Word: livingston
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rejected by a vote of 285 to 148. That was the climax of an incomparably tumultuous and unnerving week. Surreal was the word of the moment for a three-day period in which the President was impeached over lies about sex, the incoming Speaker of the House, Bob Livingston, resigned on the House floor because of his own adulteries, and the air over Baghdad exploded. So did the air over Washington, where the constant outcry over sex, lies, desperation and hypocrisy had created an atmosphere of venom and mayhem. All around the city there was a feeling that brutal, lasting...
...reason was the leadership vacuum in the House G.O.P. Newt Gingrich was out of the picture, and Speaker-elect Livingston was loath to guide impeachment proceedings, perhaps because he feared that his own extramarital affairs would be exposed. Control of the process had fallen to House whip Tom DeLay, the hardest of anti-Clinton hard-liners, who had ensured that moderates favoring censure had no place...
Early Wednesday Clinton called Speaker-elect Livingston to discuss Iraq for the second time that week, this time to say an attack had to begin immediately in order to take Saddam by surprise and avoid starting the campaign during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. In turn, Livingston promised the President he would delay the impeachment vote...
That wasn't a promise he could make. At once Livingston came under pressure from G.O.P. hard-liners not to postpone the vote for longer than one day. DeLay and majority leader Dick Armey were especially angry to learn that Livingston had already told Dick Gephardt he would postpone the vote. As a G.O.P. leadership source said, "The new Speaker has to learn that he can't make deals with the Democrats without consulting the elected leadership first." But even some G.O.P. moderates who had come out against Clinton wanted a quick vote before opponents in their districts had time...
...conference call with his Senate leaders earlier that day, Lott had learned that they were as dubious of Clinton as he was. All the same, Livingston rushed that night to hold a press conference at which he underlined Republican backing for the mission. But even he was careful to say he supported "the troops," not the President. Late that same day, Defense Secretary Cohen, a former Republican Congressman and then Senator from Maine, responded to an invitation from senior G.O.P. House leaders to justify the attack from the well of the House. "The mood was fairly toxic," says Cohen. "There...