Going on Offense
BARNES, FRED
Capitol Hill GOP on Offense by Fred Barnes House Speaker Newt Gingrich has Medicare, the budget, the debt limit, and the fate of government as we know it in America on his plate this fall. But...
...In politics, initial change is hard...
...It'd be silly for us to get into that fight," he says...
...When you put an animal in a treadmill, getting it started is difficult because you're running against gravity...
...Rather, change and reform will spur more change and reform, and permanent offense will become, well, permanent...
...The struggle between these Republicans and William Jennings Bryan, the chronic Democratic presidential candidate, has "remarkable parallels to where the two parties are today," Gingrich argues...
...What they were driving at was very simple: 'No matter what Bryan says, no matter how appealing he is, no matter how effective he is, he stands for the end of this country economically and you cannot afford him.'" To keep ideas flowing, Gingrich has more than 100 House members working on projects that may lead to legislation, published studies, position papers, articles, or books...
...Bennett also said there are no time outs in Washington...
...With the Contract completed, House Republicans went home for the April recess with a 75-page briefing book on the budget...
...By balking at sweeping legislation that's passed the House, the Senate is "undermining" the GOP "If the Senate fails to pass the elements of the Contract with America, the House will pay the price," Luntz warns...
...For example, House Republicans and their aides have been urged to halt any interview or chat in which Medicare "cuts" are mentioned...
...For the August recess, they toted a briefing book on Medicare...
...The invasion was nearly stymied as a result...
...The concept of the permanent offense came to Gingrich gradually...
...Kasich said he'd hounded the reporter, even called him at home...
...They're supposed to insist Republicans aim to save Medicare by "slowing its growth," not by cutting...
...Finally, he read an interview with Bennett in Policy Review in 1988 that included Bennett's memorable formulation about offense and defense...
...A Post story on Medicare cited Republican plans for Medicare without mentioning "cuts...
...Years ago, when reading a book about Dwight Eisenhower, he was struck by the failure of the Allies to plan for the breakout from the Normandy coast after D-Day...
...Gingrich's model for the permanent offense is not FDR, but three Republican leaders at the turn of the century: Presidents William McKinley (1897-1901) and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and Republican strategist Mark Hanna...
...A constant flood of fresh ideas is required to keep the public interested and the media busy...
...It was mismanagement," Gingrich concedes...
...But planning is only one part of it...
...On offense, no detail is too inconsequential to be addressed...
...In January, after consulting with all the presidential candidates and [Republican national chairman] Haley Barbour, we announce the spring offensive," he says...
...The Contract with America took up the first three months, then the budget was paramount, now it's Medicare...
...But his thoughts have already wandered to next year...
...Why is that so important...
...You have to keep explaining to the American people what you did, why you did it, and what you hope the result will be," says Frank Luntz, Gingrich's pollster...
...They drew a very deliberate contrast...
...And if you're on defense, you can forget about enacting your program...
...In July, John Kasich of Ohio, chairman of the House Budget Committee, rushed into a meeting of GOP leaders, holding up a copy of the Washington Post and whooping...
...Newt is powerless if enough Republicans aren't returned to office to control the House...
...Three new strategic goals-creating a benchmark for government excellence, suppressing violent crime and the drug culture, and "leading the planet"-were added...
...Curbing teenage smoking isn't one of them...
...In his best-selling To Renew America, written last spring, he listed six strategic goals for America in the first chapter...
...The issues: privatization, more block grants, immigration reform, curbs on affirmative action, tax reform, the death penalty for narcotics wholesalers, making English the nation's official language...
...Gingrich has concluded the easiest way to lose the offensive is by taking up peripheral issues: "What we need to do is not get sucked into little fights that don't matter...
...Bryan was a remarkably shallow but emotionally effective demagogue, maximizing class warfare and a sense of fear in order to avoid modernization...
...This is obsessive agenda setting, for sure, but Gingrich has a political objective in mind: staying permanently on offense in Washington...
...But once the treadmill begins to move, stopping it becomes difficult...
...The calls paid off...
...Now comes Gingrich, who believes it will take six to ten years for Republicans to replace, not merely reform, the welfare state and the status quo in Washington...
...Persistence-never relaxing as Ronald Reagan and his allies often did in the 1980s-is necessary to keep your foes from regrouping...
...Gingrich and other Republicans were tardy in responding...
...Almost immediately-this was late winter-Gingrich and his allies began planning for the Medicare offensive this fall...
...Later, he and his advisers worked up a "management memo" based on what Gingrich would like to accomplish in seven-and-a-half more years as House speaker...
...Gingrich has a strategy for this, one that's worked flawlessly (with one exception) so far in 1995...
...In case you hadn't figured it out, Gingrich has Clinton pegged as Bryan, himself as today's version of the farsighted Republicans...
...Because, as Bill Bennett once said, if you're not on offense in Washington, you're on defense...
...Gingrich says his reaction was, "Boy, is that exactly right...
...Then, in 1981, the Reagan administration let down its guard over the August recess and Democrats seized the agenda...
...He was a better candidate, more energy, better speaker...
...In truth, the GOP budget increased spending, but less than the Clinton administration wanted...
...Gingrich himself is a cornucopia of ideas...
...And those are just for starters...
...Look at it...
...If you talk about those, let him talk about anything he wants to.'" There's another problem-the Senate...
...The problem is it's hard to stay on offense for a sustained period...
...We underestimated how much the disinformation was penetrating...
...Repetition is needed to make sure the public actually hears the ideas...
...They dominated the agenda with ideas, issues, and policy initiatives, and they were extraordinarily disciplined in confronting Bryan...
...But they had to convince the people the only way you could get to a free lunch pail was to modernize...
...Kasich has assigned his staff to come up with "budget ideas for the 21st century...
...Gingrich attributes their success to "the way we phased the sequences...
...Gingrich hopes so...
...That may have saved us on Medicare...
...It's the treadmill theory, " says Luntz...
...In the unlikely event Gingrich runs dry, he can call on Kasich, who says, "Ideas give us energy...
...Once change becomes expected, preventing it or stopping it becomes impossible...
...Republicans will lose seats...
...Bryan would have won a mano-a-mano race with McKinley [in 1896...
...My point to our guys is, 'This fall no matter what Clinton talks about, you talk about balancing the budget while cutting taxes, saving Medicare with a better plan, and getting welfare reform that emphasizes work and family...
...They finally got it right...
...Part of being permanently on offense is permanently planning," says Blankley...
...Next year, he says, the budget may also stress pilot projects for testing new policies: "You've got to stay a step or two ahead of your opponents, even a few ahead of your own side...
...It comes from the excitement of new ideas and new approaches...
...We need to keep coming back to the big issues that truly define things...
...High energy doesn't come from doing the same thing over and over...
...The McKinley-Roosevelt-Hanna crowd did two things Gingrich admires enormously...
...Each phase was planned meticulously...
...The Reagan administration never recovered," Gingrich says...
...We were still in cycle for finishing up the Contract...
...The experience of the Democrats' willingness to lie blatantly and the willingness of the news media to carry the lies taught us to be dramatically more aggressive...
...The Republican leaders applauded...
...That's if all goes well, which means staying on offense...
...Their schemes for modernizing America, including the creation of a blue-water navy, produced a "constant wave of reforms"-precisely what Gingrich craves now...
...And, he says, "they defined Bryan strategically, not tactically...
...It's hard for one body to be on permanent offense while the other is on permanent stall," says Luntz, the pollster...
...No political figure has managed this since President Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal era sixty years ago (and even he was often on the defensive by his second term...
...Tony Blankley, Gingrich's press secretary, and Ed Gilllespie, House Majority Leader Dick Armey's spokesman, were assigned to badger reporters who wrote or talked about "cuts...
...Bill Paxon of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, calls it the "Gingrich permanent offense planning model...
...Democrats pounded Republicans for "cutting" school lunches...
...Look at it," he shouted...
...McKinley, Roosevelt, and Hanna represented the rise of modern America...
...When House Republicans leave Washington this fall, they'll have a book on next year's budget...
...Gingrich, for one, doesn't think this will happen...
...Ideas, repetition, and persistence are also necessary components...
...The one slip-up was in March on the school lunch program...
...The 1995 experience has made Republicans all the more determined to stay on offense...
...Let President Clinton fight that stuff...
Vol. 1 • September 1995 • No. 1
