A Republican Who's Taking His Medicine

In the first few years after he was elected in 1992, North Carolina's Lauch Faircloth tried to be every bit as conservative and unbridled as that other, better-known Republican Senator from the Tar Heel State, Jesse Helms. During the Whitewater hearings, Faircloth used his seat on the Senate Banking Committee to accuse Hillary Clinton of having "lied." In the fight over health-care reform, he was one of the most vinegary opponents of the Clinton plan--or Hillary Care, as he liked to call it. And just days before Kenneth Starr was named Whitewater independent counsel in 1994, Faircloth and Helms famously lunched...