MISSOURI WATCH: TERM LIMITS ARE THE LIMIT

Poor Newt Gingrich. When he sat down with quill pen and parchment in hand to write the second American revolution, he naturally included a provision which he had propounded for years: limiting the terms a member of Congress or a state legislator can serve in office. Unfortunately when he included this in his Contract With America, he was merely the second man in charge of the minority party in the Congress.

Newt's problem was multiple, since even a multimillion-dollar author such as himself usually underrates his powers of persuasion, and the Georgia Republican was no exception. But he did such a good job of writing revolutionary thoughts that voters turned out in droves to endorse his contract, which naturally included that old reliable provision calling for congressional and legislative term limits. Ah, genius has its drawbacks.

Newt's second problem was that, while he wrote his contract when he was only a mere minority whip, last November's elections saw to it that he was no longer a member of the minority but the majority, and he was no longer a whip but had suddenly become the most powerful man on Capitol Hill, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

He became with a mere flip of the voters' wrist a really powerful Bob Griffin, and everybody knows that Missouri's speaker of the House can perform all kinds of legislative tricks without even trying.

For several days after Newt kicked Tom Foley out of the speaker's chair, the promise to initiate term limits before Bill Clinton could say "Whitewater" was forgotten. That's understandable, since you can imagine the frustration of having to wait 40 years to hold a celebration party. By that time, the napkins you had printed four decades earlier were all faded and the celebration cake was as stale as a liberal Democrat's beliefs.

The new speaker returned to reality when some of the new House members who had just installed him as Speaker demanded to know when they were going to start limiting their congressional terms, just as the contract promised they would do. Newt explained that, being from Georgia, he moved a little slower on lesser matters than all those hyper-kinetic Yankees, but assured one and all that, hey, we'll get it done.

But the newcomers insisted, and so the new leader of the House turned his attention to term limits, and while the older members of the majority party were applauding, Newt cleared his throat and suggested that his original idea needed a bit of modification. Instead of serving just six years in this now-lovely chamber, Newt suggested that it was only fair that members of the House get to stay around as long as members in the other chamber. Why, he asked with the reasoning found only among the elite college faculty set, should we minimize our importance by serving fewer years than those old fogies over on the Senate side? And further, Newt asked, what's this business of making the restrictions retroactive? Why, if that happens, a lot of the best brains in Washington will be out of here tomorrow, and that includes moi. Let's give this thing a little thought.

With those views espoused, it seemed as if the U.S. Term Limits organization went ballistic. Fax machines in every news media office in the country went into high gear, pumping out denunciations not heard since Tom Foley was foolish enough to file a lawsuit against his own constituents. "Those SOB's have sold out" was one of the nicer expressions from the Term Limits folks on K Street in Washington. Frankly I didn't realize conservative Republicans were capable of using language usually reserved for prime-time television shows.

With Newt straying off the farm, the future of term limits is iffy at best. It never did stand much of a chance as long as guys like Bob Dole, who's been in Congress for 35 years, and Strom Thurmond, who was saddle boy for Patrick Henry, were still breathing. You know the familiar expression: Old congressmen never die, they just hang around to run up their pension benefits.

Will we ever get term limits? Will inexperience become a candidate's principal campaign qualification? Will Newt get to leave Congress and collect $4.5 million by passing Go? Will Tom Foley win his lawsuit and send his constituents to jail? Aren't term limits just the limit?

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist who keeps tabs on government.