The Breach

by Peter Baker

  For Gingrich, back at home in Georgia, the announcement by Livingston was a sharp blow. But behind the emotion of the moment, Gingrich knew Livingston was only a symptom of the larger problem. All around him were people looking out for their own interests, readily willing to speak out against him if it suited them. The party was on the verge of chaos. Even if he could beat back Livingston within the Republican conferenceand that was an open question given the passions of the momentGingrich knew that perhaps a dozen Republicans were already talking about refusing to vote for him as Speaker when it came time for the full House to vote. The idea of going hat in hand to some of the same people who had caused him so much grief over the last two years was just too much to take. Even more unpalatable was having to do it again and again, assuming he remained Speaker and was forced to hold together a fragile GOP majority on every major vote.

  Gingrich had one other unspoken pressure. The rumors his staff had heard earlier in the fall were true. For some five years, he had been carrying on an extramarital affair of his own with a young House clerk, Callista Bisek, who worked as a scheduler for the Agriculture Committee. Gingrichs marital life had been turbulent for decades. In 1981, he had divorced his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher, after she discovered she had cancer; he and his second wife, Marianne, had split up and reconciled periodically over the last seventeen years. Aware of his own glass house, Gingrich in his attacks on Clinton through 1998 had tried not to talk about the immorality of the presidents infidelity and to focus instead on allegations of illegality, namely perjury and obstruction of justice. Yet he knew if his affair became public, it would invite unavoidable comparisons and accusations of hypocrisy. In the last few weeks, he had seen fellow Republicans Henry Hyde, Dan Burton, and Helen Chenoweth all exposed for past extramarital affairs. Gingrich believed the White House was capable of anything. Yet how much this weighed on him, how much he factored this into the equation, went unstated in his conversations with some of his closest advisers in the days after the election.

  Still working the phone in his congressional district office that Friday, Gingrich hung up after another unsupportive conversation with a fellow Republican. I just dont think I can be this kind of Speaker, he said, discouraged.

  Then dont do it, said his friend and consultant Joe Gaylord. Give it up.

  Gingrich agreed. It was time to quit. When the next Congress took office in January, he would not stand for reelection as Speaker and would resign his seat. Gingrich called Washington and got his chief of staff, Arne Christenson, on the phone. This isnt going to work, Gingrich said. Im just not going to be able to govern this place with the situation the way it is. At that moment, Bob Walker arrived at the Speakers office at the Capitol ready to plunge into the campaign to get him reelected. Christenson told him what was happening.

  Im here to help you line up votes, Walker told Gingrich on the speakerphone in Christensons office.

  The Speaker laughed. No, he said, Im going to join you in the private sector. Ive decided not to run for Speaker.

  Cant we talk about it? Walker asked. This was not a decision to make in isolation in Georgia. Come back to Washington and sit down face-to-face. The whip counts look good. Besides, Walker said, you are absolutely essential to the ongoing movement. Youre the visionary, the strategist, the only one left on the Hill to push our agenda.

  If its an agenda that cant survive without the personalities, Gingrich replied, its probably something that cant be sustained anyway.

  By this point, Vin Weber, another former congressman and close Gingrich friend who was at a conference at George Washington University across town, had been patched into the call, but he sensed that Gingrichs mind was made up and did not try to talk him out of it. After a series of other calls to friends, advisers, aides, and fellow House leaders, Gingrich finally got the entire Republican membership on a conference call to disclose his decision around 7 P.M. We have to get the bitterness out, he told them. It is clear that as long as Im around, that wont happen. Clearly disillusioned by his fate, Gingrich bemoaned the strife that had overtaken his party. We need to purge the poisons from the system. He left little doubt about his feelings toward the Republicans who had rebelled against him that week. The ones you see on TV are hateful, he told his once-faithful following. I am willing to lead, but I wont allow cannibalism.

  Gingrichs choice of words carried extra irony that perhaps he did not realize at the moment. In his downfall, he sounded like two of the adversaries he had long targeted. It was Clinton who, while preparing for his second inauguration in January 1997, said that he wanted to use his second term to help flush the poison from the atmosphere. And it was Jim Wright, the Democratic House Speaker forced to resign by ethics charges brought by Gingrich, who in his own emotional departure speech in 1989 pleaded with colleagues to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end.

  Clinton learned the news of Gingrichs abrupt fall from grace while visiting friends and supporters in Arkansas. Just as he arrived at the house where he was attending a reception, aides Bruce Lindsey and Doug Sosnik walked up to his car to let him know about the head-spinning developments. Here the man who had been trying to force him out of office had instead been taken down as a result of the whole Lewinsky scandal.

  Yet whatever momentary pleasure Clinton might have felt at the Speakers demise must have been tempered by the realization that losing Gingrich meant depriving himself of his favorite target. Clinton had succeeded in rehabilitating himself after the disastrous 1994 midterm elections in large part by playing off Gingrichs excesses. Gingrich had made himself into an enormously useful whipping boy for the Democrats, a potent symbol easily understood by a public that barely tuned in to Washington politics anymore. That was why Gingrichs name had been used in so many Democratic ads in races where he was not running. Bringing in another, more reasonable-sounding Republican such as Livingston might actually be the worst thing for Clintons future.

  Clinton authorized a statement to be issued in his name and was careful to be gracious, not gloating. But when his staff tried to coordinate with Dick Gephardts office, the conversation quickly turned into a shouting match. Unlike Clinton, Gephardt despised the Speaker and saw no reason to mourn his passing. Gephardts chief of staff, Steve Elmendorf, and communications director, Laura Nichols, had a heated argument with Paul Begala over the phone about the tone of the presidents statement. It was outrageous, they said. Gingrich had gone out of his way to screw over Gephardt, and it would be disingenuous to make nice at the end. The disagreement escalated to the point where Gephardt and Clinton finally got on the phone themselves to hash it out. The president agreed to take out a paragraph hailing the balanced-budget agreement he had reached with Gingrich in 1997, but insisted on praising Gingrichs internationalist foreign policy and leaving the overall tone conciliatory.

  Gingrich was a worthy adversary, Clinton said in the version that was eventually released to the media. Despite our profound differences, I appreciate those times we were able to work together in the national interest, espe cially Speaker Gingrichs strong support for Americas continuing leadership for freedom, peace, and prosperity in the world. There was no mention of the balanced budget. Gephardt kept the edge in his statement. The American people sent a strong message that the Republican Congress was a failure, he said, adding, The Speakers resignation is the reaction to that message.

  Down in Georgia, Gingrich had other things to think about. Suddenly, he had a future to plan. Hyde called and sounded distressed. This was all so sudden. At least Gingrich should remain in the House and help them out. Youll still be able to do a lot and come back, Hyde said.

  Gingrich would have none of that. He could not return to the backbench.

  Hyde asked why Gingrich would not run again and heard the answer he feared: What you said on television didnt help.

  Hyde felt guilty. He had been disappointed in the Speakers strategy for the fall campaigns, but had not wanted to push him out. Hyde had tr
ied to stay out of the leadership battle.

  Weary, Gingrich headed home, where he was soon joined by nearly a dozen friends and aides for beer and a barbecue dinner. Gingrich was strangely calm about the days events. Sipping a Fosters lager, he reverted to his history-professor mode, analyzing his place in twentieth-century politics, reflecting on how an army brat had managed to rise to power, reform welfare, and balance the budget. He had always liked to see himself as a latter-day Churchill and knew that for all his victories in World War II, Churchill finished his career being tossed out unceremoniously as well.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The crazy righthas them by the throat

  Distracted, disoriented, and demoralized, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee returned to Washington on Monday, November 9, to find virtually no leadership left in their party and no energy left in their grand adventure. The president was the one accused of violating his oath of office, and yet their own leader was the one taken down on the battlefield. What did that mean for the rest of them? Should they give up? Were they courting disaster if they pressed forward? Where was the balance between duty and self-preservation? And given the impeachment fervor within their own political base, what course would be safest politically anyway? In the junior ranks, Lindsey Graham, for one, had always assumed they would reach a deal and it would be over; now it was dawning on him that they meant him and his colleagues.

  One thing was evident: the leadership, or what was left of it, had no appetite for pressing ahead. Several of the committee members had heard from advisers to Newt Gingrich or Bob Livingston that they wanted the issue off the political tableGingrich did not want it to be his last act as Speaker and Livingston did not want it to be his first. Neither one was saying so publicly, but the signals from their surrogates were clear enough. Congressman Jim Rogan, who barely mustered a majority in his reelection, had been approached on the House floor by leadership aides. Henry Hyde told his staff that he had gotten the same message: get rid of it.

  The chairman convened a meeting of the Judiciary Republicans in the Rayburn Building conference room that Monday morning. They would hold hearings by mid-November, Hyde told the group, and then try to be on the floor of the House by December 1. No dragging it out. Starr would be the only real witness, and everything would be wrapped up quickly.

  David Schippers, the aggressive chief investigator, could not believe what he was hearing. They were lying down. Unaccustomed to the culture of the Capitol, Schippers erupted and did something no regular aide would dare dohe started shouting his frustration at the congressmen.

  Look, you lost some seats in the election, Schippers lectured the politicians. But Ive got people on this. Theyve taken psychological hits, physical hits. . . . You want me to go back there and tell them were going to have a half-assed inquiry?

  No, no, Dave, Hyde said. Dont misunderstand me. If youve got more

  Were getting more!

  Hyde explained that they had to finish quickly. Given the election result, it was clear the next Congress would not reauthorize the inquiry in January, meaning they only had eight weeks left under the best of circumstances. And Hyde hinted that the issue could even be taken away from the committee and given to some other group to decide what to do.

  But Schippers succeeded in steeling the nerves of some of the nervous members. They had to stay the course, consequences be damned. Congressman Chris Cannon, a hard-charging panel member from Utah, leaned over to Schippers and whispered, If you want a son of a bitch, Ill go with you.

  Finally, Rogan spoke up. No one had more to worry about politically than he did. A freshman who had won his seat by just a hair two years earlier in a southern California district that included the liberal bastion of Hollywood, Rogan survived a scare in the elections the week before. In his district, impeachment could easily spell the end of his congressional career before it really got started.

  If anybody understands the potential for fallout, its me, Rogan told his colleagues. I won 50.8 percent of the vote. If theyre going to make an example out of anyone, its me. Then he tried a joke to lighten the mood. In 96, we werent impeaching him. I got 50.1 percent. In 1998, we are impeaching him and I got 50.8 percent. So obviously its a political winner.

  People around the table laughed, and the tension was broken. If Rogan was still willing to press ahead, his colleagues thought, then they should be too.

  In fact, with the exception of Rogan and one or two others, the committee was significantly insulated from the political forces that shaped the new conventional wisdom in Washington. The Republicans who served on Judiciary tended to be more conservative than their House GOP colleagues, just as the committees Democrats tended to be among the most liberal. Judiciary members on both sides of the aisle were from relatively safe districts and did not have to worry about possible threats to their political careers for failing to seek a middle ground. In the campaign that had just passed, not a single committee member was defeated for reelection despite all the controversy surrounding impeachment. Indeed, of the twenty Republican committee members who sought reelection, nine did not even draw a Democratic challenger, and all but three garnered at least 60 percent of the vote (Rogan, Bob Barr of Georgia, and Steve Chabot of Ohio were the exceptions). Similarly, six of the fifteen Democratic members who sought another term faced no Republican opponent, and only one (Mel Watt of North Carolina) fell below 60 percent. If anything, their constituent calls cheered them on in whichever hard-line direction they were already inclined to pursue; compromise might be the only course of action that could prove dangerous, because theoretically it could prompt a primary challenge in two years.

  After bucking themselves up at their private caucus, the Republican members emerged from the conference room and headed out to the hearing room to join the Democrats for the panels first meeting since the election. Charles Canady, chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution, led a daylong dialogue about the standards for impeachment, featuring a series of nineteen expert witnesses offering their views of the framers intent and the applicability in the current situation. The arguments were reasonably predictablethe GOP experts insisted that the allegations involving Clinton were at the core of what high crimes were thought to be, while the Democratic academics maintained that the very heavy artillery of impeachment would be a disproportionate response to the presidents misdeeds. With the assistance of White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, the Democrats had tried to stack the deck in the days leading up to the hearing by recruiting more than four hundred historians and more than four hundred law school professors to sign statements opposing impeachment because the charges lodged against Clinton did not add up to high crimes.

  The most important indicator from the meeting, however, came not from the witness table but from the dais. Rejuvenated by their private discussion in the conference room, the Republican members came across as determined as ever. Rather than softening their tone and looking for a way out, Canady and his colleagues asserted flatly that perjury and obstruction of justice by a president subverted the integrity of the legal system. A president who engages in such behavior, Canady declared, must be called to account for setting a dangerous example of lawlessness and corruption. He must be called to account for subverting the respect for law, which is the foundation of our Constitution.

  The Democrats in the room were taken aback. The election, it seemed, had not taught the Republicans anything. It began to sink in that the fight was not really over.

  Youre right, Abbe Lowell told Dick Gephardt in his office the next day, Tuesday, November 10. They want impeachment and no alternative.

  This means back to partisan warfare, said Steve Elmendorf, Gephardts chief of staff.

  Gephardt was grim. The problem, he said, was that no one was left to rein in the hard-liners on the Judiciary Committee. It is not Livingstons baby, Gephardt told his aides. Newts sworn it off. Without him, theres no leader to stop it.

  In the days since the election, Gephardt had r
ecommitted himself to the House and figuring a way out of the current predicament. Aside from forcing Gingrichs overthrow, the campaign results had redirected the minority leaders political future as well. Had the Democrats lost ten or more seats, as so many analysts had expected, Gephardt would likely be preparing to run for president in 2000. But because they gained seats and now stood so close to retaking power in the House, he had concluded that he should aim for the Speakership rather than the White House. Two days after the election, he had met with his closest political advisers at Loews LEnfant Plaza Hotel, and the unanimous opinion around the table was that he could not leave his members in the lurch now.

  After meeting with his aides, Gephardt gathered later in the day with eight Democratic committee members who expressed their alarm at the turn of events at the subcommittee hearing the day before. Gephardt counseled caution. Lets revert to the fairness strategy, he said, and keep attacking the Republicans for not playing straight. That was the issue that would resonate with the American public, not defending Clinton directly. But they needed to be careful in their approach to Starr when he appeared before the committee as a witness the next week.

  Dont expect a knockout punch, Gephardt warned. We want a draw, which is victory. As long as Starr did not score a major blow, then the dynamics would remain unchanged and popular opinion would remain with the Democrats. To that end, they needed to begin working toward an alternative solution with censure, Gephardt said, and should not drag out the inquiry or be blamed for delays.

  John Conyers and Lowell began reviewing how they would handle assignments for the questioning of Starr. Each member should focus on a specific area of interest, coordinated by the staff for a coherent attack. Lowell would shoulder the major burden of questioning with a half-hour time slot.