On the day that his presidency was defaced by the permanent scar of impeachment, Bill Clinton’s fate came down to the better of two bad options: the Trial of the Century or the Deal of the Century.
What should have been a day focused on a single, fundamental question of impeachment instead became a multilayered exemplar of Clinton’s political life: crisis, chaos, tension. Rarely has a day in the capital been so full of all three.
With the majestic image of the White House as a backdrop, the president whose shame is shared only by Andrew Johnson was almost dismissive of the significance of his impeachment, framing it as the unfair action of a partisan band of Republicans with an unceasing desire to do him in.
Always mindful of staging, Clinton spoke near the Rose Garden with a cultural rainbow of Democrats standing behind him, with the obvious intended message that much of the diverse nation supports him. Perhaps of greater symbolic importance, he walked arm in arm, then hand in hand with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, clearly reminding Americans that his wife, at least publicly, had forgiven him.
He showed the combative spirit that has served him in campaigns, vowing to continue to serve until “the last hour of the last day of my term.” The word resign never passed his lips.
At the same time, he appealed for the end of “the politics of personal destruction” and “the poisonous venom of excessive partisanship.” And he pleaded for proportionality, foreshadowing the essence of his argument to prospective jurors in the Senate: The proposed punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
An hour later, as if to underscore his point about proportionality and moral relativism, the president again addressed the nation announcing the end of the bombing campaign in Iraq.
The tension of the day in the House over his impeachment, with more bitter words exchanged, only added to a picture of a process driven largely by a partisan engine. When Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) announced he was resigning from a House speakership he had yet to formally assume because of marital infidelity, he challenged Clinton to follow him. Instead, Democrats turned that offer inside out, labeling Livingston a victim much like the president.
Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House Democratic leader, who frequently opposes the president on policy and is considered a presidential rival to Vice President Al Gore, became the president’s unequaled champion on Saturday.
He said Livingston’s decision to step down is a “terrible capitulation to the negative forces that are consuming our political system. . . . We need to stop destroying imperfect people at the altar of unattainable morality.”
At the White House ceremony, Gephardt stood shoulder to shoulder with Gore and deemed the House action “a partisan vote that was a disgrace to our country.”
The charges against Clinton, of course, not only will not go away. They actually gain weight in the Senate, where the ultimate stakes are his conviction and removal.
There was a constitutional gravity to the instant when Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who had on the House floor called the president a “serial violator of the oath,” handed over the articles of impeachment in bound cover to the secretary of the Senate.
The two of four articles that carried had done so with thin, party-line majorities, so the talk of a deal is in the air. But there is also talk that the case, as a matter of constitutional obligation, must proceed in the tradition-bound Senate.
Clearly, the Senate, the body that George Washington called the “saucer that cools the tea,” is a different place from the raucous House.
By derivation, impeachments in the British House of Commons were referred to as “the groans of the people” to be judged by the more distant, discerning House of Lords.
The dynamic in the Senate is anything but certain. In any American courtroom, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, but in the political-legal hybrid of a Senate trial, the burden is actually more on the president to prove not his innocence but that his transgressions are not the “high crimes and misdemeanors” contemplated by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and George Mason.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a former House member who would sit in judgment of the president at a trial, said after watching the impeachment vote: “This is a very sad day for me. As I watched the proceedings, I thought this is the last chapter as we close the Gingrich era, marked by division, attack and partisanship. Today was the ultimate expression of that political thought.”
He strongly favors censure, saying he hoped the Senate “can resolve this without the necessity of a trial.”
“It’s up to the Senate to calm things down and be deliberate,” Durbin said. “Traditionally that is our role. Living up to that standard depends on the men and women serving there.”
He said he has detected no sense among Democrats in the Senate that the president should resign. Durbin said that Clinton has exhibited a remarkable ability to lead despite the crisis of scandal.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), called the historic impeachment vote “an insult to the Constitution and the country,” a resolution “irreparably poisoned by the vindictive partisanship of the House Republican extremists.”
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has insisted a trial will go forward, and he will face extraordinary pressure from his House Republican colleagues and core constituencies to do so.
He faces the challenge of keeping the 55 Republican senators in line. Some, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who challenged Lott for majority leader, have shown independent streaks.
Others, such as Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), would almost certainly balk at any deal. Ashcroft, one of the first senators to call for Clinton’s resignation, is scheduled to announce his candidacy for president on Jan. 5 in Springfield, Mo., the day before the Senate reconvenes to consider a trial.
Far from intimidated by the White House, social conservatives are emboldened by the House action. Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition, praised the House vote and called on the president to “spare the nation any further turmoil and resign from his office.”
The early numbers favor Clinton, as few at this point can see how Senate could get the 67 votes necessary for the president’s conviction and removal. As ever, the White House also points to public polls that show Clinton enjoys robust job approval ratings, even with the stain of impeachment.
But the bizarre and often violent twists to this controversy have demonstrated there is little comfort in a day’s assumed knowledge. Politics is often a function of momentum. At this point, however, it is conflicting, moving in all directions.
