NEWT GINGRICH'S WORLD

LEADERS MAKE THINGS POSSIBLE. EXCEPTIONAL LEADERS make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional. All year--ruthlessly, brilliantly, obnoxiously--he worked at hammering together inevitabilities: a balanced federal budget, for one. Not so long ago, the idea of a balanced budget was a marginal, we'll-get-to-it-someday priority. Other urgent work needed doing: the Clintons' health-care program, for example, which would have installed elaborate new bureaucratic machinery. Today, because of Newt Gingrich, the question is not whether a balanced-budget plan will come to pass but when.

Gingrich has changed the center of gravity. From Franklin Roosevelt onward, Americans came to accept...