Will Civility Have a Chance?

eorge Wallace, poet laureate of government bashing and architect of the Southern-fried populism that the Republican Party has emulated to build its current base, died in September. Less than two months later, Newt Gingrich, an ardent--but less humorous--imitator of Wallace's rhetoric, surrendered his speakership of the House of Representatives.

Do these events augur an end to the politics of sending messages to Washington's briefcase-toting bureaucrats? Don't bet the plantation on it, but there may be a glimmer of hope.

After predicting that November's elections would bring big gains, Republicans lost five seats in the House, broke even in the Senate and lost ground at the statehouse level. The subsequent GOP leadership shake-up suggests that changes may be in order.

Could it be that trashing the bureaucracy is losing its bite? Candidates did not hesitate to bleat the B-word pejoratively in 1998, but it's not clear how profitably.

Gingrich campaigned indefatigably for Republican candidates with appeals to prevent "distant Washington bureaucrats" from getting their hands on hard-earned tax dollars or interfering with educational decisions better left at the local level. In a Sept. 26 national radio address, for example, he squeezed four sneering references to bureaucrats or bureaucracies into a single paragraph.

A week later, at a campaign appearance in the heart of peanut-producing country, Gingrich regaled listeners by ridiculing an ill-fated administration proposal to bar airlines from passing out the salty snacks. "You have to wonder where people come up with those ideas," he taunted. "Can't you just see those bureaucrats thinking, 'If we let those peanuts out, who knows what might happen next? You'd have people running wild on the airplane.' "

Gingrich's Georgia colleague John Linder, who headed GOP efforts to elect House members, predicted the Republicans would win an open seat in Indiana because voters would reject Democratic contender Baron Hill's "liberal agenda of Washington bureaucrats controlling education policies, trial lawyers controlling health care and labor bosses controlling business." But Hill eked out a narrow victory and Linder subsequently lost his post as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

But don't jump to the conclusion that government bashing is just for Republicans. Sen.-elect Evan Bayh of Indiana, regarded as one of the Democratic Party's rising stars, declared in TV ads that the nation's capital badly needed a good dose of "Hoosier common sense," including "a fairer, flatter, simpler income tax with less power to the IRS."

Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin was re-elected in an upset over better-financed GOP challenger Mark Neumann in a contest that seemed to boil down to who was the most appalled over governmental stupidity. Neumann ran jeering ads complaining that federal dollars were being wasted to study cow flatulence ("this smelled like government waste to me"). But Feingold trumped him with an ad boasting that he had eliminated the government's helium program ("now that
our soldiers travel a bit differently").

Perhaps the most telling--and most pro-government--ad was run in August by the Republican National Committee asking President Clinton to abandon his "plan to shut down the federal government" because "we owe it to the millions of children and seniors and veterans to keep their benefits going."

The ad was a futile attempt to reverse the public sentiment that turned harshly against Republicans after they pulled the plug on the government by forcing a budget impasse in late 1995. But Clinton refused to take the bait. Instead, he forced the GOP to make big concessions in the omnibus spending bill that was rushed to passage to avoid a pre-election shutdown.

The episode suggests that a chastened Republican Party has learned not to mistake citizens' exasperation with taxes, irritating procedures and complexities of federal programs for dissatisfaction with the services that government provides.

Whether that recognition will lead to less partisan deliberations remains to be seen. Despite the disappointments of November, the GOP retains its Dixie base. Mississippi's Trent Lott remains majority leader of the Senate and Texan Tom DeLay wields formidable power in the House from his post of majority whip. When Louisiana's Bob Livingston, the former Appropriations Committee chairman, shocked fellow Republicans by withdrawing from the speakership, it was DeLay who moved quickly to anoint deputy whip Dennis Hastert of Illinois to be Speaker.

Given the bitterness surrounding the party-line vote to impeach President Clinton and the revelations of marital infidelity that forced Livingston's resignation-coupled with his challenge to Clinton to resign too-the relatively unknown Hastert will have his hands full trying to promote comity between the executive and legislative branches.

Dick Kirschten, a contributing editor for National Journal, has covered Congress and the government for more than 20 years. He has also worked as a congressional aide and public affairs director on Capitol Hill.