WHO'S NEXT? LIVINGSTON STEPS UP.

Byline: Francis X. Clines The New York Times

All year long, Rep. Robert Livingston made no effort to mask his lean and hungry look.

``I'm running whether they like it or not,'' the Louisiana Republican declared in his genial, plodding way last March when he ignored the warnings of shocked party leaders that he dare not go around openly campaigning to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker.

``I can sew it up,'' Livingston announced serenely, months before many caucus members were ready to listen to him in his unalloyed ambition.

But he kept to his rounds and they are listening now, reeling from the trauma of Tuesday's election failures and the even bigger aftershock of Gingrich's decision to resign the speakership Friday night in the face of the uprising brought to a head with Livingston's public challenge of his old friend.

``I love him dearly,'' Livingston declared in disowning the knife-wielding role of a Brutus in confronting Gingrich with the message that his leadership time was over.

In the Republican scramble that followed, talk emerged of a flood of other possible candidates, but none would prove so bold as Livingston in daring to bell the wily gray cat in the first place. His boldness forced Republicans to weigh the tempting possibility of forgoing an all-out fight in favor of someone as unsensational as Livingston - an 11-term, 55-year-old traditionalist who quietly cuts legislative deals as if politics were carpentry, not the thrust-and-chop martial arts that Gingrich often seemed to prefer.

In the first wave of potential rivals, other lawmakers being mentioned included Bill Archer, the Ways and Means chairman, Christopher Cox of California, James Talent of Missouri, and others, with one of Livingston's lieutenants spreading the word that a host of national Republican leaders had been calling Livingston encouragingly in the wake of the election.

The callers supposedly included Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and his brother, Jeb, the governor-elect of Florida, as well as Govs. George Pataki of New York, John Engler of Michigan and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin.

``So it comes down to leadership,'' Livingston said gently in formally throwing down the gauntlet, sounding as taciturn as an anti-hero in a black-and-white Western. By nightfall, Gingrich had decided not to put up a fight.

In his long, unspectacular months of campaigning for the speakership, Livingston slowly measured House Republicans' wariness at the clenched-fist image of Gingrich that, they feared, was giving voters ever deeper pause at the Republican voting lever.

By contrast, Livingston's supporters found him soothingly colorless in announcing his challenge. He talked of being a ``stay-at-home'' House manager, a ``straightforward'' caucus leader, but, mercifully in the view of Gingrich critics, hardly another ``revolutionary'' to generate heated headlines from the ramparts.

With Republicans far from settled on their new speaker, the stolid Livingston presented his own sales pitch as a politician whose instincts run to fiscal fine print more than combative sound bites.

While Gingrich was spending the past four years fatally compounding his reputation for scrappiness, Livingston was serving as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, building power as the ``Pope of Congress'' with ranking authority over the ``cardinals,'' the 13 subcommittee chairmen who handle the nation's major fiscal legislation. ``He holds the checkbook,'' one member noted reverently.

Livingston, a dedicated study in gray amid a day of Republican turmoil, indeed offered himself as a pontiff of sorts for House Republicans - a leader who supporters say could best bridge jagged party factions, cut back on aggressive oratory and deliver major bills to passage.

As Gingrich was toppled, rivals already were targeting Livingston as just the sort of legislative technocrat, wide-spectrum compromiser and back-room friend of Democrats whom the revolutionaries of 1994 loved to castigate. But stark Republican losses in the past two congressional elections had dampened the fervor of revolutionaries and moderates alike for the style of Gingrich.

``I think we're a party that might be ready to have a low-profile speaker,'' said Rep. Joe Scarborough, one of the most outspoken firebrands from the 1994 Contract With America class.

``We have given Bob Livingston more hell than anybody, but now we want the trains to run on time,'' said Scarborough, a Florida lawmaker, echoing one of Livingston's mundanely phrased speakership promises. Scarborough said the election Tuesday delivered the bitter lesson that Republican campaign attack advertisements were no substitute for solid delivery on the workaday issues.