Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [395]
Although Hyde did not directly attribute his “outing” to the White House—he believed that Cherie Snodgrass’s husband probably set the Salon magazine story into motion—he still suspected that the Clinton forces were stoking the brush fire with whatever kindling they could gather up.
White House insiders would later disavow any involvement in the “Larry Flynting” of Chairman Hyde. The president’s advisers viewed these sex stories as “a third rail.” If they stirred up dirty scandals for Republicans and got caught, “it could be simply the worst thing that could ever happen to the president.” Chief of Staff John Podesta made clear that if any White House employee was involved in dredging up sex stories on Republicans, “I would kick their ass right out of the gate. And I meant it.” At the same time, admitted one aide, there were outside “free agents” deeply loyal to the Clinton cause, who were out there “doing their own thing.” Acknowledged one adviser, “Who knows?”
BY the end of September, House Democrats were floating a resolution to censure President Clinton publicly as a means to avoid impeachment. Using prominent Washington lawyer Robert F. Bauer as an intermediary, Democratic leader Dick Gephardt crafted a “censure-plus” resolution that would declare that the president “engaged in misconduct unbecoming the stature and high responsibility of the office that the President holds.” Part of the proposed deal was that Bill Clinton would have to forfeit his government pension for five consecutive years after leaving office, a total hit of $760,000—a bitter pill that Clinton would be forced to swallow if he wished to survive.
Within days of the censure-plus proposal’s being tested by Democrats, Majority Whip Tom DeLay wrote to Republican colleagues declaring that censuring the president was not an option. DeLay directed his troops sternly: “Any talk of censure or ‘censure plus’ should be stopped.”
So Democrats devised a new strategy. They began drafting their own version of an impeachment resolution, hoping that their Republican colleagues would nix it. This bold approach, placed under the supervision of moderate Democrat Rick Boucher of Virginia, involved constructing a proposal that both allowed Democrats to show their constituents that they were not dodging a fair consideration of impeachment and exposed the Republicans as mean-spirited “partisans.” As Representative Barney Frank would explain the Democratic strategy, “We realized they were like the Russian army.… We were the Chechens. They would come out with no flexibility. They would just use their massed forces and come forward.”
Representative Amory “Amo” Houghton, Jr., a moderate Republican from upstate New York, watched the maneuvering of his own party leadership and saw trouble on the horizon. A World War II veteran whose great-great-grandfather had founded Corning Glass Works, and who had himself served as chairman and CEO of Corning, Houghton was wealthy enough and respected enough in his district to be largely immune from threats and intimidation by party bosses. As he witnessed the Republican strategy unfold inside the House, the impeachment march was being led by a “troika”—Speaker Newt Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey, and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (a.k.a. “The Hammer”). These were the “terror guys,” as Houghton saw it. They thrived on “exaggerating, dramatizing … making dramatic statements.” Henry Hyde, in Houghton’s view, was an honourable man “who really believed Clinton was morally wrong” and became a “point man” for the more aggressive House leaders. Explained