Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal and New York Times each featured a Newt Gingrichabilia op-ed, to very different effect.

Exhibit A: The WSJ op-ed from former George W. Bush press secretary Ari “You Talkin’ to Me?” Flesicher.

Nut graf:

Having served as the majority spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee after Republicans took the House in 1994, I’ve seen the promise and the peril of divided government before.

That would be the Gingrich era of gridlock, government shutdowns, and gratuitous impeachment investigations – exactly what the current Republicans are promising over the next two years.

Exhibit B: Times Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd’s column featuring a series of quotes from the House Speaker-in-waiting:

“What the American people were saying is ‘Enough!’ ” the Speaker-to-be told me, as he savored his own win and his party’s landslide, which he said was “a historical tide, not just a partisan election” . . .

The next Speaker felt that the humbled president should take the election as a cue to be conciliatory, and he proposed they talk in the next few days. He offered to reach out to Democrats who wanted to work with his side, but also noted that the president would not be wise to stand in the way of the conservative agenda.

“I prefer to believe that this president, who is clearly very smart, is quite capable of thinking clearly about a message sent by the American people,” he said . . .

He said that contrary to what the media elite had been jabbering about, he would not use his subpoena power to rain down a series of investigations on the Democratic administration.

No “witch hunts,” he said. Only “legitimate” investigations.

The kicker:

Yeah, that all worked out for Newt Gingrich. He really came through. The quotes above came from Gingrich, when I covered his heady victory in Marietta, Ga., in the 1994 Republican landslide that made him Speaker.

Paging John Boehner. Paging House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner.

Smackdown Scoreboard: NYT 1, WSJ 0.