After the Revolution

By Richard Lacayo

A mark of the biggest traumas is that they reach down to the smallest levels. On the morning after Election Day, the 8-year-old son of a defeated Democratic Congressman walked slowly into his third-grade classroom at Horace Mann School in Washington and announced sadly, "My dad lost." The boy was worried that he might have to move, and his teacher tried to console him. "He's too little to understand the full implications," says principal Sheila Ford. "But he knows enough that it's been real hard on him."

Well, that's how it is for more senior Democrats these days too. As the aftershocks of the G.O.P. triumph go rolling through the city, every day is moving day now in Washington. What's moving is everything. Amid the teeming arrival of the ins, mostly Republicans, and the gloomy expulsion of the outs, mostly Democrats, any number of things are in motion. The battle lines in Congress, the power flow in both houses, the political center -- all is in play. So is Bill Clinton, who's being tugged by both sides of his party while he also manages, in that way of his, to pull himself back and forth.

The great challenge for the Democrats, still reeling from their drubbing at the polls, is to keep their footing as the G.O.P. pulls the rug out from under them. Clinton's handling of the first major surprise to be sprung by soon-to- be House Speaker Newt Gingrich was anything but surefooted. Right after the election, Gingrich declared that in the next session of Congress, House Republicans plan to introduce a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer, an item that didn't appear in the G.O.P.'s "Contract with America." When reporters asked Clinton about it in Jakarta, where he was attending the summit of Asian Pacific leaders, he replied with a small surprise of his own. "I certainly wouldn't rule it out," he offered. "It depends on what it says."

His placating instincts got him in trouble. By first appearing to endorse Gingrich's proposal, Clinton opened himself to attack from liberals who oppose school prayer. White House aides spent the next day backtracking, explaining that what the President had in mind was not a constitutional amendment but a legislative act to permit a moment of silence in classrooms like the one he had signed as Governor of Arkansas in 1985. While that could be acceptable to many Democrats as well as Republicans, the way the White House handled it reinforced Clinton's image as the Great Vacillator.

Although Clinton seemed completely unprepared for the first rhetorical challenge from the emboldened G.O.P., for Gingrich to start off with the school-prayer amendment made political sense. It probably seemed like the perfect thank-you gift to the Christian right for its substantial role in the Republican triumph. Even though leaders of the Christian right say it's not high on their legislative wish list, polls show strong support for some kind of classroom prayer, making it less contentious than an antiabortion measure they might prefer. Best of all, Gingrich could offer the amendment without fully expecting it to come to pass, with whatever messy, real-world consequences it might entail. Even if approved by both houses of Congress -- affording Gingrich the delicious spectacle of watching Clinton agonize over a veto -- constitutional amendments must be further approved by three-quarters of the states, a long and bumpy road where most of them stall.

Over time, the move could backfire. Liberal groups have seized on it as a way to energize their despondent troops, and even conservative Christians are wondering what kind of government-approved prayer they are going to have to agree to. But so far on this one it's Gingrich 1, Clinton 0.

Clinton will soon face a barrage of issues far tougher than school prayer. When the new Congress convenes in January, Gingrich plans a fast and furious start in the House, with quick thrusts on taxes, term limits, welfare and crime. Even in the generally more collegial Senate, a new lineup of Republican chairmen is setting traps on such things as defense spending and the global free-trade agreement. And everywhere the rhetoric is getting nastier. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms felt free to say on CNN that Clinton is not up to the job of Commander in Chief -- a remark that was widely regarded, even by some of Helms' ideological brethren, as very nearly unpatriotic. Earlier in the week the crusty Senator, who will chair the Foreign Relations Committee, dispatched what read like a ransom note to the Administration, threatening tough handling of Clinton foreign policy if next week's vote on the huge free- trade treaty was not delayed until next year. That sort of hubris could impede the great Republican revolution, turning it into little more than an opportunity for new bottoms to press themselves firmly into old seats of power. But for now the G.O.P. takeover is shaking up Washington much more fundamentally. If the Democrats have any idea what to do about it, there isn't yet much sign of it.

On his way to Manila three days after the election, Clinton was already deep into the very Clintonesque process of mulling things over. Sitting with his aides on the floor of Air Force One's conference room, he reviewed the political dilemmas of earlier Presidents, from Lincoln onward, pondering, as a senior official put it, "how they were perceived, and how they conceived their presidencies."

Back in Washington, a lot of party centrists are prepared to tell Clinton all about how he's perceived. The Democratic Leadership Council, the group of moderate Democrats that Clinton once headed, issued a poll conducted right after the voting by Stan Greenberg, the President's own pollster. It showed that Clinton's support had vanished among the independent voters who helped put Democrats over the top in 1992. Said D.L.C. president Al From: "For President Clinton there is a pretty blunt message in this poll: Get with the program, or you'll have to pay consequences."

The view that Clinton must hunker down in the center is shared by some members of the White House inner circle, notably domestic-policy adviser Bruce Reed and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. Another camp, which includes deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes and possibly adviser-in-chief Hillary Rodham Clinton, wants the President to consolidate his party base. If that means dwelling on civil rights, abortion rights and labor issues, it's probably an agenda that would appeal to a too narrow slice of the ever more conservative electorate. As a rough blueprint for post-apocalypse strategy, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, with the help of several other top aides, produced a memo one described as a "thought piece." The memo proposed that the President should attempt to govern from a "forceful center," working with Republicans who want to share the middle on matters like welfare reform, health care and the line-item veto, but challenging as radicals any who propose ideas too far to Clinton's right.

House Republicans these days are only too happy to find out what's too far right. Not long after Gingrich unveiled his intentions on the prayer amendment, Texas Representative Richard Armey, the next House majority leader, said that within three years his party will replace the current graduated income tax, which takes a larger bite from the upper brackets, with either a national sales tax or a flat tax of 17% on everybody. But it took congressional Democrats until week's end to utter their first opposition rhetoric. "We're not about to roll over and play dead while the Republicans rubber stamp their extremist, supply-side agenda," warned House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt.

The smell of blood in the air has encouraged some Republicans to challenge the President even on an issue that their party has long supported. Clinton faces real trouble next week in the Senate, when the lame-duck Democratic Congress convenes to take up GATT. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is the laboriously crafted 123-nation agreement designed to lower tariff barriers. In his threatening letter demanding a delay of the vote, Senator Helms, who can make "free trade" sound like some weird practice he once saw in a Mapplethorpe photo, was trying to exploit the fact that Congress has agreed to consider GATT under "fast track" rules that allow only a yes or no vote, with no amendments. Because that rule expires in January, the next Congress, under G.O.P. control, would be free to decorate GATT with subclauses sure to kill it because each one would have to be renegotiated with all 123 signatory nations. With its 26,000 pages of agreements and rules, GATT is a behemoth that just a few additions could tip over.

Sentiment on GATT doesn't divide along partisan lines. Before the task fell to Clinton, the agreement was championed by Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Ranged against it now is a loose front that runs from labor unions, environmental groups and Ralph Nader to protectionist Senate Democrats like Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Republicans like Phil Gramm of Texas. But Gingrich is a longtime GATT supporter who says he will make sure the agreement passes the House vote scheduled for Nov. 29. So the man who holds the cards is incoming Senate majority leader Bob Dole. The Dec. 1 Senate vote on GATT is a cliff-hanger. The White House may be as many as 10 votes short of the 60 it needs for passage. Though Dole has leaned toward support, his presidential ambitions keep him mindful that trade agreements aren't always popular with those voters who fear they could be swept away in a free-flowing world economy. As the price for getting Republican Senators in line, Dole wants assurances that the U.S. can withdraw from the World Trade Organization if it "gets shafted" several times by the group, which will supervise the trade regulations of member states.

January will bring an even chillier climate for Clinton. Not only will the Republicans have the majority, but Gingrich is busy refashioning the House as a fighting unit. Already he has laid the first strokes of revolutionary discipline on the backs of his fellow Republicans by skipping over some more senior members when selecting committee chairmen. So Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois will be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee instead of the ranking G.O.P. member, Carlos Moorehead of California.

In what looked like a bow to the tobacco industry, the Speaker-to-be passed over Moorehead a second time in choosing the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The outgoing Democratic chairman, John Dingell, was the impresario of this year's subcommittee hearings on whether cigarette companies were manipulating the nicotine level of their product. The new head will be Thomas Bliley Jr. of the tobacco state of Virginia, who thinks cigarette regulation has gone quite far enough already. "Carlos is too kind a man to get into the kind of vicious fights that will occur over issues before those committees," explains Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley. More to the point: the only legislation Moorehead has successfully launched in recent years is a resolution declaring Snow White Week.

With the Republicans back in power, the Pentagon seems to be wasting no time in playing to a willing audience. Last week it was announced that three of the Army's 12 divisions were far below their peak readiness levels. That prompted Representative Floyd Spence, the South Carolina Republican in line to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to charge that "U.S. military units are caught in the early stages of a downward readiness spiral that shows no prospect of easing in the foreseeable future."

Though part of the problem is traceable to the fact that additional money approved by Congress to help cover the cost of missions in Haiti, Rwanda and Kuwait did not flow to Pentagon budgets until some units were already limping, White House officials are wondering if they were ambushed. "We gave all of the services written guidance that readiness was to be their No. 1 concern and that they were to cut other programs to ensure it be kept up," an Administration official fumes. "Do you think it's a coincidence that only days after the Republicans take over, the Army finds out how much they're hurting?" Army brass emphatically denies that's the case. "We simply ran out of money because of Haiti, Kuwait and Rwanda," insists a Pentagon official.

What can the depleted Democrats do? For now they are falling back on the hope that Republicans, in the manner of Jesse Helms, will overplay their hand and that strains within the new G.O.P. leadership will open up soon. A few are already visible in the differences between the House and Senate about how fast to move. Cut middle-class taxes? "It won't happen overnight," Dole said last week on Face the Nation. Increase defense spending? He figures, "It may be -- very, very slowly." And with cuts in Social Security out of reach, as all sides agree, balancing the budget while enacting the tax cuts in the "Contract with America" will be "very, very difficult," Dole says.

Once the Republican promises on tax cuts run into the realities of budget balancing, the Democrats could find an opening to remake the case that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Until then, they will have to get used to being the outs in the city they ran from the inside for so long. Stunned Democratic committee staff members who used to feel like kings feel more now like ghosts at parties where the lobbyists flock to the Republican staff members. "The Redskins tickets, the lunch and dinner invitations," one of them laments. "All gone."

Gone too, before long, may be a fair number of Clinton's inner circle. Rumors are everywhere in Washington that the Election Day debacle will give chief of staff Panetta the ammunition to complete his overhaul of the White House, something that Clinton has resisted. "If the same cast of characters is in place three months from now, ((Clinton's)) a goner," says one Administration official.

The Democrats harbor the highly ambitious notion of prying out the Republicans two years from now. Failing that, they can hope that the Republicans mean it when they promise term limits that apply to themselves. In a town where everybody and everything seems to be moving, the upheaval adds up to even more business for real estate agent Cathie Gill. "Once people come to Washington, they tend to stay," she says. But for a while, it will be tough for a large bunch of Democrats to keep paying their mortgages.

With reporting by James Carney with Clinton, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington