, the President pointed a finger at Armey and added: “I don’t care what you said about me. But I have never said anything disparaging about your wife or any other family member.” Armey responded: “Perhaps it’s my Western upbringing. But I don’t listen very well when someone’s pointing a finger in my face.”

(In June, 1993, Armey had called First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a Marxist during a speech in Texas. Three months later, she got back at Armey as he was belittling her “government-run” health care reform plan. During a House committee hearing, a smiling First Lady jokingly linked Armey to Jack Kevorkian, the suicide-assistance advocate in Michigan. After the laughter subsided, Armey shot back: “The reports of your charm are overstated and the reports of your wit are understated.”)

Gingrich has also had his moments with the President, directly and through the press. At countless press conferences, Gingrich has insisted with righteous indignation that no one--including people educated in Arkansas--could construe the GOP’s Medicare proposals as anything but an addition to the program rather than a diminution.

Over a breakfast with reporters, he complained bitterly that Clinton had slighted him while the two had traveled together aboard Air Force One to Israel for the funeral of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The budget reconciliation bill sent to the White House might not have been so tough, he said, if he had received better treatment.

That led to a front-page headline in the New York Daily News that screamed: “Cry Baby,” a reproduction of which quickly found its way to the House floor. It took a mostly party-line vote of the House to banish the enlarged copy of the tabloid front page.

Although things have been more genteel in the Senate, 12 out of the 33 senators who are up for reelection next year have already decided to retire, with most of them identifying the increasing loss of civility as a key factor.

“The little things that help grease the wheels, that make this place function,” have all but vanished, rued Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), one of the retirees.

A similar exodus may be under way in the House. Among the 18 members who have already declared their intention to retire is Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), a 34-year veteran who declared in his retirement announcement: “We need more civility, cooperation, common sense and reason in our political discourse and decision-making, and less anger, frustration, distrust and ideology.”

Many lawmakers hope for the return of a more collegial climate--perhaps, they say, after the budget battle is resolved (if it ever is). A glimmer of optimism shone last week when 24 Republican House members, declaring themselves to be “independent and reform-minded,” formed a group called “the Alliance” and pledged to work with like-minded Democrats “to bring respect and civility back.”