Newt's heir apparent.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Bob Livingston - Cover Story

As Newt Gingrich travels the country, wearing the V-neck sweater of contrition, talking about his weightloss program, and pledging to learn from his mistakes and play nicely with others, his Republican colleagues are gunning for his chair as Speaker of the House. Gingrich is still among the least popular politicians in America, but he is nonetheless plotting a run for the Presidency. Hence the makeover, the tour for his new book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way (which just happened to include stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early primary states), and the self-effacing, awshucks Newt popping up to chuckle self-consciously with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.

Gingrich is unlikely to win his party's nomination, let alone the Presidency. But his colleagues expect he'll vacate his seat to run in 2000, and already Representative Bob Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, has declared he's got the votes locked up to be the next Speaker.

If Newt scares the pants off progressives, in some ways Livingston is worse.

Unlike Gingrich, whose outrageous nastiness actually helped liberal causes rake in direct-mail contributions, Livingston prides himself on taking the high road. He has done much to distance himself from the meanest elements in his party. Livingston, a Gingrich loyalist, comes from the First Congressional District of Louisiana, an 85 percent white district where former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke won 60 percent of the vote when he ran for governor in 1991, according to the Capitol Hill magazine Roll Call. When Livingston flirted with the idea of retirement last year, Duke was planning a run to succeed him. Livingston publicly repudiated Duke's racist politics in his home state early and often--saying he'd use his own campaign funds to block Duke's run for Congress.

And while Newt atones for scaring people and sweats it out trying to look cuddly, Livingston shows no such strain. Courteous and charming, Livingston has a manner that is a model for Republicans, who are trying to soften their image. As a step toward greater civility and decorum, he helped organize a bipartisan retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, last year, which brought together members of Congress from both parties to talk about getting along in spite of their differences.

"I think we can disagree without being disagreeable," says the six-foot-four-inch Congressman in his soft Louisiana drawl. "We can do better as far as respecting the office. There has been too much denigration of this job by us collectively. We ought not to be ashamed of being members of Congress."

Livingston, who came to Congress in 1977, is also friendly with the press. In a recent news conference, he joked around with a group of reporters who were grilling him about the Speaker's race. "I feel like I've been hit with machine gun fire!" he said with a twinkle, after answering their questions.

Many Democrats prefer Livingston's gracious brand of politics to the rabble-rousing style of the Republican class of 1994. "I left a bottle of scotch in my desk drawer for him when he took over," says Representative David Obey, a liberal Democrat from Wisconsin, who gave up the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee to Livingston in 1995. "We've been personal friends, even though we disagree. We trust each other. We try not to surprise each other. We are both institutional men. He's got his responsibilities to his party and his philosophy, and I've got mine."

Despite his soft touch, Livingston has a list of accomplishments that does Gingrich's radical conservative movement proud. As head of Appropriations, Livingston cut $50 billion from the federal budget and eliminated more than 300 government programs, while resisting even the smallest reduction in military spending. He led the fight to provide full...