The relationship between Mr Bob Livingston, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, came full circle yesterday. It was Gingrich, after all, who in 1994 asked the hot-tempered Louisianan to take over as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, by-passing several more senior members of the panel. And it was Gingrich who, earlier this year amid rumours that Livingston was planning to leave Congress, urged him to run for another term.
But yesterday, at a Capitol Hill news conference, it was Livingston who was telling Gingrich to hit the road, part of the day's rapidly moving developments that climaxed a few hours later with Gingrich's stunning announcement that he was stepping down as speaker.
Livingston had hoped to succeed Gingrich, but not in this fashion, not this soon, assuming that he is the choice of House Republicans to be their leader. What changed all that was the Grand Old Party's (GOP)disappointing performance in Tuesday's mid-term elections. That accelerated Livingston's timetable for seeking the speakership whenever Gingrich stepped down, probably in 2000.
Yesterday Livingston described Gingrich as "my dear friend" and "a man of Churchillian proportions." But he contrasted what he called his "management style" of focusing narrowly on the business of the House with the "haze of high rhetoric and miscast priorities" that many critics have come to see as the hallmark of Gingrich's leadership.
"Revolutionising takes some talents - many talents," Livingston said. "My friend Newt Gingrich brought those talents to bear and put the Republicans in the majority. Day-to-day governing takes others. I believe I have those talents."
Livingston has had ample opportunity to demonstrate his approach to government during the four years that he has headed the key spending committee in Congress. At his first meeting as Appropriations Committee chairman in 1995, he showed up armed with a machete and an alligator-skinning knife, symbols, he said, of what he intended to do to the federal budget.
Since then, Livingston (55) has proven to be a tough, skillful negotiator, much more the back room deal maker than is the outspoken, spotlight-seeking Gingrich. Livingston's committee cut billions of dollars in spending soon after the Republicans took control of the house. He is a conservative in a more traditional mould than some of his younger Republican colleagues, and among those he has clashed with are other conservatives of his own party, frequently rebuffing their attempts to attach "riders" to advance pet GOP policy goals to appropriations bills.
A tall, physically imposing man, Livingston's fiery temper has at times made for an explosive appropriations process. According to Congressional Quarterly's "Politics in America," Livingston and the top aide to then House Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, almost came to blows when Livingston opened a 1995 meeting by telling Roberts: "Some son of a bitch on your staff has been saying bad stuff about my staff in the press and I'm tired of it."
But Livingston can also be an amiable adversary. He retained key Appropriation Committee Democratic staff aides after the GOP takeover, and he has forged a good working relationship with the panel's ranking Democrat, Representative David R. Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin.
Livingston also contributed to a fiasco that has come to haunt Republicans in the Gingrich era - the showdown with the Clinton administration over the 1995 government shutdown. As house Republicans prepared to vote to extend the shutdown through the Christmas holidays, Livingston took to the floor and thundered: "We will never, never, never give in. . . We will stay here until doomsday."
The speech thrilled house Republicans, but repeated showings of the soundbite on television news programmes deepened the public perception that the GOP was responsible for the government paralysis in Washington.
Livingston comes from distinguished political lineage: One of his ancestors administered the oath of office to President George Washington and later, as ambassador to France, helped to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. But Livingston grew up in modest circumstances in New Orleans, dropping out of Tulane University to join the navy before returning to Tulane to earn a bachelor's degree and graduate from law school.
A prosperous lawyer, Livingston was first elected to the House of Representatives in a special election in 1977, when he became the first Republican to represent the district in the New Orleans suburbs since post-war reconstruction. Married and the father of four children, his seat in what was once solid Democratic territory is so safe that he was reelected on Tuesday without opposition.
Recently, Livingston has become an aggressive fund-raiser for other House Republicans, engaging in a contest to win friends with his presumed main 2000 rival for speaker, House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, a Democrat from Texas, who has been doing the same. At one fund-raiser in California last summer, when he was asked about social issues, he made clear he would prefer to steer clear of the most divisive topics while concentrating on the more mundane business of government.
Recently, Livingston has become an aggressive fund-raiser for other house Republicans, engaging in a contest to win friends with his presumed main 2000 rival for speaker, House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, a Republican from Texas, who has been doing the same. At one fund-raiser in California last summer, when he was asked about social issues, he made clear he would prefer to steer clear of the most divisive topics while concentrating on the more mundane business of government.
"We need everybody," he said, adding that he had watched "trueblue liberals" like the late Gillis W. Long, a Democrat, drive moderates away from the Democratic Party. "We need a majority."
