STICKS AND STONES

By Jill Smolowe

IS NEWT GINGRICH LOSING CONTROL OF HIS message, his revolution--and himself?

After a year of dazzling freshman acolytes with his big thoughts and frustrating Democrats with his discipline, last week the House Speaker seemed to revert to the bomb-throwing, publicity-starved backbencher he was in the 1980s. On Tuesday night, with a partial government shutdown at hand and his deficit-reduction plan heading for a Presidential veto, he charged onto the virtually empty House floor to rant about the budget before C-SPAN cameras and a handful of junior members. The next morning, he whined to reporters that his stubbornness on the budget was partly inspired by an indignity--the President had forced him to exit Air Force One by the rear door upon returning from the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin. Hours later, when Gingrich appeared for a press conference, he had a prepared text in hand, as if trying to regain his composure.

But the Speaker's lip flapping had serious consequences. He not only impeded efforts to return federal employees to work, but also put his ego in the way of the 104th Congress's achieving its larger aim of balancing the budget in seven years. Gingrich's behavior reminded his colleagues that the visionary architect of the Contract with America has never had to prove himself under the pressure of adversarial bargaining.

By so misplaying his hand, Gingrich gave up the G.O.P.'s advantage. He left his troops with no bargaining chips. ("We look like idiots," fumed one.) He dealt the President the card he needed to appear decisive and resolute. ("The very idea that they could think they could just blow the President over shows the depth of their miscalculation," said Vice President Gore.) And the Speaker gave Bob Dole's campaign for the G.O.P. presidential nomination a boost by fueling the impression that it might be time to put an adult in charge to end the gridlock.

Through the weekend, a bipartisan cluster of lawmakers struggled to reach a face-saving compromise to end the funding impasse that put nearly 800,000 federal employees on sabbatical from their jobs and closed down every thing from the Grand Canyon to the Lincoln Memorial. But the short-term aim of ending the shutdown kept colliding with the two questions blocking a longer-term budget agreement: how much to cut, and how quickly. Republicans held to their demand that the budget be balanced within seven years; the Administration, which prefers a time frame of up to 10 years, said it would consider the seven-year figure, but only as a "goal." Another point of disagreement is whose economic assumptions to use in determining the size of spending cuts: the Congressional Budget Office's estimate calls for $1.2 trillion in cuts over seven years, while the Administration's outlook would require $750 billion. No long-term deal was struck. Last week both the House, by a vote of 237-189, and the Senate, by a 52-47 vote, passed the seven-year plan. If signed into law, it would reduce growth in Medicare and Medicaid, reduce spending on education and cut taxes. But Clinton readied his veto pen with relish. "This budget's dead on arrival when it comes to the White House," Clinton said in his Saturday radio address. "If the price for any deal are cuts like these, then my message is 'No deal.'" As a result, what began to look credible was a scenario in which any long-term compromise would be postponed not only till the end of the year but all through 1996, so that the presidential campaign would become a clear referendum on the size and role of government. A fine thing for the candidates, perhaps, but a disaster for the Republican revolution in Congress.

After last week's sandbox escapades, a compromise seemed more remote than ever. On Thursday morning Democrat Pat Schroeder responded to Gingrich's Air Force One complaints by holding up an Oscar-like statue on the House floor and proclaiming Gingrich winner of the "Best Child Actor" award. Next came Democrat Lloyd Doggett, brandishing a blowup of the front page of the day's New York Daily News, which caricatured a diaper-clad Gingrich squalling beneath the words CRY BABY. "Is it parliamentary to call the Speaker of the House a crybaby?" demanded Republican Martin Hoke. Thus on the third day of government arrest, while federal employees--both those who were called into work and those deemed nonessential--wondered when they'd see their next paycheck, the nation's legislators held the day's first momentous vote. For the record: in a largely partisan vote, the CRY BABY poster was ousted.

The G.O.P. freshmen who might have been expected to come to the rescue of their Speaker offered no help at all. "I'm certainly fed up with the way our leadership is handling this," fumed Representative Tom Davis of Virginia. "I had a class of first-graders in yesterday, and I told them they'd do a better job than we are." Said Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican and freshman loyalist: "This personal quibbling is ridiculous. I think [Gingrich] and Dole should be down there banging on the gates of the White House.''

But Gingrich's missteps of last week were not the first in his battle of wills with the White House. During a Nov. 1 visit to the Oval Office to discuss the budget with Clinton and Gore, the Speaker sniped that White House spokesman Mike McCurry had suggested that Gingrich and his troops wanted senior citizens to "die." Lurching forward in his seat, Gore reminded Gingrich of his 1994 allegation that Democratic Party values had played a role in Susan Smith's drowning of her two young sons. "Newt," Gore scolded, "I don't remember you apologizing to us for saying we killed those two kids in South Carolina."

Three days later, the groundwork for Gingrich's Air Force One pique was laid when the Speaker was told by Pat Griffin, the President's top lobbyist, that Clinton would discuss budget issues on the return flight from Israel. So on Nov. 5, Gingrich spent more than four hours huddled with advisers at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, preparing one-page statements for use during the in-flight negotiating session. Gingrich even had an exit line ready to be declared upon touchdown at Andrews Air Force Base: "If they can make peace in the Middle East, we can get together in the U.S. on the budget." On the flight over, he invested another three hours talking with Dole about strategy. But at a meeting on the flight home from the funeral, the budget discussions never happened. As White House spokesman McCurry later explained, "The President of the United States lost a friend. And I don't think he much felt like talking about budget politics with Speaker Gingrich, with all due respect."

Gingrich was furious. He kicked off an 11th-hour meeting last Monday night with Clinton by refusing to let McCurry attend the parley unless the Speaker's own press secretary could be present. Tempers quickly flared inside the Cabinet Room. When Clinton pointed a finger at House majority leader Dick Armey, the Texan complained, "Perhaps it's my Western upbringing, but I don't listen very well when someone's pointing a finger in my face." The President retorted with his own lesson in etiquette. Dredging up Armey's attack on Hillary Clinton during last year's health-care debate, he said, "I never, ever have and never expect to criticize your wife or members of your family." By evening's end, Clinton had vetoed a stopgap spending measure. The next morning, 40% of the nation's federal employees awoke to find themselves on a forced vacation.

As the government rolled into its second day of partial paralysis, Gingrich began showing signs of strain. Pressed by reporters at a Wednesday breakfast to explain why he was so convinced that a seven-year timetable was the right one for balancing the budget, the Speaker offered a one-word response: "Intuition.'' (This was a sharp contrast to his reasoned response to the same question by Time last September, when he explained that he'd settled on that time frame after consulting with former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, banker Pete Peterson and others.) Then he devoted much of the remaining time to fuming about his mistreatment aboard Air Force One. "This is petty," Gingrich allowed. "I'm going to say up front it's petty ...but I think it's human." He pumped a final bullet into his foot by admitting, "That's part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher [stopgap spending bill]."

VALHALLA! DEMOCRATS TRIPPED over themselves to capitalize on the Speaker's gaffe. Before legislators would have their fun on the House floor, an Administration official leaked word that Gingrich had talked "during the whole trip" to and from Israel, thwarting even Dole's attempts to get some sleep. And even Dole was finding ways to put some distance between himself and Gingrich on the deplaning question by using statesmanlike humor: "We got in on the front exit, went out the rear exit. Maybe that's just normal rotation."

As for Clinton, he took the high road, saying, straight-faced, "If it would get the government open, I'd be glad to tell [Gingrich] I'm sorry." But Clinton's press secretary squeezed more mileage out of the situation. Asked what the President could do to assuage Gingrich's hurt feelings, McCurry joked, "Maybe we can send him some of those little M&M's [served aboard Air Force One] with the Presidential seal on it."

While Clinton was prepping Wednesday for an interview for the CBS Evening News, one of his advisers asked how the President would respond to a question about the political fallout from his refusal to cave in to G.O.P. demands. Summoning an answer he'd used on Gingrich days earlier in private, Clinton responded, "I don't care if my approval ratings drop all the way down to 5%; it's the right thing to do." Gore then piped up, "Why 5%? Why don't you say, 'All the way down to zero'?" Clinton joked in reply, "Well, if I go down to 4%, I'm gonna cave!" By that point, the jesting came easy: two of the week's polls already showed Clinton with a comfortable 10-point lead over Dole in the presidential sweepstakes. Another showed Clinton trailing Gingrich by more than a two-to-one margin on the blame scale.

As for the threat of a default on the national debt, that was really more about spin than substance. The G.O.P. had long intended to use the need to lift the debt ceiling to gain leverage in budget negotiations; the Administration had an equal interest in casting the Republicans as reckless for holding the nation's credit hostage to "extreme" demands. Both sides, however, were quietly counting on Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to stave off an actual default through internal bookkeeping changes--and last Wednesday he came through. He used an arcane process called "disinvestment," which enabled him to shift tens of billions of dollars from two interest-bearing retirement funds into accounts that earn no interest. Then he extended ious guaranteeing federal workers that the principal and the lost interest would be repaid. Conveniently, those ious don't count against the $4.9 trillion debt limit. Through all of this, Wall Street remained remarkably calm. Despite some rumblings that Rubin's action might not be legal, bonds rallied and the Dow Jones industrials sailed further into record territory, on Friday nearing the 5000 mark.

BUT VOTERS MAY PROVE LESS SANguine if the budget battle drags on. Should that happen, the G.O.P.'s much vaunted fiscal revolution could end with a whimper around Christmas. Under this scenario, after a period of negotiation to create the illusion of goodwill, both parties will implicitly agree to put the budget on hold until after the '96 election. Clinton and the Democrats will then hit the campaign trail, saying they too want a balanced budget, but not if the price is throwing seniors overboard to pay off the rich. The shape of Clinton's campaign could already be seen in his Saturday radio talk: "What's at stake is nothing less than two different visions of our country, and two different futures for our people."

Dole, meanwhile, can assail the Democrats as fuzzy-headed obstructionists. Said he on Saturday: "They're talking about goals, time frames and a lot of ambiguous language." Republicans in general will be left to explain why they have so little to show for all their efforts, save an unsigned bill that puts them on record as favoring $270 in Medicare shrinkage and $245 billion in tax cuts that many voters feel don't distribute the pain fairly.

Polls already make the case for the Democratic strategy. "The G.O.P.'s duality of Medicare reductions for middle America and tax cuts for the rich has the makings of a political mess,'' says political seer Kevin Phillips. According to the TIME/CNN Election Monitor, a poll of nearly 5,000 registered voters, not just Democrats worry about the G.O.P. Medicare plan; it also has little support among independents and rank-and-file Republicans. Sixty-three percent of self-identified conservatives and 73% of Perot voters say they oppose cutting the growth of Medicare spending to balance the budget. More worrisome for the G.O.P., 55% of the people who say they voted for a Republican in the 1994 congressional elections say they don't like the proposal. Those are the kinds of numbers that may convince Clinton to stand firm against the G.O.P.'s revolutionary agenda for a long time to come.

--Reported by Nina Burleigh, James Carney, Michael Duffy, Matthew Miller, Viveca Novak and Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by NINA BURLEIGH, JAMES CARNEY, MICHAEL DUFFY, MATTHEW MILLER, VIVECA NOVAK AND KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON