Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [528]
a bathroom break: Trent Lott, interview by author.
“had to sit without speaking”: Robert Dove, interview by author.
an unmistakable sensation of “friction”: Tom Daschle, interview by author.
“I’d have learned to say ‘no’”: Henry J. Hyde, interview by author.
In contrast: The president’s defense team consisted of Charles Ruff (an attorney who used a wheelchair), David Kendall, Cheryl Mills (an African American lawyer who served as deputy counsel to the president), Special White House Counsel Greg Craig (a high-ranking State Department official and friend of the Clintons), Nicole Seligman (a former Harvard Law Review standout and clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall who was working at Williams & Connolly alongside Kendall), and Clinton confidente Bruce Lindsey. Kendall and Ruff worked diligently to avoid repetitious presentations so that their efficient, seven-person team would stand in stark contrast to the oversized collection of House managers.
In other modern-day impeachment trials: Robert Dove, interview by author.
“ideologically committed”: Henry J. Hyde, interview by author.
by far their strongest basis: Jim Fisher, the Dallas lawyer who had handled President Clinton’s deposition in the Jones case, would later say that he was frustrated as he watched the House strategy unfold: “The instances of lying were so clear in my deposition.… When he [Clinton] said things like he couldn’t remember ever being alone with Monica Lewinsky anywhere in the White House, or he couldn’t remember giving her gifts … there were a half-dozen instances where it was extremely clear that he had lied. That should have been, I think, more of the focal point” (Jim Fisher, interview by author).
“bollixed things up”: Confidential source, interview by author.
On the second day of trial: Senate video, 15 Jan. 1999; Congressional Record, 15 Jan. 1999; “The Impeachment Trial, Jan 15: Barr on Perjury and Obstruction,” WashingtonPost.com, 15 Jan. 1999.
Just days earlier, Larry Flynt: Howard Kurtz, “Flynt Calls Rep. Barr a Hypocrite for Divorce Case Answers,” 12 Jan. 1999, Washington Post, A7.
“Harkin’s speaking!”: Baker, The Breach, 310.
Dove fully understood: Robert Dove, interview by author.
Some Republicans whispered: Ibid.; James Duff, interview by author.
“Just be as mean”: John Dean, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, 285.
As Clinton saw it: Bill Clinton, interview by author.
“I’d like to say”: James Duff, interview by author. Duff considered it “a bit paranoid” to suggest that Rehnquist had plotted to get Clinton by appointing Judge Sentelle: “Quite honestly, it wasn’t anything he’d sit down and calculate, ‘We’ll load it in favor of the Republicans this way.’” Duff typically would walk into Rehnquist’s chambers with a list of the pending vacancies and the interested judges, and the chief would make rapid selections. “He would have to be extremely calculating and vindictive to figure these things out in advance,” Duff said. “He would also have to be prescient. He made these decisions very quickly, without any great premeditation. I do not think the appointment of Judge Sentelle was nefarious in any way.” As to the story that Rehnquist had told Clinton “good luck” after swearing him in, Duff would say that if the chief even uttered those words (Duff was nearby and heard no such comment), it was merely a droll expression of what others told him when he became chief: “It’s going to