Coup By any name

Coup By Any Name


By John Calvin Batchelor


T he recent sensational melodrama when more than three dozen Republican members of the House maneuvered in secret and in the dead of a hot Washington night to remove Newt Gingrich from the Speakership was described by both friends and foes of the Speaker as a failed coup.
Mr. Newt himself, chatting with Rush Limbaugh on the radio a week later, characterized the affair as a misunderstanding within a large, rambunctious family. When Rush called the insurgents "rebels," Newt changed metaphors and fancied his opponents within the 228 member GOP conference as difficult relatives.

You can't worry about what "a third cousin" thinks of you, Rush, remarked the Speaker, you can't worry that "your brother-in-law" doesn't agree with you all the time.

Uh-huh.

A coup by any name is a coup, Mr. Newt.

Coloring it as failed doesn't make it unserious. Shading it as a misunderstanding and failure to communicate doesn't make it go away. Recalling it as bad press management on the Rush Limbaugh Show doesn't do much to calm you when you wake at 5 am from a nightmare about knife-sharpening.

The truth is that what happened mid July, 1997, was a malice aforethought and sober-minded strike, blow, hit, smack, coup d'etat, by three dozen elected members of the Congress and perhaps several hundred of their staffs against the third most important politician in the United States Governemt -- against the man who is second in line to the presidency after Vice President Al Gore.

Coup Lives

All the details of who said what to whom and when are not now available nor will they be sometime soon. Yes yes, there is mumbling about this fairweather guy Majority Whip Tom Delay and that earnest fallguy Republican Conference chair Bill Paxon and that back-stabber Majority Leader Dick Armey, and there is some finger-pointing at the "gang of eleven" plotters led by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Steve Larget of Oklahoma and Mark Souder of Indiana. But there are no tapes, no pics, no testimony on camera, no documentation of the drama. In sum, we are told there was a coup, but we are not told why, how, when, who precisely. The door is shut; we're told to go home and forget.

And the reason we can't know what actually happened sometime between Thursday July 10 and sometime Thursday July 17, when the coup was broken up by weak bowels and bad tempers, is that the coupmasters are still wearing their heads and the conspirators are changing their underwear for their moment to come again. The on-going potency of the coup is the explanation for why there is no explanation, why all the fuzziness and whistling past the graveyard humor that I heard today from Mr. Newt when Rush asked him, "What's going on?"

Listen happily: The coup is alive. Today. Tonight. This moment. Pay small attention to the balanced-budget deal circus and none to the all-is-forgiven bi-partisan shenanigans. The plotters learned that they were right to strike, because in falling short they were not executed. Because inept 1905 is always a dress rehearsal for devilish 1917. Because Newt is too weak to fight on, otherwise he would have removed his own lieutenants immediately for certain knowledge that one of them was a certain candidate for betrayal the next time. And I promise you, the conspirators will strike again.

How do I know? It's my job to know. The mechanics of coups are traditional melodrama, and I know my field, that of the political thriller.

Brooding here in Maine on and off a lake for the summer, I know what's going on in Washington as if it was a story I was writing for Hollywod.

The title is "No More Speaker Nice Guy." The old king is Newt Gingrich of Georgia (named for a fallen king), who came to power using the familiar tactics of a frantic anarchist, preaching against the Democrat majority leadership and maneuvering to cast out the get-along GOP minority leadership.

Surprise, it worked. In '94, a bumbling, affable, rudderless Democratic president combined with an older, gentler, rudderless Democratic Congress combined with the miraculous end to a sixty year-long war with despotism to produce the correct conditions for a coup. Mr. Newt was the coupmaster, and the 104th Congress was born in a burst of revolutionary hoorahs to sweep out the old order and begin a new day.

The reign of terror called the "Contract With America" scared old Dem warhorses to retire, and frightened the president and vice president into the fetal position. By mid '95, Clinton was convinced that the only thing he could save was himself and thereafter devoted all his office's power to defeating an affable old warhorse from the GOP. Meanwhile Clinton and Gore shoved the Dem party aside like day-old dogfood.

The result is a Republican majority in the 105th Congress that is lean, mean, and convinced of its rightousness. Elected in talk of world turned upside down revolution, the GOP congresspersons are certain that they have a right and duty and magic to remake everything about Washington.

Now you understand that the short version of Mr. Newt's problem is: What goes around comes around.

Mr. Newt led the rebels, and now he is their logical victim, like many a hotheaded anarchist has found out before: Revolution eats its leaders first and its children last.

Coup Tomorrow

What's next? The Republican Congress is the most bloody-minded cadre since the famous New Deal 100 Days Dem Congress of the bleak Spring of '33. This means that the 105th will set its sights on more tearing down of the old order. The '97 balanced budget deal is a stepping stone toward a utopian vision of permanent revolution in the U.S. government. No leader will survive for long; no follower will have the energy to stay more than a cycle of destruction. The corporate word for the Federal future is down-sizing. A frank word is anarchy. A vast majority in the GOP now believe passionately that the federal government is a necessary evil that must be torn down before it can be built right.

What moved against Mr. Newt wasn't a handful of restless right-wing Republicans. What stabbed at No. 3 was everyone with brains to see that Newt's fate is a rerun. E tu Brute means trust no one, believe no one, follow no one. For GOP members, no more waiting in line for pork and sympathy. No more twenty years in the same seat. Stab for the power now because tomorrow might not find your comrades in place or your head on your shoulders.

Where are we going with all this untidy rebellion? Comic theater (the highest artform). Washington is now a coliseum for a gladiator dance. The true and mysterious power of this country has moved back to Wall Street, where it watches Washington like a smug emperor. In the markets, the S&P 500 potentates know, there is no excuse for error. You screw up, you will be killed at the opening bell. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Coup d'jour is sport.

The same witty, ruthless, highly leveraged capitalist morality is now directed to the Federal government. Mr. Newt is coup bait. The same for Mr. Newt's lieutenants. What goes around comes around.

Immediately tomorrow? I remind you coups don't preannounce. The GOP rebels struck at Mr. Newt when he was distracted with the budget and not watching his backside; and when and if they move again, it won't be when he's got his mojo working. The '98 elections are a mighty big club to hold over the members if you want to convince folk that a keener, gamer, stronger Speaker is what the party needs, like a Cromwell or Bonaparte.

And you gloating Dems? Psst. What's that behind you? Just kidding. Except you're just as cunning as the GOP rabble-rousers if you want to stage a torchlight march on the palace. Those Fred Thompson hearings about Chinese funny money that your gut has has told you don't matter -- look very closely before you decide that there's no surprise coming. Make sure you know where Minority Leader Dick Gephradt is at all times. Check Al Gore's travel plans around the Ides of each month. Worry a lot if Starr wakes up and tells us who hired Craig Livingstone and who decided Webb Hubbells's tongue was for sale at Walmart prices.

Last detail before you pachyderms go off-line tonight. It's July, the time of the patriots. The GOP rebels stormed Mr. Newt in the infamous month of July 4th and July 14th. Let's get through the equally dangerous 20th century month of the Guns of August and the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact and the Prague Invasion and the Saddam Surprise and the Gorbachev-Yeltsin Moscow Circus before we can turn our backs and our attention elsewhere.