Gingrich, Newt
Identification Speaker of U.S. House of
Representatives, 1995-1999
Born June 17, 1943; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
A colorful and outspoken former professor of histor y who
was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978,
Gingrich proved instrumental in allowing the Republican
Party to achieve its first majority in the House after forty
years of Democratic Party dominance.
It is ironic that the man who would become the face
of the “Republican Revolution” barely won reelec-
tion to his own seat in the House of Representatives
during the midterm elections of 1990. Less than a
year before, the boisterous congressman from Geor-
gia had been named the House minority whip, after
a decade of using every means at his disposal to re-
vive the fortunes of his party in the House of Repre-
sentatives.
Contract with America and House Speaker In his
position as minority whip, Gingrich was responsible
along with a number of other Republican congress-
men for creating the Contract with America. This
document, introduced shortly before the midterm
elections of 1994, was a list of ten legislative initia-
tives focusing on the principles of limited govern-
ment and fiscal responsibility that Republicans
promised to pass if they became the majority party. A
few months later, when they won control of the
House of Representatives through the addition of
fifty-four seats, Republicans named Gingrich the
first Republican Speaker of the House in four de-
cades.
When Gingrich became Speaker, he initiated a
number of measures that increased his power. He
had wanted to remake the position of Speaker from
one of powerful symbolism into one that had the
ability to dictate a political agenda. The House had
been organized under a seniority system for de-
cades. Gingrich realized that the only way his agenda
could be successful was if the system was changed,
and he installed his own loyalists as chairs of many of
those key committees that dictated how the House’s
business was done. By the end of the first one hun-
dred days in the majority, Gingrich and his “revolu-
tionaries” had passed all but one of the initiatives of
the Contract with America. However, most of the
bills failed to pass both chambers of Congress and be
signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
Gingrich had a substantial amount of support in
the House of Representatives, having been partially
responsible for the victory of many House newcom-
ers in 1994. Those men and women owed him their
loyalty; therefore, early in his reign as Speaker,
Gingrich and his lieutenants were in control of
much of the legislation that moved through the in-
stitution. However, despite achieving his goals of be-
coming Speaker and attaining political power, at
times Gingrich behaved like the combative rabble-
rouser who had first arrived in Congress in the late
1970’s. His vitriolic comments about the Democrats
as “enemies of normal Americans” causedThe Wash-
ington Postto name the Speaker “the most hated man
in Congress.”
Government Shutdown and 1996 Elections An ex-
ample of the pugnacious behavior Gingrich often
displayed was his comment toTimemagazine regard-
ing his intention to shut the government down if
President Clinton did not accept the Republicans’
demand to cut Medicare. “He can run the parts of
government that are left [after the cuts], or he can
run no government,” Gingrich boasted in May,- Arguments between Gingrich and the presi-
dent over that program, along with a number of
other pieces of fiscal legislation, culminated with the
government shutdown in November, 1995, followed
by the government again coming to a halt in early - While many of Gingrich’s colleagues agreed
that the legislation was fiscally irresponsible, the rea-
soning was overshadowed following the Speaker’s
negative comments toward Clinton over poor treat-
ment he received by the president’s staff following a
trip on Air Force One. Many considered the budget
battle and Gingrich’s negative media portrayals as
responsible for Clinton’s resounding reelection in
November of 1996.
Attempt at Removal Despite these defeats at the
hands of Clinton, Gingrich continued to try to use
the Republican majority to control the national leg-
islative agenda. In June, 1997, the Republicans sub-
mitted a bill to the White House focusing on disaster
relief for flood victims. Besides the major legislation,
the bill also contained a number of conservative
amendments that Gingrich believed the president
would not dare to veto. When Clinton chose to veto
the bill, Republicans were outraged as they were crit-
icized by the media and the public for utilizing ob-
The Nineties in America Gingrich, Newt 369