BRILLIANT AND ruthless Newt Gingrich isn't a mere creature of the moment, a Rush Limbaugh dittohead with the legislative arm of the religious right. Mr. Gingrich is nobody's tool. He has commanded a 20-year war to seize the speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives. Only recently have troops and lieutenants joined his campaign.
Mr. Gingrich is hell-bent on domination. He wants to end his new bipartisan relationship with President Clinton in the same manner that he severed his first marriage. As Mother Jones magazine first reported in 1984, Mr. Gingrich, R-Ga., campaigned for Congress on the issue of family values, while cheating on his wife. After the election, he ditched her, then appeared at her hospital bedside after she had a cancer operation to present his terms for a divorce.
Mr. Gingrich's likely terms to Mr. Clinton: Mr. Gingrich keeps the House and gets the White House as well; Mr. Clinton leaves town humiliated, with more defeated Democratic senators and representatives in tow.
Mr. Gingrich's favorite chess move is the fork, a simultaneous attack on two of the opponent's pieces. He has forked the Clinton administration by forcing the president to choose between the Democrats' traditional pro-underdog stances and the surging conservative, anti-government populism. Mr. Gingrich is encouraging Mr. Clinton to move rightward so the president will lose his base and look like a follower.
At the same time, Mr. Gingrich has forked Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Bob Dole, R-Kan., by supporting the successful candidacy of Trent Lott, R-Miss., for majority whip. When Mr. Dole hits the road to campaign for president, Mr. Lott will push his buddy Mr. Gingrich's agenda. When Mr. Dole stays in Washington to retain control, Mr. Gingrich's favorite presidential candidate, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, will have a more open field. Mr. Gramm might even serve as a stalking horse.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gingrich will use his "Contract With America" to solidify his image as a tough guy who can deliver discipline. Voters today fear that government has become too soft, unable to resist demands from its weakest citizens. Mr. Clinton's post-election bipartisan concessions deepen the impression Mr. Gingrich wants aired: that Mr. Clinton is a coward.
Why is the history professor who was denied tenure at West Georgia College shrewder than Mr. Clinton and his fellow Rhodies? In 1989, as part of a magazine expose, Mr. Gingrich was followed to a meeting of doctors and insurers complaining about Medicare. Mr. Gingrich sarcastically explained that the left is "very smart. They always conceal their greed for power in the language of love."
Mr. Gingrich doesn't mind greed, power or concealment. He urges his staff to read Machiavelli's "The Prince." Mr. Gingrich's contempt is for the language of love, especially when the American electorate prefers subliminal slogans of hate.
But the next act may prove painful to watch as the two protagonists lock into a political drama that has kinky undertones. The discipline Mr. Gingrich has promised to impose on Washington and the welfare class is not entirely dissimilar from the kind advertised by sadists and, sadly, Mr. Clinton is proving to be a situational masochist. He'd rather feel his own pain than risk challenging potent enemies.
Before their births, both Messrs. Clinton and Gingrich were torn from their natural fathers. Both experienced primal abandonment, then were reared by abusive stepfathers. In order to ward off feelings of helplessness, both felt compelled to join the ranks of the powerful. But whereas son-of-a-salesman Bill will do anything to be loved, Newt (whose stepfather was an authoritarian army officer) will do anything to be feared.
Machiavelli says that "it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot combine them." Why? Because bonds of love are readily broken -- "but fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment, which is always effective."
Mr. Gingrich wants to punish Mr. Clinton publicly. As he did on last session's campaign reform bill, Mr. Gingrich may privately pledge support on some bipartisan solution, perhaps on welfare reform. But, once Mr. Clinton commits, Mr. Gingrich will savage the measure as diseased, a threat to healthy Americans. Counter-accusations of vicious duplicity won't faze Mr. Gingrich because they feed his world view.
Mr. Gingrich's own staff describes him, ironically, as a Leninist. The description fits. Mr. Gingrich has warned that "if America fails, our children will live on a dark and bloody planet." But no other outcome seems plausible to him. With his implacable cold will, Mr. Gingrich no doubt believes that history is on his side. Since he is the future, all his acts of destruction must be right.
Jeffrey Klein is the editor in chief of Mother Jones magazine.