November 16, 1995: The Gingrich Tantrum

November 16, 1995, 30 years ago: President Bill Clinton's victory in the federal government shutdown is sealed when the New York Daily News prints a front-page cartoon, showing the Speaker of the House, and the leader of the Republican Party's move to make drastic cuts in the federal budget, as a "cry baby."

After the failure of his health care initiative in 1994, Clinton saw his Democratic Party battered in the midterm elections, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress. Bob Dole, from Russell, Kansas, regained the office of Senate Majority Leader that he had held in 1985 and 1986, having been the Minority Leader from 1987 to 1994.

And Gingrich, a Pennsylvania native who moved to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, Georgia to teach at a college, and was first elected to Congress in 1978 and used fiery rhetoric to get into the Republican Party's leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, became the Speaker of the House.

Dole was considered mean, a reputation he got in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, and deepened in his 1988 Presidential run. But, politically speaking, he was still a center-right candidate, willing to compromise for the greater good of the country. Gingrich was not: He was frequently called a "firebrand" and a "bombthrower."

Like most politicians, especially Republicans, he wanted to balance the federal budget. But his plan severely cut social services -- and also seriously cut taxes, especially on the wealthy. This didn't work when Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s, and actually created the harsh economic conditions that led to Clinton's election in 1992. As we have since seen, it didn't work in 2001, and it didn't work in 2017. It would not have worked in 1995.

Every year, the federal budget takes effect on October 1. To put it another way: "Fiscal Year 1996" ran from October 1, 1995 to September 30, 1996. If no deal between Congress and the President is in place by October 1, they can pass a "continuing resolution," or "CR": For the length of the resolution, the proportions of the previous fiscal year continue.

But Clinton and the Republicans controlling Congress couldn't reach a deal by September 30. So they passed a CR that ran until November 13. But the Republicans refused to pass a new budget or a new CR by November 14. So, at 12:00 Midnight on November 13, the federal government shut down, because it was not legally permitted to spend any more money. People were still working for it, but without pay.

And the Republicans went before the media and said it was Clinton's fault. Except Clinton also went before the media, and pointed out that he was still willing to make a deal, and the Republicans weren't. Finally, he called Dole and Gingrich into the Oval Office. So often willing to compromise on things, seemingly desperate to get re-elected, not wanting to be a one-term President like 3 of the last 4 (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush), but angering many in his own party, Clinton stiffened his spine, and told them, "I don't care if I go down to 5 percent in the polls. If you want that budget signed into law, you're going to have to get somebody else behind this desk."

For once, Clinton held his ground. And polls showed that more people supported his stance than the Republicans' stance. Once the Daily News printed that front page, and blow-ups of it were displayed on the floor of the very House of which Gingrich was Speaker, their approval rating plummeted. It has never again reached its 1995 height.

Clinton had invited Dole and Gingrich to go with him to the funeral of the assassinated Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin -- certainly, a gesture of respect, if not reconciliation. But the article accompanying the cartoon alleged that, on the flight back, Gingrich wanted to talk about the budget impasse, Clinton didn't, and Clinton made Gingrich get off Air Force One at the back entrance, and Gingrich got upset about these developments.

Was it true? Only Clinton and Gingrich know for sure. The problem was, given Gingrich's own actions over the 17 years he'd served in Congress to that point, the story was completely believable. He had lived by the persona of a guy who tapped into people's emotions, and now, politically, he was dying by them. His tantrums had worked pretty well when he was in the opposition to House Democrats like his predecessors as Speaker, Jim Wright of Texas and Tom Foley of Washington State. They did not work when he had a position of power, and they certainly didn't work against a political talent like Clinton.

That front page became the Daily News' 2nd-best-known ever, trailing only the October 30, 1975 front page concerning another budget mess, that of New York City, when President Ford refused to use federal money to bail the City out. The News' front page read, "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." That headline probably cost Ford the State of New York in the 1976 election, and thus the election itself. Having brought down a President, now, 20 years later, the News was bringing down a Speaker.

Finally, on November 19, the Republicans caved. And when the general election campaign got underway, the Democrats aired commercials showing Dole and Gingrich together so many times, it began to look like Gingrich was Dole's running mate, instead of his actual choice, Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback and Congressman from New York.

Once the Democrats had their convention, Clinton and his running mate, Vice President Al Gore, solidified their lead, and Dole and Kemp never really challenged them. Dole didn't run a bad campaign, but once Clinton won the battle over the budget, Dole never had a chance.

What no one yet knew was that the government shutdown, at the same time that it was securing Clinton's win, was also setting the stage for the biggest crisis of his Presidency: Among the volunteers working in the White House during the government shutdown was a young woman named Monica Lewinsky.

But the public's backlash against the Republicans' effort to impeach Clinton led to the Democrats gaining seats in the 1998 Congressional elections. Gingrich's marital infidelities had been at least as notorious as Clinton's, and the Republicans didn't care. But now, they cared: To the conservative movement, everything is acceptable except losing, and Gingrich was forced to step down, not just from the Speakership but from Congress.

November 8, 1994: The Gingrich Revolution

November 8, 1994, 30 years ago: Election Day is a repudiation of the Democratic Party, in particular of President Bill Clinton, his now-withdrawn health care reform plan, and his Assault Weapons Ban. The Republican Party gains 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, giving them control of that body for the 1st time in 40 years, and making Newt Gingrich of Georgia the Speaker. It also gains 9 seats in the U.S. Senate, giving them control of that body for the 1st time in 8 years, returning Bob Dole of Kansas to the office of Senate Majority Leader.

In New York State, Mario Cuomo is defeated for a 4th term as Governor by Peekskill Mayor George Pataki. In Texas, George W. Bush, son of the most recent Republican President, is elected Governor, defeating the State's 1st female Governor, Ann Richards. Bush's brother, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, narrowly loses to Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida. I suspect that, had it not been for the Savings & Loan Scandal, another brother, Neil Bush, would have run for Governor of Colorado.

In addition, Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado switched parties to become Republicans. Shelby had previously called himself "the most conservative member of the Senate"; and Campbell, then the only Native American in either house of Congress (still alive as of November 8, 2022, he is a member of the Cheyenne tribe), was more of a Western libertarian than a traditional conservative, but favored gun rights. So neither switch was a big surprise, although they didn't exactly show courage by jumping ship after the election.

Gingrich knew that it wasn't enough to be against Clinton, or against Democrats in general: You had to give the voters something to vote for. He had a 10-point "Contract With America," which includes some reforms of Congress itself, including some items that Democrats were willing to work with them to pass, if with some minor adjustments. But some were drastic, and opposed by most Americans.

The backlash that hit him even before he could take office as Speaker led to him, with Christmas coming up, to being compared with two of the villains of pop-culture Christmas: Time compared him to Ebenezer Scrooge of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, while Newsweek compared him to the title character of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

As promised, all 10 items passed the House in the 1st 100 days of Republican control. And 9 of them passed the Senate. But some of these, including a radical reform of the nation's welfare laws, and a significant tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, were vetoed by Clinton.

The 1 item that passed the Senate, but not by enough, was an Amendment to the Constitution requiring that the federal budget be balanced. On its face, this seemed like a good idea. The devil was in the details: Because Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had run the federal budget deficit so high in their 12 consecutive years in the White House, balancing the budget would have required significant spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, educational spending, and environmental spending. The Republicans were fine with all of that. But they weren't willing to cut spending on new military projects, and Clinton and the Democrats called them out on that.

In the end, requiring a 2/3rds "supermajority" of both houses on Congress -- 290 votes in the House, and 67 in the Senate, instead of a simple majority of 218 and 51, respectively -- the Amendment fell 1 vote short in the Senate.

One Republican voted against it: Mark Hatfield of Oregon. As a former Governor of a State whose budget was already constitutionally required to be balanced -- a lot easier, since States have far lesser, and lesser-ranging, expenses than the country at large, but by no means easy -- Hatfield understood that the Amendment would have been dangerous. It would have cast millions of people into poverty, made things worse for those already poor, and might even have killed people.

And so, the battle was on: Gingrich would lead a Congressional campaign for 1996 on a revised Contract with America, while Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas would be the Republican nominee for President, supporting it; and Clinton would run for re-election, calling the Republican proposal "the Contract On America," and making the increasingly unpopular Gingrich "Dole's running mate," no matter who Dole ultimately selected to be his Vice Presidential nominee. Gingrich's successes in early 1995 led Time magazine to name him its Man of the Year.

(Dole chose Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback, an 18-year Congressman where he became one of the champions of tax-cutters, an unsuccessful Presidential candidate in 1988, and President Bush's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.)

In the end, Clinton was re-elected solidly over Dole, but the Democrats were unable to take back either house of Congress. Over the course of his 2nd term, even as the Republicans tried to impeach Clinton over things that were none of their, or the American people's, concern, failing to get conviction and removal, they were forced to work with him. In 1997, the federal budget was balanced. Clinton, Gingrich, Dole, and Dole's successor as Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, could all legitimately claim some credit for that.

But the Republicans' effort to remove Clinton from office angered many Americans, and, incredibly unusual for a party in its 6th straight year of holding the White House, the Democrats actually gained seats in the 1998 Congressional election. Gingrich resigned later that week, pressured into it not because of his own personal and legal failings, in each case worse than Clinton's, but because he had failed as a leader. The conservative movement will accept anything except failure.

The evangelical takeover of the Republican Party became complete with the election of George W. Bush, son of the former President, in 2000. Like Richard Nixon before him, Gingrich bided his time, mended some fences, supported Republican candidates wherever he could, and built a new constituency. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected President, and Gingrich ran for the Republican nomination to beat him for re-election in 2012. He won some Primaries, but his personal scandals came back to haunt him, and he lost too many Primaries to continue.

At the age of 81, he is now seen as an elder statesman in the Party, but, as long as Donald Trump is its emotional leader, the last true "ideas man" in the Republican Party has no place in directing its course.

November 5, 1996: President Bill Clinton Is Re-Elected

November 5, 1996, 25 years ago: President Bill Clinton is re-elected, winning 379 Electoral Votes to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's 159. Clinton wins 49.2 percent of the popular vote, while Dole wins 40.7, and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot wins 8.4 percent but no Electoral Votes.

After the failure of his health care initiative in 1994, Clinton saw his Democratic Party battered in the midterm elections, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress. Dole, from Russell, Kansas -- always mentioning his hometown, not just his State -- had first been elected to Congress in 1960, and to the U.S. Senate in 1968. He was nominated for Vice President under Gerald Ford in 1976. He ran for President in 1980, but didn't get far. He became Senate Majority Leader after the election of 1984, but the Democrats regained the Senate in 1986, making him the Minority Leader.

He ran for President again in 1988, and finished 2nd in delegates to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was elected. In 1992, Clinton beat Bush to become President-elect. The next morning, mere hours after Clinton clinched victory in a 3-man race in which Perot got 19 percent of the popular vote (but no Electoral Votes), Dole pointed out, "57 percent of Americans did not vote for Bill Clinton, and I intend to represent that majority on the floor of the U.S. Senate. If Bill Clinton has a mandate, then so do I."

Clinton was now 1-0 in Presidential elections. Dole was 0-2, 0-3 if you count 1976. Clinton got just under 45 million votes for President. Dole got 2.3 million votes in the 1988 Republican Primaries. Dole himself had just been re-elected to the Senate in 1992, with 244,000 votes. And he then represented a caucus of 43 Senators. He was in no position to claim any majority, especially against a man who had just gotten almost 45 million votes. The 57 percent of American voters who chose someone other than Clinton? As far as I know, not one of them voted for Bob Dole for President, not even as a write-in candidate.

But the '94 election restored Dole to the post of Majority Leader. And Newt Gingrich, a Pennsylvania native who moved to Georgia to teach at a college, and was first elected to Congress in 1978 and used fiery rhetoric to get into the Republican Party's leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, became the Speaker of the House.

Dole was considered mean, a reputation he got in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, and deepened in his 1988 Presidential run. But, politically speaking, he was still a center-right candidate, willing to compromise for the greater good of the country. Gingrich was not: He was frequently called a "firebrand" and a "bombthrower."

Like most politicians, especially Republicans, he wanted to balance the federal budget. But his plan severely cut social services -- and also seriously cut taxes, especially on the wealthy. This didn't work when Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s, and actually created the conditions that led to Clinton's election in 1992. As we have since seen, it didn't work in 2001, and it didn't work in 2017. It would not have worked in 1995.

Every year, the federal budget takes effect on October 1. That is, "Fiscal Year 1996" ran from October 1, 1995 to September 30, 1996. If no deal between Congress and the President is in place by October 1, they can pass a "continuing resolution": For the length of the resolution, the proportions of the previous fiscal year continue.

But Clinton and the Republicans controlling Congress couldn't reach a deal by September 30. So they passed a continuing resolution that ran until November 13. But the Republicans refused to pass a new one by November 14. So, at midnight on November 13, the government shut down.

And the Republicans went before the media and said it was Clinton's fault. Except Clinton also went before the media, and pointed out that he was still willing to make a deal, and the Republicans weren't. Finally, he called Dole and Gingrich into the Oval Office. So often willing to compromise on things, seemingly desperate to get re-elected, but angering many in his own party, Clinton told them, "I don't care if I go down to 5 percent in the polls. If you want that budget signed into law, you're going to have to get somebody else behind this desk."

For once, Clinton held his ground. And polls showed that more people supported his stance than the Republicans' stance. Their approval rating plummeted. Finally, on November 19, they caved. And when the general election campaign got underway, the Democrats aired commercials showing Dole and Gingrich together so many times, it began to look like Gingrich was Dole's running mate.

At the Republican Convention, in San Diego, Dole chose a real running mate: Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback, former Congressman from Buffalo, New York, a 1988 Presidential candidate like Dole, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bush. Kemp had long been the darling of the conservative tax-cut movement, and boosted Dole in the polls.

But once the Democrats had their convention, in Chicago, Clinton and his running mate, Vice President Al Gore, solidified their lead, and Dole and Kemp never really challenged them. Near the end of the campaign, Dole tried to make a big deal about Clinton's "scandals," but nobody could pin anything on him. And Clinton seemed to be handling his role as Commander-in-Chief well. And, just as in 1992, the issue of "the economy, stupid" helped him: This time, he was in charge, and it was doing well.

Dole didn't run a bad campaign, but once Clinton won the battle over the budget, Dole never had a chance.

What no one yet knew was that the government shutdown, at the same time that it was securing Clinton's win, was also setting the stage for the biggest crisis of his Presidency: Among the volunteers working in the White House during the government shutdown was a young woman named Monica Lewinsky.