The "Coup" Bomb
By all
accounts, the House of Representatives is about to impeach President Clinton.
For the past year, he and his surrogates have deployed nearly every argument to
halt this process. They have won over the public, according to polls, but they
haven't persuaded enough members of the Republican congressional majority. The
swing votes in Congress are turning against Clinton, pushing him to the brink
of a Senate trial. But Clinton has a weapon of last resort in his rhetorical
arsenal. He can accuse the GOP of staging a "coup."
Going into the
impeachment vote, the Republicans' message is that they're putting principle
above politics. "A thermometer is not a terribly useful thing on matters of
conscience and matters of principle," argued House Judiciary Committee Chairman
Henry Hyde, R-Ill., on ABC's This Week . And what is the GOP's principle?
"We congressmen were sent there to protect our Constitution, protect our rule
of law," said Hyde. "And if we ignore that because it isn't popular, then I
think we do real damage to our form of government. ... The Constitution means
something. The rule of law means something. We're a government of laws and not
of men."
Moreover, the Republicans hold out hope that they can
parlay these principles into good politics by persuading the public that
Clinton's actions merit impeachment. "It has been my hope that as this process
plays itself out--the hearings and the debate and the argument--that this would
have an instructive effect on the American people, and they might begin to pay
attention as to why this is very serious, what this is all about, namely
protecting the rule of law, and change their opinion," Hyde explained. "So we
have to frame the issue as to whether the American people want to tolerate
[perjury] in a chief executive--the one man who is sworn under the Constitution
to take care that the laws are faithfully executed."
The coup argument
reverses this logic. It parlays good politics into principle, by framing the
ouster of a politically popular president as an affront to democracy, the
Constitution, and the rule of law. It combines three points Clinton and his
surrogates have been making for months. The first is that the public opposes
impeachment. The November elections were generally interpreted, rightly or
wrongly, as a popular verdict against impeachment, and today's New York
Times and Washington Post polls underscore the same pattern.
Sixty-four percent of Americans approve of Clinton's job performance, 61
percent don't want him removed from office, 64 percent don't want their
representative to vote for impeachment, and 59 percent favor a censure
resolution, which Republicans refuse to let the House vote on.
The second point is that the impeachment juggernaut has
been driven exclusively by the GOP. Not a single Democrat voted for any of the
four impeachment articles approved by the House Judiciary Committee, and only a
handful of Democrats are expected to vote for impeachment on the House floor.
In the Times poll, 62 percent of Americans said Republicans voted for
impeachment not on the merits but mostly to hurt Clinton and the Democrats. In
the Post poll, two-thirds said most members of Congress would cast their
impeachment votes based on "partisan politics" rather than "the facts of the
case."
The third point is that
many of the legislators who will vote on impeachment are "lame ducks." Some
were voted out of office in November. Others didn't seek re-election. The new
Congress chosen by the voters will have five fewer Republicans. But the old
Congress, including the old Republicans, will decide whether to impeach the
president.
As impeachment draws nearer, the White House and
congressional Democrats have been escalating their rhetoric along these lines.
They have accused Republicans of trying to "defy the will of the people,"
"overturn the votes of the American people," and "undo the last election."
"It's a sad day for America when extreme elements of one party seek to impeach
the president on a party-line vote in a lame-duck Congress," White House
Special Counsel Greg Craig declared Saturday. "Nothing about this process has
been fair. Nothing about this process has been bipartisan. Nothing about this
process has won the confidence of the American people."
The escalation culminated in an assertion by the
Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., that the
impeachment process "does sometimes, to some people, begin to take on the
appearance of a coup." In that explosive word, the Democrats' three criticisms
of the process--unpopularity, partisanship, and the participation of lawmakers
who lost their seats in the election--combined with the force of a
thermonuclear reaction. Republicans reacted with anger. "This is the orderly
process of the Constitution, not troops in the streets," said one member of the
committee. "Mr. Gore is a man of very similar views to Mr. Clinton," said
another, "so there's not going to be an abrupt change in the policies that the
president of the United States advances."
The Republicans have
reason to worry. Imagine the uproar when televisions across the country show
the first Democrat rising on the House floor, in a thundering crescendo, to
denounce the Republican "coup" against the president. Imagine the barrage of
video clips on the nightly news showing Clinton, Hyde, and other figures in the
drama being hounded by reporters as to whether a "coup" is in progress. Yes,
the GOP can rebut this charge. But the charge is easy to understand, whereas
the rebuttals are subtle, complicated, and technical. It's too bad Republicans
have spent the past year mocking legal distinctions. That's all they'll have
left when the bomb goes off.
Recent "Frame
Games"
"": Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein share the same bag of
tricks. (
posted Wednesday, Dec. 2)
"": Was Clinton's decision to call off the Iraq attack cowardly or
courageous? (posted Wednesday, Nov. 18, 1998)
