The Black Republican

Todd S. Purdum appears to have an eye for history, and knows where to go to put that history into perspective. In The New York Times, he compares periods of one-party rule in Washington, trying to divine what might come of the current majority.

What I found most interesting were some quotes from a noted and influential historian - who happens to have been a major political figure in his own right.

But history also suggests a perilous twist on an adage as old as Athens: Whom the Gods would destroy they first give control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. With responsibility for all of government comes accountability for all of government, and the picture is not always pretty.

"There are three pretty obvious patterns," said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who should know. "There are majorities which are motivated to do very large things, which resonate with the country - the Homestead Act, land-grant colleges, all of the Progressive reforms, the rise of the New Deal. The other possibility is that you get a majority that doesn't do much bad and doesn't do much good, like lots of state legislatures.

"And third, you can have majorities that get out of touch and either become corrupt or get arrogant and isolated, the way the Democrats after the 1992 election clearly didn't understand the country and threw away their majority."

Later on, Gingrich seems to be agreeing with another American historian and watcher of things political - albeit slightly less famous.

Certainly, there have been early signs of elephantine hubris, chief among them the House majority's willingness to rewrite its own ethics rules for the sole purpose of assuring that its majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, would not have to step down should he be indicted as a result of any of the inquiries now swirling around him. Only a dominant party would dare do a thing like that. It was the Republicans themselves, after all, who instituted the rule that indicted members could not serve as leaders. They did so a decade ago after supplanting the long-ruling Democrats, whom they derided as ethically sloppy.

"It was a mistake, because it was a public statement that the party would change the rules to benefit one individual," Mr. Gingrich said of the DeLay decision. "That's a mistake, period. Are the rules subordinate to the interests of the powerful, or are the powerful subordinate to the interests of the rules? In a free society, the rules govern."

I couldn't have said it better myself. But at least I tried.