Gingrich, Gore Stage Verbal Brawl Clinton And Dole Calmed The Combatants
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Vice President Al Gore got into a shouting match last week at the White House, accusing each other of making dastardly attacks that poisoned the political atmosphere.
In doing so, they provided the most dramatic evidence yet that when it comes to the budget, the level of debate is getting in the way of serious discussion of the issues.
The oral brawl on Wednesday, which left some bystanders wondering if punches would be thrown, began when President Clinton changed the meeting’s subject from Bosnia to the national debt and asked where everyone stood.
“Nowhere,” answered Gingrich, who said he wondered why he had even come to the meeting when the administration was so busy slurring him and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the majority leader. In particular, some participants told their aides and colleagues, he cited the vice president’s repetitive labeling of him and Dole as extremist.
In one recitation a week earlier, Gore told Democrats in Secaucus, N.J., “This Congress led by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole is the most right-wing, extremist, anti-family Congress in the history of this country.”
At last week’s meeting, Gore responded to Gingrich’s complaint by saying that at least the Democrats had not accused the Republicans of being responsible for the drowning of two innocent children in South Carolina.
Gore was referring to an interview Gingrich gave The Associated Press just before the 1994 elections, in which he spoke of a widely publicized case in which two children were drowned by their mother, Susan Smith, in Union, S.C.
“I think the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick society is getting and how much we have to have change,” he said. “I think people want to change, and the only way you get change is to vote Republican.”
Ultimately, Clinton and Dole calmed the combatants at the meeting, and they got around to talking about the debt, the budget bill and spending. But a day or so later they were back at it, with Gingrich saying that all the president wanted was “another credit card to run up debt,” and Clinton declaring that Republicans in Congress wanted to “deny citizens the right to know what’s in the air they breathe and the water they drink.”
The debate in the House, where Gingrich once set the standard for vitriol, has been equally acid. Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., said, “GOP stands for ‘Get Old People,’ ” and outside the chamber he called Republicans “dictators” and “fascists.”
While Republicans complained when Democrats said they were killing Medicare, Rep. Scott Klug, R-Wis., said that under Democratic plans, the headline would be “Medicare Dies!”