NEWS ANALYSIS : Can Gingrich Hold His Tongue for Good of Party? : Politics: Speaker has resolved to exercise self-discipline. But if he fails, he may derail GOP cause.

The last of the day’s meetings was finally over. As he kicked back with several of his closest confidants, Newt Gingrich launched into a heartfelt mea culpa.

“In the last few weeks, I’ve said some of the most stupid things I’ve ever said in my life,” the dejected speaker of the House rued, one of the participants recalled later.

He acknowledged that his proclivity to talk too much, often in petulant, scornful tones, had become an embarrassment to himself and his fellow Republicans. Now that churlish behavior was threatening to derail the legislative revolution that he had sired, just as high-stakes budget negotiations with President Clinton entered the final stretch.

Left unsaid was that Gingrich had only himself to blame. For nearly everyone close to him this year has urged Gingrich to resist the impulse to sound off--advice that went unheeded day after day.

Indeed, as Gingrich completes his first year as one of the most powerful speakers in history, the promise and the peril facing him in 1996 rank among Capitol Hill’s most intriguing topics as a frazzled Congress prepares to wrap up a frenetic session dominated by Gingrich and his Republican revolution.

At this point, one thing seems clear enough: Gingrich is not only master of his own fate but more than any other individual, he will determine the success or failure of the Republican agenda in the 104th Congress.

Having almost single-handedly created the Republican majority in the House--and secured his own place in history--the 52-year-old congressman from suburban Atlanta is perhaps the only man who has the ability to derail the GOP revolution--if he fails to comport himself in a less controversial manner.

The most spectacular example of his inability to check himself was his complaint in November about being snubbed aboard Air Force One while traveling to Israel for the funeral of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Before going public, Gingrich had expressed his resentment privately to House colleagues. And on the spot, one of his lieutenants, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House GOP Conference, urged Gingrich in no uncertain terms not to repeat those remarks.

But Gingrich soon told reporters over breakfast that the first budget impasse, which caused a partial government shutdown, might have been avoided had it not been for the tougher stance he took during negotiations with the Clinton administration--all because he felt snubbed by the president while on Air Force One. His remarks provoked a firestorm of criticism and ridicule.

Verbal Gaffes

Now, on this bracing December night, as the majestic Capitol Christmas tree twinkled below his elegant suite of offices overlooking the Mall, a chastened Gingrich resolved to resist the temptation to expound on virtually every topic known to man. In the past, he has held forth on the risk of female soldiers developing infections in combat ditches, called liberal Democrats “despicable” and linked heinous crimes to the “welfare state.”

Such inflammatory comments eventually provoked a backlash, something that GOP lawmakers encountered at every turn during their Thanksgiving recess. One Republican House leader later reduced that message to “Tell Newt to shut up!” Even Gingrich’s mother-in-law in Ohio told him: “Just don’t say anything,” according to Time magazine.

The avalanche of advice seems at last to be taking hold.

But will it last?

Because Gingrich has always been a boat-rocker, many of his closest friends and advisors wonder whether he has the self-discipline to maintain what, for him, amounts to an oath of silence--especially with more than 30 fund-raising events on his January calendar.

As Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) noted, with a sense of foreboding, it is precisely when Gingrich keeps such a grueling, almost manic, pace that he is most prone to commit verbal gaffes.

“Newt’s mind moves so quickly and aggressively that he finds it very difficult to restrain himself,” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), a longtime Gingrich confidant who served with him in the House.

Added best-selling author William J. Bennett, an influential Republican strategist and Gingrich ally: “This is a guy who’s going to reflect out loud. He’s a professor. Academics do that. They are used to doing it in front a class, in front of colleagues.”

But it also is a trait that does not serve a speaker of the House well, as Gingrich himself has acknowledged.

“I keep forgetting that all the ground rules have changed,” he told Time during a recent interview for a cover story honoring him as its “Man of the Year.” “I have consistently, all year, said things that made no sense for the speaker of the House.”

To the consternation of some of his closest allies, Gingrich’s management style has proven to be a study in contrasts.

Personal Conduct

Among the House GOP rank-and-file, Gingrich has imposed discipline worthy of a military commander. But he has been remarkably undisciplined in his personal conduct. Against all advice, he sleeps too little, eats too much, exercises too little and--at least until now--talks too much.

To wit: As a public relations ploy, Gingrich instructed his troops to call the GOP’s seven-year budget legislation the “Balanced Budget Act of 1995.” He decreed that henceforth, any Republican who referred to it as the “reconciliation bill,” as it is commonly known on Capitol Hill, would be fined $1 per violation. In short order, Gingrich himself was out $20.

On the eve of a presidential election year--in which Gingrich himself is certain to become a major campaign issue--the speaker is facing the severest test of his public career, one whose outcome will have far-reaching ramifications for the nation.

Can he embrace the sort of tough discipline that he expects of others? Can he check his intellect, his ego, his readiness to start a verbal brawl for the greater good of his party?

Having deftly exploited the flamboyant, even inflammatory, tactics of a minority-party backbencher in his stunning rise to power, can Gingrich now modify his conduct and behave more like a traditional speaker?

Is Gingrich, in short, capable of reinventing himself as an act of self-preservation?

Complicating the challenge is a broadening House Ethics Committee investigation of his far-flung political activities--an inquiry that, fanned by withering Democratic attacks, has unnerved him far more than he has let on.

“The last few weeks have been hell for him. It’s hurt him terribly,” confided one Gingrich loyalist and a key House committee chairman.

“It has gotten to him. He’s not been sleeping well--you can see it in his eyes. He’s disheveled. He’s sagging visibly,” the chairman added. “Last week, he was just a basket case.”

That assessment was confirmed by others close to Gingrich.

Said Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas): “Yes, he’s been looking a little worn, a little down. But the attacks on him have been so personal and so vitriolic that I marvel at the way he’s been able to withstand it.”

“It has bothered him,” added Bennett. “But he’s a man with tremendously deep resources. . . . He’ll be back.”

Even if Bennett is right, it will be a long road to travel.

The latest public opinion polls show Gingrich’s popularity scraping the bottom of the barrel. In a November ABC News/Washington Post poll, his disapproval rating hit 65%--just one point shy of Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation from the presidency. Even in Gingrich’s home state of Georgia, his negative ratings climbed from 41% to 50% in a poll completed in early December by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV.

If Gingrich is unable to reduce his negative ratings and remains a serious liability to the Republican agenda, he faces the possibility, albeit remote for now, that his followers may jettison him so that they can preserve their legislative priorities.

Already there is talk, mostly among some of the 73 first-year House Republicans--who unabashedly admire Gingrich’s political acumen and intellect--that the speaker and the agenda are not inseparable.

“This is not surprising,” said a Republican senator and longtime Gingrich ally. “It’s to be expected in politics anytime somebody is perceived as weakened.”

But Craig, another Republican senator who has maintained close ties with members of the House, where he served for 10 years, is not sure that the GOP agenda can be accomplished without Gingrich. “Newt is the glue that holds things together over there,” Craig said.

Indeed, questions about Gingrich’s ability to lead the House have already arisen. During the recent budget negotiations, none other than the president implied that the speaker was unable to deliver.

Showing a dose of his newfound restraint, Gingrich responded tersely: “I’ll let the historians figure that out,” adding: “I think my record of getting things through this House is pretty good.”

No dispute there.

According to a recent analysis of 805 nonprocedural roll calls by Citizen Action, a liberal consumer group, House Republicans voted with Gingrich an average 91.8% of the time--a remarkable display of legislative unity.

Exercise in Discipline

“He’s trying to change the fundamental direction of public policy--without being in the White House. That’s unprecedented,” said Merle Black, a political scientist and historian at Emory University in Atlanta.

“I give Gingrich a lot of credit for trying to pull this off. But he’s really going against the history of this country,” Black said. “He has turned the speakership into the driving force in public policy. That’s a very unusual role in American politics. Whether he can pull this off in part depends on his ability to change his behavior.”

As Gingrich’s own conduct has demonstrated, “it’s often easier to discipline other people than yourself,” Black said. “Newt’s a natural born minority leader. . . . It remains to be seen whether the skills that he employed, which propelled the Republicans into the majority, are the kind of skills that can keep him there.”

One Gingrich ally who does not buy the argument that Gingrich is undisciplined is Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), a longtime party activist. He said Gingrich has shown “a special, unique self-discipline [by] subjecting himself to take the hits for others, to sustain a lot of attacks and ongoing criticism, much of it highly personal in nature and even frivolous--without ever losing sight of the agenda or his objectives.”

‘A New Newt’

Gingrich will do better, predicted Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), the speaker’s closest friend in Congress, “once we get our program accomplished and we’ve been successful and we get a few weeks off and Newt can go off and think about the next year and begin to focus on his view of how to take us into the future.”

Added Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee: “I think he’s going to be very strong this spring. I’m confident of that.”

Said Craig: “I think you will see a new Newt Gingrich--in the sense of how he operates. He will speak out less but not change the thrust of the direction he thinks the country should go in. And I applaud that.”

Gingrich allies point to his recent Time interview as an early sign that he will succeed in adapting to a new way of comporting himself.

In that interview, Gingrich quickly corrected himself after describing news media coverage of him as “grotesque.” Instead, he used the word “sad.” Similarly, Gingrich initially called a fringe presidential candidate “a nut candidate” but immediately revised his remarks, calling her instead a “candidate of limited public appeal.”

That description clearly is one that Newt Gingrich would like to avoid for himself.