Hello and welcome to whistlestop, a podcast of the presidency. I'm John Dickerson of CBS this morning.

This is volume two of the Gingrich and Clinton set to the struggle to chart the direction and purpose of government in an age of American pause.

In this period, we've chosen for our time together,

the Cold War is just over. And in the flicker of relative peace before the age of terrorism

is to start, America and its elected representatives are narrowing their eyes on the question

of the country's fiscal and economic health.

Two men were wrestling over a chicken bone of opportunity to use the budget deficits

accumulated over the years and the political appetite for a creative government response to

them as an opportunity to reshape the nature of the American system.

On the one side, a big gray-haired baby boomer

tinker with historic ambition raised by a strong mother and abandoned by an erratic father whose

words and ideas tumbled after each other like jerseys in a dryer. On the other side,

the same thing. Mirror images with their ideology and their hair parted on opposite sides,

fighting to reorient government in a titanic set of battles that until recently marked the most

famous government shutdown in American history. More of that story in a moment, but first a word

from our sponsor. Our whistle stop today is November 7, 1995.

First term president Bill Clinton is flying with a delegation to the funeral of

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had been killed by an assassin for trying to make

peace with the Palestinians. Joining him aboard Air Force One for the 25-hour round trip

where House Speaker Newt Gingrich

and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Government funding wasn't working so well. Since October 1st,

the government had been running on a continuing resolution. A legislative vehicle created to keep

...