Ira Glass Act 1, Loudspeaker. So we start today with a guy, who-- I don't want to overstate this, and it sounds really big when you say this out loud, but I really think it might be the truth-- a guy who, with sheer force of will, utterly changed our politics and created the political world we live in today, alongside a second man who helped him. Zoe Chace tells the tale.

Zoe Chace It's probably helpful in telling this story to remember for a second what politics was like before today-- how different, informal, and quaint things used to sound.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

Zoe Chace This is President Reagan walking onto the South Lawn. It's 1983, April, but apparently, a cold day. One of the lawmakers is looking very Soviet in his big coat and fur collar.

Ronald Reagan Well, I want to extend to all of you a very warm welcome. Something ought to be warm.

Zoe Chace Reagan's in this '70s, all brown suit, with a brown tie.

Ronald Reagan But it's especially fitting that so many of us from so many different backgrounds-- young and old, the working and the retired, Democrat and Republican-- should come together for the signing of this landmark legislation.

Zoe Chace Social security legislation, a major bipartisan compromise involving raising taxes and cutting spending to things that only go together when it's a bipartisan compromise.

Ronald Reagan And now, as a special treat, I would like to ask two of our leaders from Congress. First, to step forward for a few words is Speaker of the House of Representatives, the honorable Tip O'Neill. [APPLAUSE]

Tip O'neill Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, my distinguished colleagues in government, this is indeed a happy day.

Zoe Chace A special treat, the Democratic leader. The friendship between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill is one of the most famous friendships in American politics. These days, it's regularly trotted out, like a fable, to demonstrate what the good old days were like back when things worked. If you knew anything about Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, you know he was a bipartisan schmoozer, a big Muppety guy, who took up a lot of space in the room. He'd invite members from both parties to poker nights in DC. He was in Congress for decades and by the time he was Speaker, he was a living legend type.

Ronald Reagan We got along. And Nancy and I had Tip and his wife over for dinner.

Zoe Chace This is Reagan talking to William F. Buckley.

Ronald Reagan Then one day, I picked up the paper and read where he had made a statement about me that was pretty harsh. And I called him, and I said, Tip, I thought we had a relationship here, where we could do business together. And, oh, now, I read in the paper that you said-- And he interrupted me and said, well, buddy, that's just politics. He said, after 6 o'clock, we're buddies. We're friends. I did take it that every once in a while, when we had a meeting, I would visibly set my watch at above 6 o'clock.

Zoe Chace To be fair, O'Neill had been known to call Reagan a real Ebenezer Scrooge. Truth is, their relationship was complicated. They disagreed profoundly about a lot of stuff. But that's the point. It's why people tell each other this story. The two were able to come together and talk, compromise, and pass legislation. Anyway, here we are today.

Donald Trump The MS-13 lover, Nancy Pelosi.

Zoe Chace People are mean about each other now in public, all the time, in particular, the president. And of course, people fight back. This is Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Maxine Waters He's not a role model for our children. He is a liar. He's a con man.

Donald Trump Maxine Waters, a very low IQ individual. You ever see her? And Conor Lamb-- Lamb the Sham, right? Lamb the Sham.

Zoe Chace Lamb the Sham never caught on. But you know what I'm talking about. It's different now. Here, I want to lay out for you one theory of the case as to how we got from there to here. We've always had two parties. But we didn't always have two teams like we do now. Red versus blue, us versus them. Each side routinely demonizes the other side as un-American. You sign up for one issue-- the wall, the Mueller investigation, Colin Kaepernick, climate change-- you basically sign up for all of them. It wasn't always so zero sum like it's become. You could explain what happened in different ways. But I'm going to argue it was the work of these two guys that got us to this point, two guys, one quarterbacking the other. And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the first of the two men who created the modern world. You know him from Fox News. You know him from Republican primaries gone by, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich I hope I can convey this in a way that you can really feel. If we lose, we will be able to look our children and our grandchildren in the face and say, we did everything we could to save this country. [APPLAUSE]

Zoe Chace Gingrich was a weird, nerdy kid growing up. People close to him say he always pictured himself as a historical figure, someone who would bend the course of American history, someone who anticipated stories like the one I'm telling you now. From his teenage years, he thought this way. He ran for Congress twice in West Georgia, lost, and then finally won a seat in the House in 1978 with a 1778 attitude, like there was a revolution on, and the country's very existence was at stake. We're fighting a war, Gingrich said back then, a war for power. Raise hell. Raise hell all the time. His goal was to retake the House of Representatives. At the time, an impossible dream. Republicans had been in the minority for 24 years. People called it the permanent Democratic Congress. Once Newt finally got there, he discovered, as he'd suspected, was a place full of losers with Stockholm syndrome. It was chummy, mostly guys in suits and ties, smoking cigars, playing poker together and generally, getting along, hanging out, talking to each other. Also, depending on your perspective, it was a corrupt cesspool of bribes and giveaways. That's definitely how Gingrich saw it. Republicans didn't have much power, but they'd go along to get along and occasionally do some deals. And most of them had stopped imagining it could be any other way. I learned most of this story from the great political reporter Steve Kornacki. He'd just published a book about this time called The Red and The Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. He's also that excited guy at the big board on MSNBC during elections.

He explained that Newt arrived in Congress determined to turn the place upside down. Newt didn't want everyone getting along. Republicans were never going to take the majority that way. He wanted to fight, and the weapon he used was the media.

Steve Kornacki His arrival in the House coincides with a historic moment in the house, and that is the first television camera is placed in the chamber in 1979-- his first year there. And its C-Span.

Zoe Chace C-Span may not sound exciting to you, but A, it's still awesome. And B, it's a major change. Now anyone can see for themselves what's going on in Congress if they want to. And people in Congress can speak to anyone on the outside. Newt gets it right away. The rest of the House does not.

Steve Kornacki There's a lot of opposition to it, because this is a club here. But once the camera's there, most members, they just kind of ignore it. And they leave at the end of the business day. And they go and they do whatever it is they do after business hours. To Newt Gingrich, here it is. I want people to notice this around the country. I got an audience now.

Zoe Chace Yeah, it's Twitter.

Tip O'neill The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Gingrich, is recognized for 60 minutes.

Newt Gingrich Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to pick up where Mr. Walker left off on the document entitled What's the Matter with the Democratic Foreign Policy by Mr. Frank Gregorsky.

Zoe Chace OK, not Twitter exactly. He's professorial, pedantic, not a lot of flair.

Newt Gingrich Somehow, someday, this country has got to learn to live with revolution in the third world. It's endemic.

Steve Kornacki And he starts claiming there's this rule in the house that at the close of business and any day, any member can claim the floor for any reason they want for pretty much any amount of time they want. And it's called special orders. And Gingrich starts claiming these special order speeches that were 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. It's an empty chamber. His colleagues are asleep. They're drinking. They're not there. They're not listening to this. They're never even going to hear about this-- most of them. But Gingrich knows there are people all across America, who've got these new cable boxes in their house, who are scanning the dial and seeing what's out there. And some of them are going to pause when they see him. And what they're hearing is he's not giving a dry speech about and now, if I can direct your attention to subsection 3 of the agriculture funding-- he's giving these grand speeches about American politics, and an American identity, and the corrupt Democrat machine.

Zoe Chace Often Gingrich or one of his few allies was explaining how the Democrats were fringy, communist radicals. The whole party, everyone in the party was, more or less, a socialist. It was sort of his version of all Democrats want open borders, but less punchy.

Newt Gingrich Since communism doesn't strike them as an independent, inexorable force, feeding on totalitarian personalities and concepts, McGovern Democrats don't fear it. Trash America, indict the president, and give the benefit of every doubt to Marxist regimes. That's the standard formula.

Steve Kornacki He is producing what you would now recognize as a cable news show on the floor of the House. And he's performing for the camera, and he's giving his monologue. He's giving his monologue on the decay of the Democratic Party, the decay of American culture, the promise of a Republican Party that embraces opportunity and responsibility, and all these things. And there is an audience that starts to tune in. And he knows it. He gets that. He gets the potential of that before anybody else.

Zoe Chace Newt believed there was a Republican majority out there. Because just a decade earlier, Richard Nixon had trounced the Democratic candidate for president. He won 49 out of the 50 states. Clearly, there was an appetite for Republican rule. But Republicans were still a minority in the House. People somehow weren't syncing up their Republican votes into one Republican ticket. What he needed to do was paint all the Democrats more clearly as the enemy to the voters. And he'd do that by associating all of them with a candidate who'd lost to Nixon-- George McGovern. George McGovern was sort of the Bernie Sanders of his day. So lefty, he even freaked out a lot of Democrats in '72-- the counterculture, anti-war candidate.

Steve Kornacki If Republicans were able in 1972 to score that epic of a landslide running against the Democratic Party of George McGovern and the activists behind him, Newt Gingrich believed that's the key to the Republican Party winning everything. If you nationalize politics, and you make voters everywhere in the country see in whatever Democrat it is in their backyard, who's running for whatever office it is-- Congress, or Sheriff, or state legislature, or dog catcher-- if you get the voters to see that Democrat as no different from George McGovern and the folks around him, well, you know how those voters are going to react. They're going to go, and they're going to vote Republican. And so his idea was to make voters across the country judge politics based on what they saw coming out of Washington, based on what they saw coming out of the national media.

Zoe Chace Based on what they saw on C-Span, where over and over again, Newt brought up McGovern.

Newt Gingrich In the late '60s and early '70s, it became a truism with the entire American left from bomb throwers in Chicago, to eastern writers, to progressive, pinstriped supporters of Eugene McCarthy and McGovern. The Southeast Asia would be fine once the US left.

Zoe Chace Attacking congressmen by congressmen by name and footnotes.

Newt Gingrich Congressman Harkin, on June 26, 1979 told the house that the Sandinistas knew more about nurturing democracy than America did. Quote, "should the United States feel empowered to meddle once again in Nicaragua?"

Zoe Chace This speechifying made the Speaker of the House furious. You remember the Speaker, the affable Muppet, Tip O'Neill. Newt Gingrich and a couple of the other guys, Gingrich acolytes, are talking smack about specific congressmen. They're questioning their patriotism on the public record, and they aren't even there to respond. That was not done. It was against the gentlemanly code of the House. As Speaker, Tip O'Neill controls the cameras. And he orders them to pan out and show the empty room that Gingrich and his buddies are addressing. Bob Walker, Republican from Pennsylvania, happens to be speaking right then. And he takes great umbrage when this happens.

Bob Walker But I do want to take a note of something that's evidently happening right now, which is a change of procedure here.

Zoe Chace Tip O'Neill thinks this will make the guys look petty talking to no one. Watching it, it's like a surreal Beckett play. A tiny man at the bottom of the screen gestures wildly from a podium as though he's speaking to a big crowd, but he's surrounded by empty chairs.

Newt Gingrich It is my understanding that as I deliver this special order this evening, the cameras are panning this chamber, demonstrating that there is no one here in the chamber to listen to these remarks. That is evidently the work of a change in the pattern of rules around here. It is one more example of how this body is run, the kind of arrogance of power that the members are given that kind of change with absolutely no warning. I see the gentleman from California, Mr. Coelho, was standing in the back of the chamber just a moment ago. Mr. Coelho has talked in recent weeks about shutting off these special orders and not allowing them to even be seen in the countryside. And he stands in the back of the chamber now smiling. I have to feel that perhaps he is getting worried that some of the things that are being said in this chamber in these special orders are, in fact, influencing people out across the country to think that this body is something less than what the American people think it ought to be.

Zoe Chace Lots of C-Span watchers today understand the congressmen are putting on a performance. There isn't always someone in the audience. But it was new back then. This all sets up a wild showdown between Newt and the Speaker Tip O'Neill. A few days later, Gingrich gets time on the floor.

Newt Gingrich OK, I'll be delighted to yield to our distinguished Speaker if he wishes to continue this.

Zoe Chace The Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill asking Gingrich to yield, so he can say something. And Newt does, knowing the Speaker is going to yell at him. This time, the chamber is packed with congressmen and reporters both. Here's Tip O'Neill.

Tip O'neill My personal opinion is this. You deliberately stood on that well before an emptied House and challenged these people. And you challenge their Americanism. And it's the lowest thing that I've ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.

Newt Gingrich Mr. Speaker, if I may reclaim my time.

Zoe Chace As insults go, in the US House, circa 1984, this is big, so big, Trent Lott, Republican from Mississippi, standing near the Speaker says, I move we take the Speaker's words down.

Trent Lott I move we take the Speaker's words down. [APPLAUSE]

Zoe Chace This means that would Tip O'Neill just said to Gingrich is so offensive, so toxic that he wants the wrongness of it officially acknowledged, perhaps even struck from the historical record as though it had never been said. For five full minutes, everyone shuffles around, clutching their pearls about Newt, about the Speaker's behavior, how do we preserve the dignity of the House. The clerk reads out the offending speech once again so that the Chair can decide what to do about it.

My personal opinion is that you deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people, and you challenged their Americanism. And it is the lowest thing that I have ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.

Trent Lott The Chair feels that type of characterization should not be used in a debate.

Zoe Chace This is like saying, that was out of line. Don't do that again. That was very bad. But it doesn't actually erase the words from the historical record. Still, it was an epic showdown. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill being scolded in front of America. Maybe it's hard to understand what a coup this is for a younger congressman. But think of him as a producer, a producer of his newly-formed experimental cable news show on C-Span, how expertly produced this moment was. Everyone's in the room. The Speaker of the House basically promotes Gingrich's late night program. Then the Speaker gets called out in front of the whole country, and he looks arrogant and mean. And Newt Gingrich is at the center of the room, like a conductor, pointing from one guy to the next guy, doling out time, as the Speaker gets red in the face and yells over the room.

Tip O'neill Does the gentleman from Georgia yield?

Newt Gingrich The gentleman, Mr. Weaver-- [BANGS GAVEL]

Tip O'neill Does the gentleman yield? [BANGS GAVEL]

Newt Gingrich And the gentleman, Mr. Walker, if they would express their opinion to the members of the floor, it would be fine.

Tip O'neill Point of parliamentary inquiry.

Zoe Chace And the story is covered on the nightly news. This is a turning point for Newt Gingrich. He's now the Pied Piper, and other Republicans start rallying to his causes. Not long after this episode, Tip O'Neill retires. And he's replaced by Speaker Jim Wright. Newt sees an opening to take Wright down. He thinks it'll rally the Republicans in the House. It's a battle they can win. Wright is both cocky and dismissive of the minority party, with none of the hail buddy Tip O'Neill warmth. It'll be a branding exercise for the new aggressive Republican Party Newt was selling. Here's what happens. He reads a story in the Washington Post about the new Speaker getting $0.50 on the dollar for every one of his books he's selling. It's more of a pamphlet than a book, actually, but it's a way to give the congressman backdoor donations. The people buying it were like the local Teamsters in his district and supporters at rallies. Newt talks to the papers about this, compares Wrights to Mussolini, makes speeches. Think of it as though he's standing on his tiptoes, shouting over the heads of Congress to the American people-- drain the swamp. That's his intention.

Steve Kornacki Again it's just the idea that here's this clubby, elite, arrogant institution that the corrupt Democrat machine is powering. And they are so disdainful of you everyday Americans that this is how they behave. And so Gingrich is calling for an ethics committee investigation on the House Speaker. It's like shooting the general. The code of the House is you don't do this.

Zoe Chace Newt's striking at the top of the food chain. It's brazen. I want to say here, as tactical as Gingrich's attack on Wright was, from one perspective, this was an attack on corrupt, lazy Democrats that was long overdue. It felt idealistic for everyone sick of being pushed around in the minority. Gingrich promised a new system that was less corrupt, more transparent, more accountable to the voters, not just like we're putting on a play that we're two parties. But at 6:00 PM, we dropped the mask and make it work. Democrats freaked out when this happened, but Republicans were getting into it.

Steve Kornacki It's not like Gingrich launched the campaign, and the entire Republican Party signed the letter, and that's it. But they didn't pull him aside and say stop. And I think, even a couple of years earlier with Tip O'Neill, that would have happened.

Zoe Chace Newt gets his ethics investigation into the Speaker's behavior. Wright defends himself petulantly on the House floor.

Jim Wright It is true, I think, the people on my staff were eager to sell these books. I've got to accept some responsibility for that if it was wrong. But the rule doesn't say it was wrong.

Zoe Chace It's kind of, yes, I had a private email server, but it wasn't that big a deal. You know by now how that goes over. After an investigation, the most powerful man in the House, who had served for 34 years, is forced to resign. Wright gives a speech on the House floor that reminded me of Jeff Flake retiring from the Senate last year.

Jim Wright And it is grievously hurtful to our society when vilification becomes an accepted form of political debate, negative campaigning becomes a full-time occupation, when members of each party become self-appointed vigilantes carrying out personal vendettas against members of the other party.

Steve Kornacki And he frames it in terms of something wrong is happening in this institution.

Jim Wright In God's name, that's not what this institution's supposed to be all about.

Steve Kornacki When I came here, a congressman's word was a congressman's word, and that mattered for something. When I came here, we didn't question each other's honor. I mean, it's all subtext to all of this. He's not using his name, obviously, but the subtext to all of this is, this is Newt Gingrich.

Jim Wright Harsh personal attacks on one another's motives and one another's character drown out the quiet logic of serious debate on important issues. Surely, that's unworthy of our institution.

Zoe Chace Jim Wright painted his resignation as a sacrifice on the altar of civility. He seemed to think his resignation would be so dramatic, it would put an end to the wars Gingrich had started in the House. Obviously, the opposite is true. Republicans in Congress are galvanized by Wright's fall and Newt's tactics to get him out. The wars that Gingrich dreamed of are starting to materialize. Newt becomes the second most powerful Republican in the House, and he starts making himself into a franchise in the mid '80s. He starts running this organization called GOPAC. It's basically a candidate training organization and fundraising tool. That's where he develops these audiotapes, little by-mail cassette tapes that teach potential candidates how to do Newt's divisive brand of politics. John Boehner has talked about driving around, listening to tapes like this in the car.

Newt Gingrich I don't want to repeat it. But I will just say, I have said this now for six months. And every audience I say it to nods yes and understands. You cannot maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds shooting each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year-olds getting a diploma they can't read. And I stop audiences and say, now, if you disagree with that, and you think you can maintain a civilization with those things going on, the rest of what I'm going to say is irrelevant. You're not us. I don't want to waste your time.

Zoe Chace You're not us. You're on one team or the other. So that's a lot. Gingrich is almost at the height of his power. He has an army of Republicans falling in line using the same language that they're going into battle-- he has media attention. But it's the same old, entrenched Democratic Congress. The Republicans keep winning these big presidential victories, but the House is stuck with that permanent Republican minority. That's when the second guy comes into this story, the guy that made Newt Gingrich's dreams finally come true. And no, I don't mean Democratic President Bill Clinton, though, you could certainly argue that that is why Newt gets his wish. But something happens before that-- someone.

Newt Gingrich This is a man, who, I think, has had an astonishing impact on America. He is, in many ways, the quintessential American.

Zoe Chace Here's Newt Gingrich introducing him at a training event for Republican candidates in 1995.

Newt Gingrich One of the reasons I believe in the end we'll win is the person who's about to talk to you. We now have a media giant who stands astride the entire of society. Join me in welcoming a man who is creating the 21st century-- Rush Limbaugh. [APPLAUSE]

Zoe Chace Rush Limbaugh was the perfect tool for Newt's mission. He and Newt had basically the same views. But Rush was outrageous and exciting. He made his listeners feel like they were part of a righteous underground movement, the only people who were still sane in a world gone crazy and stupid.

Rush Limbaugh Thank you. Thank you very much. Nice to be with all of you extremists tonight. [LAUGHTER] It's nice to be with like-minded souls, who want to starve our children and get our old folks sick and dying in the gutter. It's so nice to be with so many of you. I could just look out there. I see in so many hearts and faces the desire to poison the water and the air. Gee, isn't it great to be together here tonight?

Zoe Chace Rush's communications' ambitions were just as high as Newt's political ones. He never wanted to be in politics. He just wanted to make the greatest radio show ever.

Rush Limbaugh Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. It's The Rush Limbaugh Program. From New York and our flagship station--

Zoe Chace He set the standard for political talk radio. And of course-- wait, I have it right here-- widely imitated. Rush was funny.

Rush Limbaugh Did you know that the White House drug test is a multiple choice test? [LAUGHTER]

Zoe Chace He could also be cruel. He said things like if you don't want to get AIDS, don't have gay sex. He was heavily anti-political correctness. He ended up acting almost as Newt's de facto interpreter. He zhuzhed up his message. Rush doesn't sound like a nerdy YouTube professor. Gingrich talked about saving America from liberal politicians. But Limbaugh sharpened the Us vs. Them. Democrats were about this. Republicans were about that. This is from Rush's TV show.

Rush Limbaugh All right, Zoe Baird is in big trouble. She's been nominated as attorney general, but as you all know, she hired some illegal aliens to take care of her kids. Now, she only makes $660,000. [LAUGHTER] As Cokie Roberts of ABC says, she had the best line. With that kind of money, she could hire Mary Poppins. Why is she out there hiring illegal aliens? Now, I have a couple of points about this I want to make that I don't think anybody else has made, except me in other places. In case you haven't heard it, you should hear it, because it's brilliant points.

Zoe Chace Bill Clinton's nominee for attorney general, Zoe Baird, hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny for her kids, didn't pay social security taxes. At the time, I was 11. I remember it well. She was the only other Zoe I'd ever heard of. So I was thrilled. Zoe paid the money back after she was nominated. And neither Senate Democrats or Republicans saw it as a big deal at first.

Steve Kornacki But Newt Gingrich, that's the nerve of politics that Newt Gingrich is just conditioned to look for. And it's like, God, could it be any bigger? You've got a Democratic president coming in. And for attorney general, the top law enforcement officer in the country, he's nominating a woman who just blatantly flouted social security taxes. It's just that populist nerve of they get away with things you don't. They live lives of privilege you can't imagine. They lord it over you. They don't have to worry about the things you worry about. It touched all of those nerves. Gingrich got it immediately. He's railing against this. Limbaugh got it immediately. He's railing against this. And what happens is the senators, who are in the committee and don't feel this immediately, they start feeling it because their phones start ringing off the hook. There are Democrats who start saying after a couple of days that their office calls are, like, 90 to 1 against Zoe Baird's confirmation. I mean, this is widespread. And then they feel the pressure. They feel the pressure that Gingrich and Limbaugh had stoked. And it kills the nomination.

Zoe Chace When Newt needed to communicate something to voters, he now had a direct line to millions of them listening to Rush every afternoon.

Newt Gingrich One afternoon, I'm in the middle of a big fight here. And I called Rush Limbaugh's program director, and I said, here is exactly what's going on. He turned on C-Span. He could see what was going on. It was an issue they cared about. And Rush went straight into talking about it. He's got somewhere between-- I don't know-- 4 and 14 million people. It's a lot, and they're intense. An hour later, I had members walking up to me on the floor saying, what did you do? Because literally, in some places, their phones are so jammed, they couldn't use them.

Zoe Chace That's from the documentary Rush Limbaugh's America. It describes how Newt would just fax talking points out to talk show hosts around the country. It was like he was calling in airstrikes.

Talk Show Host I want to read to you now a paragraph from a letter that Newt Gingrich sent to all Republican members.

Zoe Chace Newt wasn't just stirring the pot with divisive politics. He did have a policy vision. He got people to unite under it. Going into the 1994 midterm elections, hundreds of Republican candidates signed on to this thing-- the Contract with America. For a moment, they were all literally on the same page with Newt Gingrich. The contract promised to fix everything they thought had gone wrong after 40 years of one-party control of the House. There were anti-corruption measures targeted at the Congress itself, plus a slate of 10 proposals to balance the budget, cut welfare, do tougher sentencing, lower taxes, basically, a limited government, law-and-order agenda. They ran the contract in full in an ad in TV Guide, because everyone read TV Guide, and they'd open it up several times a week. And with that, Newt Gingrich, of course, got his majority, like he'd always dreamed, and became Speaker of the House in 1995. He moved into the office held by Jim Wright and Tip O'Neil before him. Here's Democrat Dick Gephardt handing over the gavel.

Dick Gephardt With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of democratic rule of this House. [APPLAUSE]

Zoe Chace Newt Gingrich pledges to work across the aisle, as they always do, though, for the first time, Republicans don't have to. It's an epic hugely significant victory. Though it was Newt's dream, many people called it the Limbaugh Congress.

Rush Limbaugh How does it feel to be part of a majority that's right? [CHEERING]

Zoe Chace It wasn't just the majority they'd gotten. People seem to be signing on to their vision of the country. That it was split into two clear camps. The Democrats were amoral, welfare state-loving, politically correct feminists. Republicans were responsible, balanced, budget-promoting, normal, regular Americans.

Rush Limbaugh One of the questions I was asked as the reporters were peppering me was, do you think Newt will moderate his stance now that he is the Speaker of the House? And I said, better not. [LAUGHTER]

Zoe Chace From the moment Gingrich becomes Speaker, things get pretty red versus blue. One Republican I talked to this week quoted to me from memory, indignant, something ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said on the air when Republicans finally took the House and installed Gingrich as Speaker. Jennings said the voters had a temper tantrum. The nation can't be run by an angry 2-year-old. This Republican's point was it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh who is stoking the fires of partisan warfare. It was the mainstream media, what he called the liberal media. It was a new day in Congress. The Speaker and the president-- Gingrich and Clinton-- they did not hang out. The politics that follow are personal and vicious, as I'm sure you know. It's a storm of whitewater, Hillarycare, government shutdown, Vince Foster, impeachment proceedings. Seems like the two sides couldn't stand each other. When Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Clinton gives a speech blaming, in part, talk radio for spreading hate. It was gridlock politics. Depending how you saw it, it was obstructionism for its own sake or obstructionism in defense of bigger ideas that were finally part of the conversation. People signed up for red or signed up for blue. Politics is team sports, no compromises. In other words, we've arrived at today. The whole reason I wanted to remind myself of Newt and that time were these past midterm elections. They felt like the extreme sports version of Newt's game plan. Just like he worked really hard to make every Democrat into George McGovern, the campaign that the Republicans ran tried to make every Democrat into a caravan-loving, Kavanaugh-hating Nancy Pelosi. Newt himself was on Fox a bunch. And his lieutenant--

Rush Limbaugh What an honor. This is so exciting. I have been watching Trump rallies from the very first one.

Zoe Chace Rush Limbaugh was the opener for Trump's last rally before the midterm vote.

Rush Limbaugh I was just talking to people backstage. And somebody said that the president and all of us have been labeled by some Democrats to the media-- divisive. [CROWD BOOING] Divisive? The Democrats haven't even accepted they lost the election in 2016. [CHEERING]

Zoe Chace There is this one moment, where I think Newt realized maybe he'd gone too far in pushing people apart. Stephen Gillon reported the story years later in his book, The Pact. It was October 1997. Newt was Speaker. Clinton was president. They wanted to cement their legacies as great men of history. They decided to tackle two of the most daunting issues out there-- Medicare and Social Security. Fix them once and for all so they'd be safe for generations to come. The federal budget, for once, was about to run a surplus. Now was the time. Because they'd fought so publicly, they met in secret. To avoid reporters, Gingrich entered the White House through a side door. If the partisans in either of their parties heard they were working together, the deal would fall apart. The zealots on both teams would punish you for working with the other side. The deal never happened. Four months after they agreed to work together, the Monica Lewinsky story broke. A few months after that, Gingrich was pushed out of the House. He had to deal with ethics charges, like the Speaker he'd gone after 10 years earlier. And he was really unpopular by then. The political environment he'd willed into creation had spit him out. I can't work anymore with these cannibals, he said as he left. But look at him now. He can't stay away.