FOLLOW--OR MOVE OVER

By MICHAEL DUFFY

POLITICS ABHORS A VACUUM, AND Newt Gingrich last week was feeling its tug. Even before Senate majority leader Bob Dole's uninspired performance during Wednesday's televised forum in New Hampshire for G.O.P. presidential candidates, Gingrich had phoned key Republicans around the country and wondered aloud whether he should launch his own bid for the White House. Already on the previous Saturday, over dinner at the Connecticut home of Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Gingrich had fretted about Dole and launched into a detailed analysis of his own presidential chances.

Gingrich is clashing with two different Bob Doles. The Speaker can't control Dole the campaigner, but he needs to have influence over Dole the Senator in order to push through the extensive collection of spending cuts and tax reductions promised in the Contract with America. So last week the Speaker took control of the legislative stream, persuading Dole to create a task force of House and Senate leaders designed in part to ensure that the Senate majority leader and other moderate Senate Republicans would not unilaterally trade away elements of Gingrich's revolution in the final days of congressional bargaining. The Speaker also anointed himself the Hill's master strategist and tactician. When the time came for Republicans to take a harder line toward Bill Clinton, it was Gingrich, not Dole, who set the tone. And when the time came to secure a powerful ally for the G.O.P.'s embattled overhaul of Medicare, it was Gingrich, not Dole, who cut the deal, by winning--some would say buying--the endorsement of the influential American Medical Association.

Gingrich's message to Dole is simple: Follow me, or get out of the way. In leaking to allies his latest presidential ambitions, the Speaker sought to make it appear that what worries him is a presidential run by Colin Powell, since the general is an avowed moderate who might threaten the Speaker's agenda. Of Powell's candidacy, Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley says, "As long as the Speaker is reasonably assured that whoever the standard bearer is going to be is willing and able to carry the message of the revolution through the campaign, then he is very happy being Speaker."

But those words are directed as much at Dole as at Powell. In public last week, Dole and Gingrich made unusually overt displays of cooperation--twice holding joint press conferences to castigate the White House for failing to negotiate in good faith. In private, hard feelings are hardening. Dole suggested two weeks ago on national television that Republicans might not be able to deliver all the $245 billion in tax cuts they have promised. The admission so infuriated Gingrich that he telephoned three prominent Republican Governors and told them, in effect, "I've had it with this guy." Although the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a proposal for the full tax cut last Friday, Gingrich knows as well as Dole that it is unlikely to survive negotiations with the White House. What Gingrich couldn't believe was that Dole would show his cards in the middle of the poker game, thus panicking freshman Republican lawmakers and corporate interest groups.

GINGRICH WAS STILL CALMING THEM down last week. Dole's statement forced Gingrich to invite 150 lobbyists to a windowless room in the Capitol basement on Thursday to reassure them that the tax cuts were still on track. "We're approaching this as a team," Gingrich and other top Republicans told the lobbyists, who helped finance hundreds of G.O.P. campaigns and who were counting on fresh tax breaks. The 9 a.m. meetings of the newly created task force, the Speaker promised, would ensure that such mistakes did not take place again. Yet Dole did not attend the session.

Those closest to Gingrich insist he is unlikely to pursue the G.O.P. nomination. But party members who have spoken with him recently say he is fully briefed on the mechanics of a race, can recite filing deadlines for early primaries and confidently informs anyone who asks that 55% of convention delegates can break their pledges and vote for a favorite son. He has also bragged that Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and Massachusetts Governor William Weld have urged him to run, and he believes an announcement would activate thousands of his supporters nationwide.

But at least partly to avoid the distraction from which Dole is suffering, Gingrich is unlikely to jump in while Congress is still in session this year. His major challenge as a budget cutter is getting $270 billion out of projected Medicare spending over the next seven years, which became more difficult when polls this fall began to show that the public thinks the Republicans would penalize seniors to give tax breaks to the rich. The Speaker had been looking for a celebrity endorser who could rally seniors to the cause, and last week he found one in the A.M.A. Who could be better than a family doctor? "Once the doctor says, 'Yes, we will be there to provide care,' that fills an important segment of doubt that seniors might have had about our policy,'' says Blankley.

But what elderly patients are not likely to hear from their doctors is that in exchange for their support, they will actually receive higher Medicare payments than they could have expected under current law. When doctors argued that the present arrangement is unfair and does not reward them for practicing more economically, Republicans rewrote the complicated funding formulas to boost payments to doctors, even as their patients, hospitals and other groups with a stake in the program were feeling the pinch. Yet the peculiar math of federal budgeting will still allow both the House and Senate bills to claim "savings" of at least $23 billion in those fees over the next seven years. The higher fees were among many bouquets Gingrich handed out to doctors during their long courtship. Among the others: new protection against malpractice suits, new approvals for referring patients to doctor-owned labs and a new opportunity for doctors to form their own managed-care networks under financially generous rules that do not apply to regular hmos.

With the A.M.A. firmly at his side, Gingrich trained his guns on Clinton, threatening to send the President completed legislation in November and then immediately adjourn to prevent Congress from "receiving" Clinton's inevitable vetoes. That drew a quick retort from the White House, where spokesman Michael McCurry said Clinton would respond to such a move by invoking the constitutional clause that enables the President to force Congress into session. Gingrich next suggested that Clinton wouldn't dare veto a balanced budget because he needed it to be re-elected, prompting Clinton to declare that he would rather face defeat in 1996 than sign legislation that would be a betrayal of his political career.

Such brinkmanship is anathema to Dole, who stayed above the fray, struggling to maintain his balance between running for President for the third time and running the Senate. As Dole shuttles--sometimes daily--between Washington and New Hampshire, the juggling act has begun to take a noticeable toll. In the Senate, Dole has made several unforced errors lately, puzzling lawmakers who have long relied on his dealmaking acumen and keen sense of timing.

On the campaign trail, Dole remains the clear front runner in the listless race for the G.O.P. nomination, but has inspired little excitement and fallen as many as 9 points behind Clinton in head-to-head match-ups. Though none of Dole's rivals laid a glove on him at the New Hampshire forum last week, the man who has run for President twice before was unable to explain why he was in the race without referring to a text. The lapse wasn't lost on Team Gingrich: Newt booster Arianna Huffington appeared on CNN Friday night and lit into Dole as "this tired old man" who had to "read from note cards."

Clinton aides are delighted that Dole, 72, leads the G.O.P. field. As for Gingrich, they are convinced he is sure to get bogged down in taming revolts from his freshmen. White House chief of staff Leon Panetta opened secret negotiations with Gingrich in the beginning of October, hoping for an early agreement on a 1996 budget. Speaking only by telephone, Gingrich and Panetta discussed the broad outlines of a deal that would have balanced the budget, preserved the Medicare trust fund, included a welfare-reform measure and provided tax cuts for the middle class. Clinton was kept fully informed of the conversations, sometimes talking with Gingrich himself. But when word of the collaboration leaked on Oct. 6, angering House freshmen, Gingrich was forced to break off the talks.

As for Gingrich's presidential ambitions, the White House is salivating at the idea. Pointing to a poll indicating that 80% of Republicans oppose his running, a White House aide says, "Go ahead, make my day."

--With reporting by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Karen Tumulty/Washington and John F. Dickerson/Manchester

With reporting by JEFFREY H. BIRNBAUM AND KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON AND JOHN F. DICKERSON/MANCHESTER