Word: gingriched
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That's hardly a ringing endorsement, and as such, it sums up Gephardt's challenge if he has any chance of replacing Gingrich as Speaker: before the nation is willing to oust the Republicans, it will have to decide whether it can trust the Democrats again. So it falls to Gephardt to make the country believe two years in the wilderness have been enough, that his is a chastened party with the discipline to keep its liberal, profligate instincts in check. "We got the message," Gephardt insists. "If you can't learn from your mistakes, then you aren't worth...
Unlike the man he would replace, no one would ever mistake Gephardt for a revolutionary. With his flat Midwestern accent, his crisp, cuffless blue suits and his wispy, ginger-colored hair, he comes across as exactly what he is: careful and deliberate, encouraging but rarely inspiring. Where Gingrich prefers to back his opponents up against a wall, Gephardt would rather subdue them at the negotiating table. His willingness to sit and listen for hours while others gripe and posture has earned him the nickname "Ironbutt," courtesy of his colleagues...
Initially, the once haughty Democrats were relegated to bit parts in the first-100-days extravaganza that opened Gingrich's Congress. But their shared humiliation also offered a chance to find the sort of cohesiveness that they had often marveled at in the Republicans. Early on, Gephardt fashioned the test that would force them to confront all their old ideological demons: a Democratic alternative to the G.O.P. welfare-reform bill. Day after day, they argued in Gephardt's office. Hispanic members threatened to walk out over provisions cutting off benefits to legal immigrants; liberals hated the idea of putting time...
...again given a chance to write legislation that actually has a chance of becoming law. When a similar bill came before the House this summer, liberals bolted. But the early exercise on welfare became the model Gephardt used to produce a plan for a new Democratic majority. As Gingrich and the Republicans began to stumble on issues like school lunches and Medicare, Gephardt and his increasingly optimistic troops began hammering out Families First in endless meetings. "Everyone brought their ideas," he says. Most of them were thrown out, including Gephardt's own pet protectionist proposals on trade...
...plan both strategy and policy, and he has put some of the caucus' most conservative members in critical positions. Only weeks after the election, he recruited Texan Chet Edwards to take charge of part of his vote-counting operation; Edwards himself would later vote for three-quarters of Gingrich's Contract with America. And when it came to developing anticrime policy for the caucus, Gephardt turned not to Conyers but to Bart Stupak of Michigan, an ardent foe of gun control...