Unforgiven
Seconds after the Senate
voted last Friday not to remove President Clinton from office, network
producers stamped the words "ACQUITTED" and "NOT GUILTY" across the nation's
television screens. "This is a real slap at the House prosecutors," declared
CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer, echoing colleagues on other networks. "CLINTON
ACQUITTED DECISIVELY," announced the New York Times . Sunday's talk show
pundits scavenged the battlefield, pronouncing Republicans the losers.
Not so fast. Though the
Senate has cast its votes, history's verdict remains in doubt. The spin war
over who was right or wrong doesn't end with Clinton's acquittal. And the early
conventional wisdom--that the GOP has lost the fight--rests on three erroneous
assumptions.
The first fallacy is that the debate over Clinton's guilt
is an up-or-down question. Actually, it's a spectrum. Pundits, crippled by
short memories, focus on the public's opposition to Clinton's impeachment and
removal. But this was only the last stage of a gradually escalating scandal.
The first question, unresolved until Clinton's Aug. 17 confession, was whether
he had done something immoral. The second question, debated throughout the
Starr investigation and the House Judiciary Committee's inquiry, was whether
Clinton had done something illegal. The third question--whether he had done
something impeachable--didn't come to the fore until the House impeachment
debate and the Senate trial.
It's true that by the
time the Republicans got to the third stage, they had lost the public. But on
the first question, the polls remain squarely on their side. In a
post-acquittal Los Angeles Times survey, only 24 percent of respondents
say Clinton shares their moral values. Likewise, in a CNN poll, 57 percent
express a negative opinion of him as a person (only 35 percent express a
positive opinion), 59 percent say he has diminished the presidency's stature,
and 54 percent say he would "commit adultery if he knew he could get away with
it." Only 39 percent say the Senate's verdict vindicates Clinton, 53 percent
say it does not. These numbers show how Republicans can rewrite the scandal: by
sliding the debate back across the spectrum to the moral question and
portraying every vote to acquit Clinton as a vote to exonerate him.
This is why Democrats have scrambled to avoid a fight over
Clinton's morals and to assure the public that he's been sufficiently
castigated. They denounce his conduct at every opportunity. Having failed to
pass a censure resolution Friday, they signed it anyway and put it in the
Congressional Record . They denied that in acquitting Clinton they had
voted to exonerate him morally. They even touted the 45 to 50 Republican votes
to convict Clinton--which they had unanimously opposed--as suitable punishment.
The votes for conviction "confirmed the humiliation of the president," Sen.
Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., observed approvingly. Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle, D-S.D., called the verdict "a rebuke" of Clinton and asserted that
"this whole process ... has been a level of punishment that was commensurate
with the failures of the president to act appropriately."
Several Democratic
senators, assisted by the media, depicted the House prosecutors' failure to win
a majority vote in the Senate as a disgraceful setback for the GOP. This
argument reflects a second fallacy: that the Republicans are out to get Clinton
and that their vindication depends on his repudiation by Congress. In
post-acquittal comments, some Republican senators did try to portray the Senate
as united in its denunciation of the president. "We're going to end up with
two-thirds of the Senate either having voted to convict or to censure," Sen.
Robert Bennett, R-Utah, told ABC. "And that, I think, sends a very strong,
historic message to our children." ABC commentator George Stephanopoulos seized
on Bennett's remark, "It's the first Republican talking point you see: that
two-thirds have voted either to convict or censure."
But Stephanopoulos is missing half the story. There are two
Republican camps. The pedagogical camp, led by Bennett and Sen. Orrin Hatch,
R-Utah, wants to unite the country in condemnation of Clinton's behavior,
thereby resolving the impeachment issue. The political camp, led by Sen. Phil
Gramm, R-Texas, and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, wants to divide the
country and keep the issue alive for the next election. The pedagogical
Republicans want Clinton punished and repentant. The political Republicans want
him un punished and un repentant, so the public will stay angry at
him and his party. They're not interested in using congressional Democrats to
hurt Clinton. They're interested in using Clinton to hurt congressional
Democrats.
The political
Republicans' first objective was to kill the censure resolution. They argued,
correctly, that Democrats were using it for "political cover." But the GOP's
decision to kill it for the same reason was no less political. First DeLay
blocked it in the House, then Gramm killed it in the Senate, insisting that
senators render an all-or-nothing verdict. According to the New York
Times , Gramm had warned his Republican colleagues that censure would muddle
the partisan rift over impeachment, making the issue less potent in 2000.
Friday evening, he got what he wanted. In a tone of disbelief, Schieffer told
CBS viewers, "The trial ended without even a verbal reprimand from the
Senate."
Gramm's allies proclaimed far and wide that Clinton had
escaped untouched. "[It] looks as though, as the Democrats put it, a reckless,
reprehensible, and irresponsible man will remain our president for the next two
years," said DeLay. "He won. He always wins," agreed Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.
"Children now have the lesson that lying, cheating, and breaking the law are
permissible," moaned Christian Coalition leader Randy Tate. On Meet the
Press , Republican strategist Mary Matalin accused the White House of
"gloating." On This Week , the chief House prosecutor, Henry Hyde,
R-Ill., called Clinton's acquittal another "skirmish in the ongoing culture
war." Former Vice President Dan Quayle signaled his intention to pound Vice
President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign for having defended
Clinton's character.
Democrats think they're
immune to this attack because they've got both ends of the spectrum covered: On
the removal question, the polls are on Clinton's side, and on the moral
question, on which the polls are against Clinton, Democrats have acknowledged
and condemned his misconduct. This is the third fallacy: Democrats have
overlooked the legal question in the middle. On that question, they have failed
to reconcile themselves to the polls. In a Gallup survey shortly before the
Senate verdict, 73 percent of respondents said Clinton was guilty of perjury. A
post-acquittal CBS poll finds that 78 percent think he's guilty, though only 32
percent think his crimes merited expulsion from office. And in a post-acquittal
Washington Post survey, 48 percent still say Clinton should "face
criminal charges at some point."
Yet every Democratic senator voted "not guilty" last
Friday. A few have conceded Clinton's guilt on the perjury charge, but the rest
have either denied that the case was proved or have dodged the question by
arguing that either way, the alleged crimes wouldn't merit the president's
removal. And while their censure resolution may immunize them against the
charge of moral indifference, it doesn't protect them from the charge of
indifference to Clinton's apparent lawbreaking. Its language pointedly avoids
accusing him of perjury or obstruction of justice.
Republicans smell their
opportunity. At their press conference after the Senate verdict, several House
prosecutors interrupted their sermons against "the polls" to point out where
the public agreed with them. "We take great satisfaction ... that [one poll]
showed that 75 or 80 percent of the people ... recognized that the president
had committed falsehoods under oath," said Rep. George Gekas, R-Pa. Rep. Jim
Rogan, R-Calif., cited the same figure. The public, "by 80 percent or more,
believes that he's committed perjury," chimed in Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.
"The political cleansing that did not happen through the impeachment process"
leaves Clinton "with a great and serious burden."
Republican strategists will make Democrats carry that
burden into the elections. On Fox News Sunday , when Democratic Party
chairman Roy Romer ritually expressed his "disappointment in [Clinton's]
personal behavior," GOP chairman Jim Nicholson shot back, "I find it
interesting that Roy Romer would say [Democrats] are on the high ground, when
73 percent of the people say his president lied to them, and over half of them
say he obstructed justice." On Face the Nation , political consultant
Ralph Reed went further, calling the scandal Al Gore's "albatross" because "he
acted as an advocate for a president who 73 percent of the American people
believe committed perjury and only 24 percent think is honest and
trustworthy."
Pundits often say
history is written by the winners. They think this maxim shows how clever and
cynical they are. Actually, it's half of a circular argument, and their failure
to grasp this irony exposes their naiveté. Thirty-five years ago, Barry
Goldwater was a landslide loser. Today he's the father of the conservative
movement. Winners, it turns out, are written by the historians. And the contest
to write the history of Bill Clinton's impeachment is just beginning.
