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Hyde brings decades of experience and legal insight to a difficult task
Updated November 18, 1998
7:51 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP)— When Henry Hyde hit Capitol Hill over two
decades ago, his anti-abortion crusade earned him a reputation as a
fringe conservative. Gradually he built standing as one of the
House's elder statesmen.
Now the 74-year-old Illinois Republican has taken on his most
visible and thorny leadership role to date Ä presiding over
impeachment hearings.
Hyde combines deep religious beliefs with a trial lawyer's
combative instincts. He is known for an ability to weave verbal
attacks and wit into lofty speeches, a love of worthy adversaries,
and an evenhandedness that commands respect even from Democrats on
his highly polarized Judiciary Committee.
He has shown distaste for the heated anti-Clinton rhetoric of
some GOP colleages. But he also resists pressure to back down.
"It's an onerous, miserable, rotten duty, but we have to do it
or we break faith with the people who sent us here," he told a
divided House the day it authorized the inquiry.
Raised an Irish Catholic Democrat, the 6-foot-3 Hyde attended
Georgetown University on a basketball scholarship. He dropped out
in 1944 to fight in World War II but later returned to college and
law school, and spent 10 years as a Chicago-area lawyer.
By then, he had switched to the Republican Party. In 1966, he
was elected to the Illinois House Ä rising to majority leader in
just four years.
Congress beckoned six years later. Soon after taking office, he
rose from obscurity with his passionate arguments for curtailing
federal abortion funding. The "Hyde amendment" now is a fixture,
included in congressional spending bills every year since 1977. He
is a vocal opponent of the procedure that critics call
"partial-birth abortions."
But though Hyde is intensely conservative on some issues, he
confounds fellow Republicans on others. He opposed term limits for
Congress and advocated family leave legislation. At the 1996 GOP
convention, he prevented a floor fight over anti-abortion language
to help nominee Bob Dole.
In 1983, Hyde opposed conservatives' effort to expel Illinois
Republican Daniel Crane for sexual misconduct with a House page,
saying, "The Judeo-Christian tradition says, `Hate the sin, love
the sinner."'
He has been at the center of debate over other officials'
conduct, as well. He was a House manager for the 1986 impeachment
trial of Judge Harry Claiborne. In 1987, Hyde was one of President
Reagan's chief defenders as an appointee to the special panel
investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.
Hyde was the only director of the former Clyde Savings and Loan
who refused to contribute to an $850,000 settlement last year that
ended a federal government lawsuit alleging negligence in the
thrift's collapse.
His role investigating the president has brought an unfamiliar
spotlight to his own personal life. A widower with four children,
Hyde recently acknowledged "youthful indiscretions" after an
Internet magazine reported that he had an extramarital affair 30
years ago, when he was a 41-year-old state legislator.
—Jennifer Loven
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