Lott Endures Week of ‘Herding Cats’ Toward Consensus

For most of the last week, the main event in the trial of President Clinton has not been on the floor of the Senate, where Republican prosecutors and White House lawyers have waged formal debate at a Dickensian pace over removing the president from office.

Instead, the real action has been hidden from public view in the Senate’s cloakrooms and corridors, especially in the elegant oak-paneled conference room behind the chamber where the Republican majority has met for its daily caucus.

It was there that GOP leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, in an exercise likened to “herding cats,” gently persuaded strays in his 55-member caucus to drop their objections to calling witnesses in the trial. It was there that a series of last-minute ideas for a quick, bipartisan end to the proceeding were shot down. And it was there that Lott quietly dispatched two senators Monday morning to tell House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) that he would be wise to pare his witness list to three.

Last Friday, Senate Democrats thought that they--and the president--were slowly gaining momentum in the trial. Former Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) had delivered an eloquent summation of the president’s case. Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a revered old-line Democrat who had reserved judgment on the case, had announced that he would sponsor a motion to dismiss it. Most significant, a growing number of Republicans were expressing misgivings, private and public, about the House prosecutors’ demand to call a dozen witnesses for testimony on the floor.

But over the course of six days, Lott calmed his caucus and forged a consensus that held all 55 Republican votes Wednesday and attracted one maverick Democrat, Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin.

And although the party-line divide disappointed those who had hoped for a bipartisan proceeding, Lott also managed to avoid a major rupture with his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

So firmly is the Republican caucus now running the trial that Democratic senators have taken to ambushing their GOP colleagues after meetings to find out what decisions were made.

“Senator!” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) across a crowded lobby on Monday. “What did your caucus conclude? How’s it look?”

And the corridor leading to their conference room--the Mansfield Room, named after an eminent Democrat, longtime majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana--is lined with reporters. They hope to talk with senators as they come and go between a glowering portrait of Vice President John C. Calhoun (D-S.C., 1782 to 1850) and a marble bust of a smiling, youthful Vice President Richard Nixon (R-Calif., 1913 to 1994).

‘It’s Been a Very Open Discussion’

“It’s been a very open discussion, a constant process of making sure everyone’s concerns were heard, especially on the moderate side,” said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a leading conservative, as he waited for Wednesday morning’s caucus to begin.

“At the beginning of this, there were some who wanted stronger leadership,” he said, referring delicately to Lott’s detractors in his own party. “They wanted someone who would issue marching orders. But you can’t lead that way on something like this.”

“Howard Baker said leading the Senate was like herding cats,” Bennett said, recalling the Tennessee Republican who served as majority leader in the 1980s. “This week, it sometimes seemed like pushing a rope.”

On Friday, many Republicans were openly looking for a way to end the trial quickly. A week of formal presentations by the House managers and the president’s lawyers had shown that the case against Clinton was no stronger and no weaker than before. Most important, there was no sign of slippage in the president’s support among Democrats--and thus no clear way to build the 67-vote majority required to remove him from office.

Dissent Begins to Take Hold

Under those circumstances, senators began tossing out proposals for an “exit strategy.”

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) suggested skipping straight to a vote on the verdict. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) proposed simply adjourning the trial, apparently as a way to avoid giving Clinton an acquittal. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) worked on a bipartisan scheme to allow the House to present a rebuttal, “stipulate” a list of Clinton’s misdeeds and fast-forward to a verdict.

Moreover, some Republicans were getting cold feet about the House request to call witnesses. Six GOP senators said publicly that they were undecided or leaning against witnesses, enough to swing the vote to a tie. More agreed with them privately.

The dissenters included both moderates and conservatives and their qualms varied. Some didn’t want to extend the trial a day longer than necessary. Some dreaded the idea of questioning former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. Some simply doubted that there was anything new to learn.

Even Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the longest-serving senator, was dissenting. “I don’t want to hear from witnesses,” he rasped. “The quicker we get through this, the better.”

At the Republican caucus on Saturday morning, Lott let the dissenters speak about their fear of a long, drawn-out witness phase that would make the Senate look bad, according to senators and their aides.

Lott said he would look for ways to limit the number of witnesses, to address the dissenters’ concerns. At the same time, he made a personal appeal to his GOP colleagues to stick together, focusing on Byrd’s motion to dismiss the case. His implicit message: If the party divided over these key procedural motions, nobody would come out looking good.

That was enough to convert at least one of the dissenters, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). “I would rather err on the side of thorough rather than fast,” he said after the meeting.

On Sunday, several of the GOP dissenters appeared on the capital’s weekly talk shows, keeping up the pressure on the witness issue. “If it’s not going to add something to the trial--something that would change the whole dynamics--I say let’s move on,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.).

On Monday, Lott met again with his caucus and settled on an approach: only two or three witnesses and no guarantee of GOP support for live testimony. He sent two senators, Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), across the Capitol to inform an unhappy Hyde.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) even made a stab at turning it into a bipartisan compact, telling Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that the GOP would settle for two witnesses if Democrats agreed--but Kennedy turned him down.

That afternoon, on the Senate floor, Hyde let his resentment show. “I sort of feel that we have fallen short in the respect side, because of the fact that we represent the House, the other body, kind of blue-collar people,” he said plaintively. Many senators, not knowing of Lott’s message, laughed--but Hyde wasn’t joking.

By Tuesday morning, unbeknownst to anyone but Senate Republicans and House managers, the fix was in.

Hyde and his colleagues agreed to propose only three witnesses--a “pitiful three,” the still-wounded chairman would say.

At the GOP’s Tuesday morning caucus, Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate who played a key role in working out a compromise, offered a proposal for handling depositions. Chafee said they could be completed quickly enough to present to senators by early next week.

Lott never made a strong pitch for the House managers’ proposal, aides said. Instead, he and Chafee were looking for a formula that would satisfy the dissenters just enough to keep the caucus together.

It worked. “I don’t personally believe that anything will come of [calling witnesses],” said Shelby, who had strongly opposed the idea, “but . . . I don’t want to be unreasonable.”

Through the entire process, senators and aides said, the Republican caucus never formally voted proposals up or down. The issue was handled by consensus.

“What Trent has tried to do is be a facilitator,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), appropriating the language of group therapy for the GOP caucus. “And he’s done an outstanding job.”

On Wednesday, even as the Senate voted on party lines in favor of calling witnesses (and against Byrd’s motion to dismiss the case), Lott approached Democratic leader Daschle to try to restore a measure of bipartisanship.

“I feel, personally, that how the vote [turns out] is not as important as how we conduct ourselves. If we come out and start hollering at each other and sounding partisan, then that will make it so,” he said. “But . . . we’re going to get to an end as expeditiously as we can. And when we get there, hopefully all concerned will feel like, ‘Well, I don’t like the result, or I didn’t like this little point or that point along the way, but I had my chance.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do right now.”

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Janet Hook and Art Pine contributed to this story.