BACK TO THE BENCH

NEWT GINGRICH RETURNED FROM HIS Thanksgiving break not refreshed but chastened. Over the holiday, he had worried aloud with his wife and grown children about what he had done to himself and the Republicans. His plan to balance the budget was a month behind schedule. He had thrown a childish fit about his treatment aboard Air Force One, then connected a grisly triple murder in suburban Chicago to "the welfare state." His popularity had been dropping, taking his party's down with it. On Monday he announced he would not run for President.

But Gingrich soon realized that his symbolic retreat wasn't going to be enough. The party faithful had complained to his aides over the holiday break that the Speaker's erratic behavior was jeopardizing the revolution. By Tuesday Gingrich's top lieutenants had delivered the news: unless he lowered his profile, the balanced budget would be defeated, and more voters would grow disenchanted. "All the members [had gone] home," says a House Republican leader, "and heard the same thing: 'Keep it up, don't back down and tell Newt to shut up.'" So, on Wednesday, Gingrich went before a closed session of the House Republicans and said he had "thrown one too many interceptions" and that he intended to "sit on the bench for a while."

Yet Gingrich had no sooner agreed to a lower profile than he was yanked back onto the playing field. In a federal-court filing in Washington, the Federal Election Commission said the Speaker had received $250,000 in support from his political-action committee at a time when that organization was barred from participating in federal elections. The FEC charged that Gingrich's self-styled GOPAC had paid the salaries and expenses of consultants who helped Gingrich defeat a Democratic challenger in 1990 by a margin of 974 votes. The evidence amounted to what the FEC called "the appearance of corruption" on the part of GOPAC. Gingrich, who was general chairman of the committee from 1986 until earlier this year, dismissed the allegations as "phony." Nonetheless, documents produced by the FEC are likely to increase pressure on the House Ethics Committee to name a special counsel to independently review the complaints against the Speaker.

At what should have been Gingrich's finest moment, the Speaker faces the prospect of seeing many of his legislative dreams collapse. Term limits, legal reform and a tougher crime bill are dead; tax cuts and welfare reform are in danger. Now many Republicans worry that the Contract with America's crown jewel, a balanced budget by the year 2002, could be put off until after the election.