Newt Gingrich and the constitution - 25 November 1994

It was sad in a new way to read on Wednesday a presidential proclamation, which every year at this time is more often a cry of triumph and good cheer, here's the beginning and the end of it. As the end of another grows closer, we are again filled with thankfulness for the blessings of a fruitful land. For more than 200 years Americans have welcomed autumns harvest with gratitude and goodwill. Now therefore, I, William J Clinton, President of the United States of America by virtue of the authority etc etc do hereby proclaim Thursday 24 November 1994 as a national day of Thanksgiving and urge the citizens of this great nation to gather in their homes and places of worship to express their heartfelt gratitude for the many blessings of our lives.

I suppose, in fact I know that the President and his family and friends had the usual feast with the ritual turkey and cranberry sauce and the pumpkin pie and all the fixings, but also I'm afraid this year a double helping of crow. We already go about our business and pretend that after the upheaval of the election everything is back to normal, but it's much like trying to get back to normal after an earthquake. Everywhere you turn; familiar landmarks and institutions like city government, police departments, state legislatures have been badly damaged or dented.

The Democrats, while tossing out such pious words as bipartisanship and creative compromises, are walking around like zombies wondering what hit them and the Republicans are so dizzy with the glow of a situation new to most of them in their lifetimes, the control of the House of Representatives, that they are perhaps overreacting and their leaders shouting out sound bites as if they were policies already decided if not voted on.

Mr Newt Gingrich the incoming Speaker of the House and so the new majority party leader in the House, he got off several unhappy cracks about the Clintons, which to repeat here would only give wide exposure to catchphrases better left unsaid. But Mr Gingrich, also like a new sergeant major, rapped out the commands for his troops: a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, strict limits to the terms congressmen and senators can serve, instant reform of welfare, no money for single mothers with new babies, school prayer to be permitted in all public schools. Most of all – a ballad refrain from the Republicans for at least the last 20 years – a big cut in the capital gains tax, which has become a Republican cure-all for everything from unemployment to flat feet.

Anyone who has watched the processes of congressional government for any length of time is inclined to say with Ralph Waldo Emerson, why so hot little man? I won't bore you with reciting the various stages that lead from a wish to a law. In the American system there are seven time consuming stages from the introduction of a Bill to the day when the president decides either to sign it or veto it or wait 10 days and let it automatically become law.

And as for the first revelation of Mr Gingrich's brave new new America, making a federal law requiring the national government balanced budget that involves a process like all other suggested amendments to the Constitution that can take a lifetime, I think of one proposed amendment that passed both houses of Congress most American women thought it was practically the law of the land. One young woman I know commented grimly sometime ago, it took half of my lifetime to fail and that was the Equals Rights Amendment meaning equal rights for women.

What the Constitution never provided for that, well yes it did in the view of many people and many constitutional lawyers, in the famous 14th Amendment ratified a year or two after the Civil War, which originally aimed at protecting the civil rights of the Negros after several states in the aftermath of the war had passed quick laws trying to keep Negros in their place, no longer in slavery but positively unable to enjoy many rights of citizenship. Now today, the clause of the 14th most commonly called on in appeals is "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law". Well, women are persons in law surely. In fact, since the dawn of political correctness about 20 years ago, some chairwomen of clubs and societies have insisted on being called chairpersons.

And it was all of a dozen years ago that a young mother on Long Island having procured a divorce went to court to change her name from Cooperman, her husband's name, to Cooperperson. The first judge said, "ridiculous we'll soon be singing woods person spare that tree", but she moved on to a higher court and her claim was granted. She allowed her young son, however, to remain young Cooperman. Why, so as she gallantly said to preserve his male identity. But down the decades since 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified, enough women have noticed that the 14th has too seldom been cited to protect their legal equality.

So in the 1960s a move started, which shook the whole country to add a new amendment to the Constitution, which would simply say "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex". Pretty simple, right. It took a dozen years from the first noises of opposition in some states to its passage by both Houses of Congress. Wait a moment, I hear somebody say, what sort of opposition to something so simple and direct? Well objections mushroomed during the next few years from the state of Oklahoma saying the Bible didn't say women were the equals of men, organised labour organised against it, afraid that women might demand equal rights, equal pay for equal work. In most democratic countries their still working on that one, worse that women might want to become bricklayers, builders, electricians who knows they might want – to be soldiers serve in combat units and also want to well, for heavens sakes – be coalminers. Some other states mobilised opposition from women's groups very eager to preserve some inequalities such as for instance compelling men to support ex-wives and children. Imagine, men getting alimony. It happens all the time.

Long before an amendment can become law, witnesses before congressional committees and also committees of state legislatures, we love delaying any and every problem of government by holding interminable committee hearings all of which are reported, transcribed and published to the extent of millions of words. Other witnesses were afraid women would be subject to a conscription. Can you imagine one much quoted witness cried, can you imagine women going into combat carrying 40lb packs? This man had evidently been asleep right throughout Israel's 1956 and 1967 wars.

Well, to complete the sad story, the amendment went sailing eventually through both Houses. The Senate in 1972 voting 84 to 8 in its favour, but passage by Congress is only the beginning, it then must go to the law making bodies of all the states, 50 state legislatures most of which have two houses to ponder and hold hearings and debate. The Constitution says, "an amendment becomes law when it has been ratified by three quarters of the states", so in 1972 the lobbying and the parades and the hard work began across the country.

It took 10 years to be brought up and voted on by all the states, it needed 38 states to approve. By March 1982, the final count was in, 35 in favour, 15 against, three states short of ratification that was the end of a great campaign to add a one sentence amendment to the Constitution.

Nothing's been heard of it since and nothing's likely to be heard since you may have noticed, most of the things the opponents feared have come true anyway, women with 40lb packs, women down coal mines, women up on horses outracing men.

My own guess on Mr Gingrich's amendment saying the government must balance the budget is it will never pass in my lifetime or perhaps in yours. A quick rough poll of most of the Congress shows that there is a solid body of common sense that sees it for what it is, a wish that frequent repetition will not make into law.

As for the rest of the brave agenda, Mr Gingrich in the House will learn what Senator Dole, the new majority leader in the Senate knows very well that winning control of the House is wonderful, but a majority of 15 is scarcely enough to guarantee the passage of a bill, especially if the Democrats come alive and realise they can no longer afford the luxury of defying their own leader.

What I suspect is likely to happen is that the election will have acted as a galvaniser on the Democrats making them wake up and realise that the way into perdition as an effective opposition party is to be in the minority and still enjoy the luxury of splitting into pro and anti Clinton blocks. Maybe wishful thinking on my part, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I'm a small 'd' democrat who believes as passionately as James Madison did in a vigorous two-party system.

For 58 of 62 years, the House has been heavily at times overwhelmingly in the control of the Democrats, which is fine for liberal democrats who say they applaud the system but love it mainly because in the House, the Democrats are always in power. The Republicans felt the same way in the 1920s when they were continuously top dog, so to me the good thing about the election was that it shook the Democrats out of their complacent coma and it reasserted the importance, the value I hope of a legislative body that is not run by one party for 58 years.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC. Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.