Political Comets Burn Out Fast

It tells you a lot about congressional hypocrisy and cronyism that the ethics panel’s stall over Newt Gingrich lasted longer than the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

O.J. didn’t have House Speaker Gingrich’s pals in high places.

Finally, after 14 months of diddling, his friend and sometime-partner, House Ethics Committee Chairman Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., announced the panel voted 10-0 to sic an outside counsel on Newt’s case.

Sure, Gingrich got a break - the investigation will ignore Gingrich’s $4.5 million book deal and his suspicious GOPAC political fund to focus narrowly on whether his college course broke tax laws.

“This is fine,” said Gingrich. “This is great news.”

Pardon me if I doubt Newt’s sincerity.

If being investigated is such great news, Newt would be overjoyed at a broken leg and thrilled by an Internal Revenue Service audit.

At best it means Gingrich will be distracted by the ethics probe, the equivalent of Chinese water torture, through the 1996 elections.

Already in trouble because of his overheated rhetoric and bogeyman image, Gingrich will be more of a dead weight to the Republican Revolution that, ironically, he inspired.

While he’s a tarnished hero to most Republicans in the House, especially firebrand freshmen, Newt’s mounting problems could mean he’ll exit the speakership long before his avowed six years.

If the ethics investigation signals that Gingrich’s glory days are numbered, it demonstrates a hoary Washington axiom: “What goes around, comes around.”

In an eerie case of deja vu, Gingrich rose to power in the late 1980s by hounding then-Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas.

Calling Wright “the most corrupt speaker in history,” Gingrich pressured the media and the ethics committee until an outside counsel got his hooks into Wright.

If Gingrich someday resigns under fire as did Wright, Democrats will celebrate it as rough justice.

They’ve pursued and tried to destroy Gingrich just as Newt bayed after Wright.

Sure, the rap against Gingrich - whether his satellite-beamed college courses were really a fund-raising gimmick for GOPAC seems trivial.

Like Whitewater charges against Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Gingrich case is too murkily complex for public drama. But as chief Gingrich tormentor Rep. Dave Bonior, D-Mich., gleefully pointed out, the ethics panel’s tough criticisms were “bad news for Newt.”

The harshest jab was at Gingrich’s multimillion-dollar book deal with Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins. The panel said Newt’s huge advance was “out of bounds” and “an attempt to capitalize on your office.”

Whether Gingrich makes a legal escape, you sense a pattern of Newt skidding downhill, out of control.

Only last week his Republican cadre was so riled by Gingrich’s motormouth gaffes that it told him, in effect: “Newt, put a stopper in it.”

Bad enough that Gingrich in a puerile whine revealed he’d caused the federal shutdown, putting 800,000 government employees out of work, because Clinton dissed him on Air Force One.

Then in a typical overwrought Newtism, Gingrich blamed “the social welfare state” for a grisly Chicago murder.

Two-thirds of the public tell pollsters they’re negative toward Gingrich - fear and loathing even Richard Nixon in the depths of Watergate didn’t stir.

In a Barbara Walters interview on ABC-TV, Newt explained his dismal ratings: “I think it’s partly because of me. I’m a hot personality. I’m not a salesman … I think you open yourself up, frankly, to look dumb at times.”

Gingrich had that right. But his self-analysis doesn’t pacify Republicans’ jitters that Newt’s fast becoming their albatross.

While Gingrich jabbers away, Clinton’s approval rises over the 50 percent mark.

Suddenly Newt’s such a caricatured villain, Republicans in embattled districts avoid him like poison ivy.

Even if he takes a vow of silence, Gingrich makes his right-wing confederates unhappy. When Gingrich ducked a stand on Bosnia in a Republican caucus, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., stormed out to grumble, “Newt’s been tap-dancing on this issue. We elected Newt because he’s not afraid of a fight, not to be a dancer.”

Six months ago, before budget wars and Gingrich fiascoes, such criticism by Newt’s loyalists was unthinkable heresy.

Sure, freshmen who owe their ‘94 elections to him would still walk through fire for Gingrich. But there’s suspicion that Republicans are splitting into pro-Newt, anti-Newt camps. And all wish he’d become invisible and mute.

“The revolution was about ideas, not Gingrich,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

Can Newt survive his ethics jam? Can he stifle his grandstanding ego? Or is Gingrich, like other Washington political meteors, doomed to crash and burn?

Don’t ask Jim Wright.

He’s laughing too hard.

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