Bob Livingston: The Speaker of the House Who Never Was

The Speaker Who Never Was

In December 1998, Bob Livingston was about to become the most powerful person in Congress. The Speaker of the House. Third in line to the presidency. He'd spent twenty-two years building toward this moment, rising from a Tulane law grad to chairman of the House Appropriations Committee — the committee that controls the federal checkbook. Newt Gingrich had just resigned, and Livingston was the chosen successor. All he had to do was show up and accept the gavel.

Then Larry Flynt made a phone call, and the whole thing fell apart.

Robert Linlithgow Livingston Jr. wasn't born in New Orleans — he came into the world in Colorado Springs in 1943 — but he became a New Orleans man through and through. He attended Tulane for both his undergraduate degree and his law degree, graduating from the law school in 1968. He settled in Metairie, built a legal career, and in 1977 won election to Louisiana's 1st Congressional District, becoming the first Republican to represent a significant portion of New Orleans since Reconstruction. That alone was a historical footnote worth noting.

But Livingston wasn't interested in footnotes. He was interested in power, and he was good at getting it. He climbed the Republican ranks steadily, and when the GOP took the House in 1994, he landed the Appropriations chairmanship. In Washington, the Appropriations Committee chair is sometimes called the Cardinal — because they control the money, and in politics, money is scripture. Livingston wielded that power effectively for four years, becoming one of the key figures in the Gingrich revolution.

When Gingrich fell in November 1998, Livingston was the obvious choice to replace him. He had the experience, the relationships, and the ambition. The Republican conference nominated him, and the vote to make it official was scheduled for January 1999. Everything was in place.

Except that this was also December 1998, and the House was in the middle of impeaching President Bill Clinton — largely over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and his lies about it under oath. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, had offered a million-dollar bounty for proof of sexual misconduct by any member of Congress who was pushing impeachment. Flynt's investigators found their way to Bob Livingston.

On December 19, 1998, as the House debated articles of impeachment against Clinton, Livingston took the floor and did something nobody expected. He admitted to his own extramarital affairs. Then he said that he could only call for the president's resignation if he was willing to heed his own words. And he resigned.

The chamber went silent. Democrats shouted "No!" — partly out of genuine shock, partly because Livingston's resignation undermined the narrative that only Democrats had character problems. Republicans sat stunned. The man who was supposed to lead them had just walked away from the most powerful position in the legislative branch because he decided that honesty and consistency mattered more than power.

You can argue about whether Livingston's resignation was noble or unnecessary, whether he was forced out or chose to leave, whether the whole thing was a circus or a genuine moment of principle. What you can't argue is that it was dramatic. A man from New Orleans was about to become Speaker of the House, and instead he became a cautionary tale about the intersection of personal life and political power.

Livingston left Congress on March 1, 1999, and founded The Livingston Group, a lobbying firm in Washington that became one of the most successful in the city. He's still working, still connected, still a player — just behind the scenes instead of behind the gavel. His congressional seat went to David Vitter in the special election that followed, which launched its own saga of scandal and ambition. But that's another story.

Bob Livingston's story is a New Orleans story because it's about a man who had everything lined up and watched it evaporate in a single week. This city knows something about that — about the distance between almost and never, about the plans that don't survive contact with reality. He was the Speaker who never was, and in a town full of near-misses and what-ifs, that makes him one of ours.