In his long political career, Bob Michel never twisted somebody’s arm not to vote for him.
But it happened last week as the political and pundit class was immersed in the melodrama of Newt Gingrich, the dissembling speaker of the House, who barely kept his job amid a swirl of ethics charges.
Michel, 73, is the former Republican congressman from Peoria who served as the GOP’s top dog while it was in the minority.
He spent 38 years in the House, the last 14 as GOP leader. He was a product of a more conciliatory age and ran smack into the confrontational style of younger backbenchers, notably Gingrich.
“Michel thought that if you work on the backbench, you keep your mouth shut,” said Rep. Ray LaHood, his longtime aide who in 1995 succeeded him in representing Illinois’ 18th District.
“Newt was of a different generation, with different tactics,” LaHood said. “He elbowed people out of the way to get to the top. Michel did it differently.”
The Michel-Gingrich relationship was not chummy during Michel’s last several years. When Michel agreed to a budget deal during the Bush administration that raised taxes, Gingrich and chums were irate.
Gingrich had his eye on supplanting Michel, hoping, as LaHood put it Friday, that Michel “would slip on a banana or retire.”
Michel retired–and watched as the GOP promptly scored the historic string of upsets in that November’s elections and gained the majority.
Michel, in theory, would have had his dream job, speaker, if he had stuck around, though Gingrich surely would have opposed him.
Now, fast forward to last week and Speaker Gingrich finding himself in deep doo-doo, having copped a plea to misleading the House ethics committee and fighting to retain that job.
At a Republican meeting on Monday night, and at a subsequent vote by the full House the next day, his fate hung in the balance.
Michel, to whom Gingrich has extended an olive branch since his retirement, was at the GOP meeting. “It was unique,” Michel conceded in a phone call Friday. “Here we were, we had come so long to get control of the House, and it looked like it might all be blown.”
Michel says he would have voted for Gingrich, because the final ethics report was not completed. But he was placed in a weird position after the notion of his serving as an interim speaker was floated.
Indeed, professorial Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa announced Monday he would not vote for Gingrich. It then leaked that he’d vote for Michel since one need not be a House member to be speaker.
Michel confirmed Friday that Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, who heads the GOP’s congressional campaign committee, asked him to dissuade Leach.
Michel called Leach. “I argued with him,” the famously mild-mannered Michel said. “I thought it was folly and impractical.”
“I asked him about voting `present,’ ” which would be a similar slap at Gingrich. Leach responded that he had never done so in his career and wouldn’t now, according to Michel.
Leach voted for Michel, but Gingrich slipped through to keep his post.
As for the entire, ongoing Gingrich mess, the courtly Michel, back home in Peoria, said, “Well, I hope it all works out.”
Clinton’s case in a nutshell
Unless you watch only ESPN, you may know that on Monday the Supreme Court hears a matter titled “William Jefferson Clinton vs. Paula Corbin Jones.”
It’s the big sex harassment case brought by the former Arkansas state employee who says the then-governor exposed himself to her in a Little Rock hotel room.
The lawyer names at the top of Clinton’s brief to the court is headed by Washington heavyweight Robert Bennett and partners at his firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Tucked at the bottom are those of two law professors at the University of Chicago, David Strauss and Geoffrey Stone, the latter the university provost and former dean of the law school.
In fact, Strauss and Stone did lots of work on the brief, which argues that the Jones lawsuit should not come to trial while Clinton is president. They labored for free, though federal ethics rules necessitate their sending in some sort of bill at some point. (The president can’t get free legal services.)
“Our ultimate position is that the suit can go forward but just wait until he leaves office,” Strauss said Friday. “He gets no special protections once he leaves.”
Asked to dispense with legalese, he cites three reasons:
“First for anyone to get sued, be it a newspaper reporter or law professor, is a terrible, all-consuming event that can only distract you from your job. It’s tough enough whatever your job is; more difficult if you’re leader of the free world. There are consequences for all of us. A big part of our argument is that when he is president, his time belongs to all of us.”
“Second, he is such an inviting target for people who would sue him for political reasons. People might be interested in suing merely to make it difficult for him to do his job. They might merely want to get details about his finances or publicity for themselves. He’s a large target. If suits can go forward while he’s in office, suing the president might become the political tactic of choice for both parties.”
“Third, bigtime litigation these days is not a clean and neat affair. It’s an endless series of maneuvers to look into people’s files, demand they give testimony out of court. Parties try to schedule things in a way most inconvenient for the other side.
“If a suit can go forward against the president, you’ll have some judge deciding when the president can participate in litigation. The idea that a judge can say it’s reasonable to expect the president to be in this place at this time, or that `I don’t accept the contention the president can’t go forward with this litigation,’ is not something he (a judge) should do. It’s second-guessing the president’s schedulers.”
Hmmm.
Clinton spent a whole lot of time last year running around on purely partisan endeavors, raising money and making campaign speeches. It wouldn’t seem that difficult to schedule some court time for a lawsuit.
The Clinton argument is a substantial one, but far from lock-proof.
C-SPAN callers have their quirks
Political junkies watch C-SPAN for everything from congressional hearings to physically painful symposia at the American Enterprise Institute. It has gained a reputation as non-partisan, allowing us to decide for ourselves what we think about the workings of government.
Here, thanks to founder Brian Lamb, are some comments from viewers, and the occasional wrong-number call:
– “I’m almost as old as Bob Dole. I wouldn’t want a man with my memory to be president.”
– “I want to purchase three of item 605-109, the sweater coat.”
– “Change your name to the Robert K. Dornan Network. He appears on your channel ad nauseam. Enough is enough.”
– “Pan the chambers. Some of the women have great legs.”
– “Don’t alternate calls from Republicans and Democrats. When the other people do their cheerleading, I turn on mute. When my side comes on, I watch it. So now I only get to hear half the program, and it’s all your fault.”
– “Will you show the vice presidential debates again? I was watching the Braves game.”
– “I know women are working there at C-SPAN, and they’re going to ruin it, just like they ruin everything else.”
– “Put the Moscow news back on (C-SPAN stopped its daily airing of the Moscow evening news). I don’t trust our liberal media and must watch the news from Moscow to find the truth out about what is going on in the United States.”
