Last man standing: Sadly, Gingrich falls, Clinton survives

Last man standing: Sadly, Gingrich falls, Clinton survives

ATLANTA
November 13, 1998

A week ago, two men were at the helms of their respective political parties in this country. One of the men had spent the last several months doing nothing but trying to explain away lies he had told under oath in a court of law. The other had spent the last four years reinventing the American political process. He turned a budget situation most considered unsalvageable into a surplus, cut taxes for the first time in seventeen years, and found a way to make Congress abide by the same rules the rest of the country lives by.

Can you guess which one was forced to resign?

Think back to 1994. Bill Clinton was in the middle of his first term. He had run on a platform that included promises of a middle-class tax cut, welfare reform, and a balanced budget. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he hadn't acted on any of those promises, instead choosing to focus his attention on socializing medicine and instituting a retroactive tax-hike.

Newt Gingrich offered something different. He proposed the Contract with America.

Gingrich made ten specific promises, wrote them down, and signed his name to them. Along with the hundreds of Republican congressional candidates who followed him, he gave his word to the American people that if they chose a Republican Congress they would get a vote on those ten issues in the first hundred days of the new session.

It was unthinkable to Washington analysts. There was no way the Republicans would win the House for the first time in four decades. Even if they somehow did take control, the GOP would never keep their promises. After all, Clinton had been in office two years and not done anything to act on several of those same promises.

But Newt was different. The Republicans kept every single promise in the contract and did it in the first ninety-three days. They passed nine of the ten bills, and made certain that Congress would operate under the same rules as the rest of the country to boot.

Today, the projected federal budget for the next eleven years has gone from a $3.1 billion deficit to an astonishing $1.6 billion surplus. Bill Clinton had two years with his party in control of Congress and did absolutely nothing to slow the rapidly ballooning deficit. Newt took over and erased the deficit in one fell swoop.

As one might expect, the nearly unfathomable magnitude of the accomplishments of Newt's Congress brought a huge response from the country. The booming economy has brought a level of satisfaction with government that America has not seen in decades.

However, even as the country basked in the glow of Gingrich's accomplishments, the media was marshaling its forces for a counterattack against this politician who had dared keep his promises and actually accomplish goals the American people wanted to see.

The media labeled Gingrich a radical, an extremist, and a hatemonger. They told their audiences he was out to harm the poor, prevent the elderly from obtaining health care, and make sure school children starved at lunch time. The yellow journalism ranged from promoting every Democratic lie about Newt "cutting" Medicare (media lingo for "increasing the Medicare budget by an amount the 'objective' journalists deem inadequate") to running news magazine cover stories entitled 'The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas.'

And we bought it. Hook, line, sinker.

Given the choice, we decided to throw to the wolves the one man in our lifetimes to bring meaningful change to Congress, the man who reversed the budget deficit single-handedly, the one man in the entire American political process who had a vision that ranged beyond a sound bite.

For a while, Newt ignored the hatred spewing from the media establishment and pushed forward. Despite the vicious attacks, he tried everything in his power to move America toward his vision of a freer and more prosperous future.

Sadly, we were so content with what Newt had brought us that we sat back, fat and lazy, and passively believed what the media establishment told us. We ignored the incredible string of accomplishments Newt had brought us, ignored the prosperity, ignored the openness of the new Congress, and instead sat around soaking up every spiteful word Dan Rather and his cronies had to say about the Speaker.

It isn't often a man like Newt Gingrich comes along. Without him, we would still be without welfare reform, without a tax cut, and still facing that ever-growing deficit. During Newt's tenure as Speaker, we have experienced four of the happiest, most prosperous years in recent history. As his reward, we kicked him to the curb.

We now face the prospect of a Congress, and a country, with no vision and no sense of purpose. We had a choice, and what we chose is a return to the days of deficits, burdensome entitlements, and unresponsive big government, and that is exactly what we are going to get. Brother, we asked for it. "It isn't often a man like Newt Gingrich comes along. Without him, we would still be without welfare reform, without a tax cut, and still facing that ever-growing deficit." Scott Lange Assistant News Editor

Copyright © 1998 by Gregory S. Scherrer, Editor and by the Student Publications Board

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