Succession Scenarios
Since Elizabeth Drew claimed that Speaker Gingrich has been discussing the idea of impeaching President Clinton and Vice-President Gore with his advisers, Gingrich has told conservative legal pundit Victoria Toensing that the claim was (her words) "false, absolutely false"; and his press secretary, Christina Martin, has ridiculed the idea of dual impeachments. Drew sticks by her story.

Who's right? We have no dog in that hunt. We can say that as long as a year ago, Gingrich was speculating to supporters about the possibility that both Clinton and Gore would both be forced to leave office in disgrace. He did not say that they would be impeached, or that he would push for their departure, and he certainly did not envision becoming president himself. His thinking, consistent with Drew's account, was that in this scenario some Democrat-he specifically mentioned Sam Nunn as an example-would be chosen to replace Gore and would then succeed Clinton. This would only happen if the administration's decapitation were a bipartisan affair, and not a kind of constitutional coup. This was clearly not a plan of action, but the kind of off-the-cuff speculation about contingencies in which all politicians engage away from the cameras.

Some associates of Gingrich are fingering Grover Norquist, the ubiquitous leader of Americans for Tax Reform, as Drew's source. Norquist denies it-"I haven't spoken to her in a long time"-and says he has never advised the Speaker on this subject. But he adds that it is absolutely essential that if Clinton were somehow to be removed from office because of scandal, Gore would have to go too-for the obvious partisan reason, and because Gore is involved in the important, i.e. non-sexual, scandals. "It is self-evident to any intelligent person on the Hill that this is the way to approach this. . . . Our goal is not to remove Clinton any more than it was to remove Gorbachev. It is to eliminate the whole corrupt system of which Clinton and Gore are a part."

CAT Scan on Conservatism
The political culture has turned sharply to the right in the '90s, according to the conventional wisdom, and there's certainly a lot of evidence to support that view. Here's an unlikely piece of counter-evidence: the Conservative Action Team budget.

Don't get us wrong: the CATs budget is solid and well worth fighting for, better than anything we're likely to get this year. It eliminates the marriage penalty in a simple and ingenious way-by making the joint income threshold double the individual threshold in every bracket-that should, unlike previous proposals, draw unanimous conservative support. Its procedural reforms would finally drive a stake through the heart of Darmanomics.

But it is also a sign of conservatives' lowered visions. Consider: the most conservative faction of the House Republicans, who are themselves more conservative than Republican governors or senators, is asking for tax relief that would amount to less than two per cent of federal spending over the next five years ($150 billion vs. $8.9 trillion). CATs argues that more tax cuts can follow if the economy keeps chugging along, a concession of principle-we can't cut taxes in bad times, when we need them most?-made necessary by Republican balanced-budget fetishism. The press release on the budget actually brags that it "increases defense spending to keep up with inflation" and "limits government growth to the rate of inflation." Raising defense spending and cutting government are apparently too much to ask for. Again, this is not a criticism of CATs, just a reminder of how far we have to go.