REP. BOB LIVINGSTON RESIGNS

December 19, 1998
		Speaker-Elect Rep. Bob Livingston announced his resignation during the House debate on articles of impeachment against President Clinton. Shields and Gigot discuss the implications.

Full coverage of the impeachment hearings. Dec. 19, 1998: Rep. Livingston's resignation speech. Dec. 11, 1998: Our pundits discuss the Judiciary Committee's vote on impeachment. Dec. 11, 1998: Two members of the Judiciary Committee discuss the impeachment decision. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Conversations on Clinton, White House, and the Starr Investigation.     The U.S. House of Representatives The House Judiciary Committee Background on the impeachment process from JURIST, the Law Professor Network.

MARGARET WARNER: We're back with Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. And with them, Congress watcher Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Paul, how do you explain this stunning development? PAUL GIGOT: I think you explain it by the fact that the accusations that came out about his affairs in the past. We're not going to be over, that there were going to be explorations into - investigations into who the women were, were they lobbyists, how long had that gone on? The details were going to be ugly, no doubt. The details are going to be prolonged, and at this juncture - where the Republican House is trying to make a moral statement and an ethical statement about the President's conduct, that a lot of the members did not want to have at the top of the party somebody who was not a real example, and despite the fact that there were different cases. Adultery is not perjury. Nonetheless, that connection is a harder one to make when your own Speaker is under a cloud. And I think that that is what bore down on him in the end. You could feel the tension talking privately to members; they were not real happy with - with the Speaker-to-be. MARGARET WARNER: And, of course, Mark, he tried - wants to make the connection with the president, calling on the president to do just what he's doing. Do you think that's going to add any impetus, any momentum to the Republican push calling on the president to resign? I mean, do you think , in other words, he can have the desired effect on the president? MARK SHIELDS: No. No. I think the Republicans are caught. They've made the case that this is the rule of law, the rule of law; we must follow the constitutional process. This has been their argument. And Henry Hyde said very eloquently yesterday, we have the same rule of law for the ruler and the ruled, and so forth. If you believe in the rule of law, then you've got to carry this process through and to short-circuit it, especially after what is going to be overwhelmingly a party-line vote today and call upon the president to resign without the prescribed constitutional process of the trial in the Senate would be inappropriate. MARGARET WARNER: I'm told Henry Hyde is coming before the podium on the floor.