Word: lotte
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Another obstacle in Lott's way is his own propensity to blurt things out that he'd be better off keeping to himself--what a G.O.P. Senator described last week as "Trent's foot-in-mouth disease." It struck last summer, when Lott compared homosexuality to alcoholism and kleptomania, and again in mid-December, when he attacked the President's motives for launching air strikes on Iraq. Then it appeared one more time last week, when Lott went public with the outline of his plan for a streamlined impeachment trial without warning anyone on his staff, clearing it with...
...fact, Lott began thinking about ways he could avert a full-blown Senate trial in the days before the House voted to impeach Clinton on Dec. 19. "Trent has no interest in helping Bill Clinton," says a senior G.O.P. Senate official who knows Lott well. "But Trent wants to run the Senate. He doesn't want this thing screwing up the whole year." Lott also knew he couldn't scotch a trial entirely without enraging conservatives. So he went on television three weeks ago to insist that there would be a trial and "there won't be any dealmaking...
...deal aimed at shortening a trial to work, Lott knew he had to have the White House's tacit agreement not to call witnesses. He also needed assurances from Lieberman and Daschle that Clinton would not make a mockery of Lott's work by celebrating the Senate's turn to censure as a vindication of his behavior. In the wake of the House's partisan vote to impeach--and the polls showing the public siding overwhelmingly with Clinton--the early talk in the White House was more about combat than compromise. As a senior White House official put it, "There...
...meeting of the President's senior political advisers and lawyers last week, bravado gave way to pragmatism, and a decision was made to go along with the Lott plan. Better to end it quickly, the thinking went, while the White House could be sure that Republicans lacked the 67 votes to convict. Chief of staff John Podesta told Daschle that the White House was on board, but both sides agreed that it was important to play down any White House role in the deal for fear Republicans might reject it. "Right now, this is the Lott plan," said a senior...
...time Chief Justice William Rehnquist administers the oath given to Senators before an impeachment trial, G.O.P. conservatives may have torpedoed Lott's plan. But as the majority leader is quick to point out, in the absence of an agreed-upon schedule, there is nothing to prevent a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans from putting together the simple majority of 51 votes needed to short-circuit a trial altogether and move immediately toward censure. His plan, Lott argues, at least gives House prosecutors a chance to make the case for conviction and then allows Senators to vote on whether...