LOTT MAKES A DEAL
BARNES, FRED
LOTT MAKES A DEAL by Fred Barnes THE THING TO UNDERSTAND about Trent Lott is that he's never wanted to be a Senate majority leader like George Mitchell, who mostly obstructed the agenda of a...
...Lott is interested in his own legacy, too...
...Now, Lott "wants to be an accomplishment-driven majority leader who builds on his successes of '96 and '97," says Rep...
...And a third problem for Lott is Senate * conservatives...
...DeLay's advice to Lott turned out to be prophetic: Just hold on and let the process play itself out without much interference...
...If he had, he'd have balked at Gorton's suggestion that his plan was the best Republicans could hope for, both to avoid an embarrassing shutdown of the trial and to protect GOP senators (like Gorton) running for reelection in 2000...
...Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Spencer Abraham of Michigan, Paul Coverdell of Georgia, Connie Mack of Florida, Gorton—that's the group...
...And Lott caves...
...The next day, he released a letter to Lott condemning the plan...
...You quietly work around him to build a firm majority of Republicans in opposition...
...This method allowed conservatives to kill tobacco legislation, campaign finance reform, and a patients' bill of rights last year...
...He just hadn't believed there were enough GOP votes to ensure it, or that Democrats would ever go along with a GOP blueprint for the trial...
...In truth, he didn't...
...LOTT MAKES A DEAL by Fred Barnes THE THING TO UNDERSTAND about Trent Lott is that he's never wanted to be a Senate majority leader like George Mitchell, who mostly obstructed the agenda of a president (George Bush) of the other party...
...Normally he'd rather impede Republicans than compromise, but this time he relented...
...Social Security reform...
...A ban on partial-birth abortion...
...How come Gorton-Lieberman died...
...Only Lott doesn't call on them much anymore, except for Gorton...
...In Lott's mind, his own best days as Senate leader were in 1996 and 1997...
...It doomed the Gorton-Lieberman scheme last week...
...Who knows...
...And Lott has a House counterpart, speaker Dennis Hastert, who's probably more inclined to compromise than was his predecessor...
...It would have guaranteed a one-week trial and probably no vote at all on the articles of impeachment...
...Maybe intact...
...There's rarely any Clinton quid for Lott's quo, and there wasn't this time either...
...He can't do that without Lott...
...Lott's style is closer to that of Lyndon Johnson, who as Democratic majority leader in the 1950s worked with a Republican president (Dwight Eisenhower) to achieve mutually beneficial results...
...Sweeping tax reform...
...Meanwhile, Lott was lobbied by both Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and House GOP whip Tom DeLay...
...So over the Christmas holidays he grabbed onto the plan devised by GOP senator Slade Gorton of Washington and Democratic senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut...
...Yes, he really had...
...Abraham was conflicted...
...Yet that plan collapsed, and was replaced by a far better one...
...Until recently, he's relied on an inner circle of a half-dozen advisers, dubbed the Council of Trent, to keep in touch with the sentiments of Senate Republicans...
...They've known all along that Lott, though a conservative, isn't a partisan conservative leader...
...Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican and former Lott aide...
...That may happen eventually...
...Hyde was upset...
...The White House and Senate Democrats loved the idea, and Lott thought a good number of the 55 Republicans would, too...
...You don't confront him and say, 'Lott, you're a jerk,'" a Republican official said...
...Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, is also a problem...
...Assume Clinton is roughed up in the Senate trial but not ousted, then what...
...Lott did hear Hutchison's vigorous argument for a full trial with witnesses when the two sat together at the Cotton Bowl on January 1. By then, however, Lott had already begun touting Gorton-Lieberman...
...Lott should have known better than to embrace that plan in the first place...
...So did Santorum, who's up in 2000, and Coverdell and Mack...
...Mike DeWine of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine, even squishy John Chafee of Rhode Island said no to Gorton-Lieber-k ' man...
...But Lott didn't exactly follow the LBJ formula in producing a bipartisan plan for the Senate trial of Clinton...
...Once Lott gave up on Gorton-Lieberman, that's what happened...
...This upset Lott, who called Hyde on New Year's Eve to complain testily about Hyde's making the letter public...
...Lott desperately wants an orderly trial in which Republicans will not be embarrassed by having the proceedings terminated at the outset by a simple majority of 45 Democrats and 6 or more queasy Republicans...
...In other words, Lott assumed he had a weak hand...
...Hyde, who heads the prosecution at the Senate trial, called Lott on December 29 when he got wind of Lott's tentative backing of Gor-ton-Lieberman...
...Lott and Gorton operated on two assumptions, one that there will never be 67 votes to convict the president, the other that 51 votes were likely to materialize quickly to shut down any trial at all...
...Lott has made generous concessions to Clinton—a chemical-weapons treaty, a big jump in domestic spending— and gotten very little in return...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...One reason is an inherent problem in the age of Clinton: This president doesn't play the game fairly...
...Lott, by the way, told Republican senators he'd always preferred what was ultimately agreed on January 8: a full trial with up-or-down votes on both articles of impeachment...
...If he could combine the accomplishments of LBJ but in a new [and more conservative] direction, that would a be good legacy for him," says his ex-aide Chip Pickering...
...Instead, he took a long detour...
...Hutchison wasn't the only Council of Trent member who wanted a full trial...
...And no witnesses would have testified...
...Then, a consensus among Republicans will emerge, as it did in the House in favor of limited hearings and, finally, of impeaching Clinton...
...Clinton will be eager for accomplishments to offset the stigma of impeachment...
...Then, while he didn't quite have a partnership with President Clinton, he worked with the White House and congressional Democrats to enact welfare reform, a telecommunications bill, health-insurance portability, and a balanced budget...
...Where does all this leave the notion of Lott as a leader in the style of LBJ...
...Indeed...
...Not so...
...Now, they've figured out how to thwart him...
...Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania spoke eagerly about being a juror in the most important trial of all time...
...But the group Lott really misjudged were the GOP moderates, who he thought would be ready to join Democrats and short-circuit the proceedings...
Vol. 4 • January 1999 • No. 17
