Behind The Scenes

Fear and Polling

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

(TIME, August 5) -- All of a sudden the do-nothing Congress is doing everything at once. Why? Fear. A Washington adage says members of Congress care about only three things: getting re-elected, getting re-elected and getting re-elected. When Republicans returned from their July 4 recess, a privately distributed poll by G.O.P. pollster Richard Wirthlin showed that voters would prefer a Democrat to a Republican as their representative by 5 percentage points. In 1994 it took only a 2-point advantage the other way round for Republicans to win control of the House and the Senate.

Thus emerged the bills that Dole strategists would rather keep bottled up. "I've had it with the Dole campaign," Newt Gingrich groused to a colleague. Gingrich will focus instead on re-electing his majority, staging eight seminars on how lawmakers should market their agenda. (Example: Don't say "cut" Medicare, say "preserve and protect.") A Gingrich spokesman denies that the Speaker and Dole have gone separate ways. But John Boehner, the fourth-ranking House Republican, says, "There's been a realization on Newt's part that the Dole campaign is going to manage itself."

With reporting by James Carney/Washington

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