My life

On the day after the election I called Newt Gingrich to talk about some business; when the conversation got around to the election, he was very generous, saying that as a historian and “the quarterback for the other team,” he wanted to congratulate me. He hadn’t believed we could do it, he said, and it was a truly historic achievement. Later in November, Erskine Bowles called to tell me about a very different conversation he had had with Gingrich. Newt told Erskine that they were going to go forward with the impeachment despite the election results and the fact that many moderate Republicans didn’t want to vote for it. When Erskine asked Newt why they would proceed with impeachment instead of other possible remedies such as censure or reprimand, the Speaker replied, “Because we can.”

The right-wing Republicans who controlled the House believed that they had now paid for impeachment so they should just go on and do it before the new Congress came in. They thought that by the next election there would be no more impeachment losses because the voters would have other things on their minds. Newt and Tom DeLay believed that they could bring most of the moderates into line through pressure—from right-wing talk shows and activists in their districts; with threats to cut off campaign funds, or to come up with opponents in the Republican primary, or to take leadership positions away; or with offers of new leadership positions or other benefits.

The right-wingers in the House caucus were seething over their defeat. Many actually believed they had lost because they had given in to too many White House demands in the last two budget negotiations. In fact, if they had run on the balanced budgets of 1997 and 1998, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the 100,000 teachers, they would have done well, just as the Republican governors had. But they were too ideological and angry to do that. Now they were going to seize back control of the Republican agenda through impeachment.

I had already had four showdowns with the radical right: the ’94 election, which they won, and the budget shutdown, the ’96 election, and the ’98 election, which went our way. In the interim I had tried to work in good faith with Congress to keep the country moving forward. Now, in the face of overwhelming public opinion against impeachment, and the clear evidence that nothing I was alleged to have done rose to the level of an impeachable offense, they were coming back for another bitter ideological fight. There was nothing to do but suit up and take the field.

FIFTY

W ithin a week of the election, two high-profile Washington politicians announced they wouldn’t run again, and we were in the teeth of a new crisis with Saddam Hussein. Newt Gingrich stunned us all by announcing that he was resigning as Speaker and from the House. Apparently, he had a deeply divided caucus, was facing an assault on his leadership because of the election losses, and didn’t want to fight anymore. After several moderate Republicans made clear that, based on the election results, impeachment was a dead issue, I had mixed feelings about the Speaker’s decision. He had supported me on most foreign policy decisions, had been frank about what his caucus was really up to when the two of us talked alone, and, after the government shutdown battle, had shown flexibility in working out honorable compromises with the White House. Now he had the worst of both worlds: the moderate-toconservative Republicans were upset because the party had offered no positive program in the ’98

elections, and for a solid year had done nothing but attack me; his right-wing ideologues were upset because they thought he had worked with me too much and demonized me too little. The ingratitude of the right-wing cabal that now controlled the Republican caucus must have galled Gingrich; they were in power only because of his brilliant strategy in the 1994 election and his years of organizing and proselytizing before then.

Newt’s announcement got more headlines, but the retirement of New York senator Pat Moynihan would have a bigger impact on my family. On the night Moynihan said he wouldn’t seek reelection, Hillary got a call from our friend Charlie Rangel, the congressman from Harlem and ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging her to run for Moynihan’s seat. Hillary told Charlie she was flattered but couldn’t imagine doing such a thing.

She didn’t completely close the door, and I was glad. It sounded like a pretty good idea to me. We had intended to move to New York after my term ended, with me spending a fair amount of time in Arkansas at my library. New Yorkers seemed to like having high-profile senators: Moynihan, Robert Kennedy, Jacob Javits, Robert Wagner, and many others had been seen as representatives of both the citizens of New York and the nation at large. I thought Hillary would do a great job in the Senate and that she would enjoy it. But that decision was months away.