House Broken

PRESIDING over the House of Representatives on the day Republicans took up the impeachment of President Clinton was Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican who loves parliamentary procedure and worked for years for the former Republican minority leader, Bob Michel. Beneath him that morning, Bob Livingston would make his snap resignation, paving the way to the speakership for Dennis Hastert, another Illinois Republican and Michel protégé. So, the most dramatic day of the Republican majority had an unexpected subtext—Bob Michel’s revenge.

Michel serenely presided over what seemed at the time a permanent Republican minority. It was Newt Gingrich who pushed Michel aside and installed a politics of issues (as embodied in the Contract with America) and anti-congressional agitation (the payraise fight, the House-bank scandal, the advocacy of term limits). When Republicans won a majority in 1994, the whiff of agitation never quite left them, and a series of crises—the shutdowns, the flood-relief fiasco, the attempted coup—seemed designed to convince the public they couldn’t run the House.

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

PRESIDING over the House of Representatives on the day Republicans took up the impeachment of President Clinton was Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican who loves parliamentary procedure and worked for years for the former Republican minority leader, Bob Michel. Beneath him that morning, Bob Livingston would make his snap resignation, paving the way to the speakership for Dennis Hastert, another Illinois Republican and Michel protégé. So, the most dramatic day of the Republican majority had an unexpected subtext—Bob Michel’s revenge.

Michel serenely presided over what seemed at the time a permanent Republican minority. It was Newt Gingrich who pushed Michel aside and installed a politics of issues (as embodied in the Contract with America) and anti-congressional agitation (the payraise fight, the House-bank scandal, the advocacy of term limits). When Republicans won a majority in 1994, the whiff of agitation never quite left them, and a series of crises—the shutdowns, the flood-relief fiasco, the attempted coup—seemed designed to convince the public they couldn’t run the House.