Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House.

• Author: Georges, Christopher

Attacking Elizabeth Drew for drowning us in irrelevant political details about an arcane process is far too easy. But that shouldn't stop anyone.

In Showdown, Drew takes us through the internal maneuvering of the budget wonks on the Hill and in the White House during the 1994-'95 budget battle. This weighty event is replete with moments (in fact, days, even weeks) of tedium. Drew spares us none of them. We witness, for example, the internal debate among House Republicans over the rewriting of sections of an appropriations rescissions bill. One memorable paragraph begins, "In the subcommittee meetings...." It reads like a full-text printout of a Nexis search for "Budget and Congress."

Only occasionally is the drama of the events thick enough to support Drew's tick-tock coverage. The Senate cliffhanger vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment is one. Drew supplements what was detailed daily press coverage with some choice bits, like Utah Senator Orren Hatch, a key amendment supporter, sending teleminister Robert Schuller to visit Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield before the vote to convince him to switch his vote to "aye." (He didn't.)

That said, Drew's points, both large and small, are on target: The budget battle was less about balancing the books than an excuse for hacking at the size and scope of federal government; the GOP made a political goof by trying to push through most of their budget reforms in one do-or-die bill; Republicans didn't have the foresight to plan an effective counter-strategy in the event of a Clinton veto; and so on. And Drew's political judgments are keen. Her up close observations bring to light the haphazard nature of the way both the policy and the politics of the budget were assembled. For example, she shows how Clinton caught even his own White House advisors off-guard when he blurted out in a New Hampshire radio interview that he would offer a 10-year balanced budget plan of his own.

It's also true that Drew, to her credit, doesn't overreach. Political analysts can't seem to resist linking congressional and presidential debacles to grander points about the failure of the System. (Occasionally, they're right.) Drew sticks to the nuts and bolts. The fact that Republicans didn't enact their balanced budget has less to do with James Madison than with Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

Drew zeroes in on the GOP's Medicare plan as their undoing. The Democrats cashed in big by focusing attention on the fact that Republicans...