Molly Ivins May 16

AUSTIN — While all political eyes were on Sen. Bob Dole, who's resigning after 27 years in the Senate to concentrate on his run for the presidency, mine were fixed in horror on House Speaker Newt Gingrich's plan to get Dole elected.

After a profound study of America's problems, Gingrich has decided that the most important issues in this presidential race are "cronies, corruption and cover-up." President Bill Clinton's, of course — not his own. Right away, this gives you some idea of the elevated discourse to which we can look forward.

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas sat next to Gingrich on a flight from Washington to Atlanta in February, and Gingrich enthusiastically outlined his plan for the Christian commentator, who apparently saw nothing un-Christian about it.

According to Thomas's column, Gingrich's chart divides the country into "Clinton liberals" and "the rest of us." He describes Clinton liberals as those who "desire to maintain programs that mire people in poverty, ignorance, addiction, alcoholism and entitlements," while "the rest of us" want to "liberate people from these things to self-reliance, responsibility, productivity, achievement and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, the speaker believes that Clinton must be "ruthlessly defined" against this "values majority."

In favor of poverty, ignorance, addiction, alcoholism and entitlements — whew! I'd say that's a fairly ruthless definition, all right. Just the other day, I was reading a column by conservative Tony Snow, who was decrying those "humorless Beltway dweebs who write off their foes as moral pond scum." Unfortunately, he was not writing about the speaker.

Gingrich told Thomas that Clinton "is the most enthusiastically dishonest politician ever to occupy the White House, and no Republican who is harnessed to the burden of truth can verbally match him." That speaker! He is just so given to understatement.

As nearly as I can gather from Gingrich's plan, he believes that what this country needs above all else is more polarization. "The Clinton liberals believe in higher taxes to pay off the union political agenda and federal bureaucracy on the taxpayer's credit card.

The rest of us want lower taxes, lower interest rates, more take-home pay, more profitable savings, more jobs and a leaner, decentralized government."

You know, when I hear this kind of "we believe this/they believe that" rhetoric, I am reminded of the first political lesson I ever learned: Never let anyone else define your politics. The second lesson, which I was taught by Ralph Yarborough and many others in the trade, is that good politics are inclusive, not divisive. When we let a politician (Richard Nixon comes to mind) divide us into Us and Them instead of unite us as We the People, All of Us, trouble follows.

Mark Gerzon's new book, "A House Divided," is an intelligent exploration of six American belief systems and of what we can do to heal our divisions. That some of our leaders exploit and aggravate our divisions for political gain is one of the saddest parts of our current dilemma. As one who has long predicted that negative campaigning will soon sink under the weight of its own nastiness, the thought of a fall campaign about "cronies, corruption and cover-up" leads me to reflect that I'm probably wrong again.

Another cheerful thought of the speaker's: "We are going to redefine compassion and take it back." Redefine compassion. Compassion as defined by Newt Gingrich. Gee, I bet it will be different.

Gingrich spent 10 days in Tampa, Fla., with a group of strategists, drawing up this game plan. They intend to defeat Clinton by sending teams of Republicans around the nation to dwell on "cronies, corruption and cover-up." Unfortunately, there is not a single solution to a single one of the nation's problems in their strategy.

Clinton is famous for his rapid-response team when campaigning; the trouble is, a response isn't an idea or a solution. Isn't anyone going to talk about how to fix things — how to make government work better? Dole says that the campaign is about "doing what's right," which is better than doing what's wrong but not all that specific.

Perhaps what we need here is more discussion of "how to" and less high- falutin' persiflage about morals and values. We're not going to cure poverty with less food and more Bibles (no disrespect to Bibles meant).

Personally, I prefer to hear preaching from preachers. I seriously doubt there's a lot that Newt Gingrich — the dope-smoking, draft-dodging, deadbeat dad who divorced his sick wife and climbed the greasy pole of politics by spreading fear, smear and sludge through the land (that's my Rush Limbaugh imitation) — can teach most of us about morals or values.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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