Word: lott
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rocky start to the Senate phase of impeachment was a bad sign for the man who has more at stake than anyone--with the obvious exception of the President. Since he took over as majority leader from Bob Dole in mid-1996, Trent Lott, 57, has not lived up to the widely held expectation that he would assume the role of the G.O.P.'s pre-eminent national leader. More a pragmatist than an ideologue, and more interested in passing legislation than in delivering visionary speeches, Lott has preferred immersing himself in the mechanics of running the Senate to playing...
...explosions were nearly instantaneous. One Senate conservative, Oklahoma's James Inhofe, blasted Lott's gambit, telling reporters it was a "whitewash" designed to sacrifice the Constitution in the name of expediency. The 13 House impeachment "managers" who will prosecute the case in the Senate were particularly aggrieved by Lott's scheme, complaining that he had not even bothered to consult them before it became public. Drawn from the ranks of the House Judiciary Committee and led by its chairman, Henry Hyde, the managers have been preparing for their star turns as prosecutors in the trial of the century. When Lott...
...that it has, Lott has the chance to be the leader who brings the scandal to a dignified conclusion. But he's not particularly happy about the opportunity. Lott knows that no matter what he does, he'll be attacked--"bashed by the left," he told TIME, or "criticized by people on the right." But he also knows that the outcome--and how the process will be judged by both the public and history--depends largely on him. "I realize that there's plenty of room to handle it properly or improperly," he said. "And I'm going...
That is the elegance in the Lott proposal. After the mini-trial, there would be two votes on whether to conduct a full-blown trial, each requiring a two-thirds vote to go ahead. In the probable event they would fail, the trial would adjourn and the Senate would take up censure. Temporarily setting aside the messy issue of how to craft a censure resolution that would satisfy all sides, the obsessively punctilious Lott had devised an exit strategy that seemed to have something in it for everyone. Conservatives would get a trial, albeit a brief one, and a chance...
...Lott to succeed with his or any other plan, he'll have to placate not only Hyde and his fellow House prosecutors but also conservatives within his own caucus in the Senate. Suspicious that their leader is in the process of cutting an accommodating prefab deal--just as he did during last year's budget negotiations--some conservatives, like Inhofe, are already rebelling. To be done with the unpleasant duty of the trial, they claim, Lott is running roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law, all in the service of rescuing the President. "Trent cannot be perceived...