Word: gephardts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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However modest Gephardt's agenda may be, Republicans point out, it would fall to his committee chairmen to carry it out. Almost to a man (and they are all men), those in line to take the jobs represent the most liberal, activist core of the Democratic membership. But they too say they got the message of the 1994 elections. "The goal is not just to have a program but to accomplish the goals that a program is supposed to achieve," says California's Henry Waxman, whose seniority would give him a choice of several committee or subcommittee posts. "The Democratic...
...records or the new, austere rhetoric of the would-be chairmen. "They are trying to find a way to win the election, and then they will move back and do their agenda," warns Ohio's John Boehner. Even now, some are chafing, making it clear that they see Gephardt's Families First outline as a starting point, not a goal. "Gephardt never has and never would tell me what to do in my committee," Michigan's John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told the Wall Street Journal last month...
Recent years have seen changes in Democratic caucus rules that make it easier for the leader to rein in headstrong chairmen. With the credibility of his agenda on the line, Gephardt has hinted he is likely to use that power in a Gingrichian way: by becoming the first Democratic Speaker in more than 20 years to set aside seniority in selecting his chairmen. If the Democrats win back the House, the erratic Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas appears almost certain to be unseated as head of the Banking Committee, and Conyers' position at Judiciary is far from secure...
...Gephardt also has sought to diffuse power by spreading it around. As many as 50 Democrats meet daily with him to plan both strategy and policy, and he has put some of the caucus' most conservative members in critical positions. Only weeks after the election, he recruited Texan Chet Edwards to take charge of part of his vote-counting operation; Edwards himself would later vote for three-quarters of Gingrich's Contract with America. And when it came to developing anticrime policy for the caucus, Gephardt turned not to Conyers but to Bart Stupak of Michigan, an ardent...
...Speaker in a second Clinton term, Gephardt would have to find common ground with the Democrats in the White House too, and that may be complicated by the Missourian's strained relationship with the President. Gephardt is a straight arrow who looks like he walked out of an episode of Happy Days and is said to disapprove of the President's baby-boomer propensity for self-indulgence. On a political level, Gephardt also resents Clinton for his "triangulation" strategy of distancing himself from congressional Democrats. To this day, Hill Democrats argue that Clinton owes his political resurrection not to adviser...