”No one imagines that the Senate will come close to obtaining the two-thirds majority needed to convict the President and remove him from office,” The New York Times asserted on Dec. 13, in a ”Week in Review” piece by David E. Rosenbaum.
In case anyone had missed the point, The Times repeated it the next day, in a news report by Adam Clymer.
Wrong. Actually, I’d put the odds of removal (or forced resignation) at about one in three.
These latest exercises in wishful thinking recall the front-page assertion by The Times on April 2 that ”it is now politically inconceivable that Congress will consider impeachment.” That was in a ”news analysis” by John M. Broder.
In fact, President Clinton may well be ousted, as people focus more on the facts, the law, and the dangers of having a crippled President for more than two years. Public opinion, which appears to be moving already, could come to favor resignation or removal so decisively as to touch off a wave of Democratic calls for Clinton to go. That would set the stage for his trial, conviction, and removal by a solidly bipartisan Senate vote if he won’t spare us the trouble by resigning.
A Senate trial would be far shorter (a few days or at most weeks of floor proceedings), and less traumatic and pornographic, than the White House and its media allies would like us to think. In this scenario, Al Gore would probably become President sometime in February.
On the other hand, if public opinion solidifies into immutable support for Clinton, even in the days following Jan. 6, when the Senate formally receives the Clinton impeachment case, the stage will be set for a quick and relatively painless censure vote ending any trial either at its inception or after a few days. The reason I so stress public opinion is not merely the presumption that as a matter of political self-interest, Senators–who are accountable to broader cross sections of the public than are House members–will heed their constituents’ wishes.
The main reason is that while I am convinced that President Clinton has committed high crimes warranting removal, I also believe that it would create a crisis of political legitimacy for the Senate to remove him if the considered opinion of most voters, after the constitutional (and educational) process has played itself out, remains opposed.
My view is admittedly in some tension with the language and immediate intent of the Framers of the Constitution. They strongly suggest that Senate trials in impeachment cases should turn on facts and law, not public opinion.
But the Convention of 1787 was long before the 17th Amendment, which provided in 1913 for popular election of Senators. It was even longer before electronic media and constant polling had, like hydraulic forces, made our polity far more sensitive to public opinion than the Framers envisioned when they created a ”republican form of government.”
The House’s defiance of the still-unsettled polls is welcome evidence that we have not yet succumbed entirely to government by plebiscite and propaganda. But government-by-elites is also gone. And the Constitution’s deliberately flexible language gives Senators more than enough discretion to take account of the democratized nature of our modern republic. So even those of us who strongly favor removal should bow to public opinion if it hardens behind the President as the process nears the ultimate decision.
The Constitution also gives Senators ample discretion to avoid a trial, or to end it at any time, by a simple majority vote (as provided in Senate rules). Neither Republicans nor Democrats have any reason to drag themselves and the nation through a prolonged or painful exercise in futility. The leadership could work out a bipartisan resolution censuring the President for his multiple lies under oath and other alleged crimes and misconduct. Or the 45 Democrats (minus any defectors) could persuade six (or more) Republicans to join them in ending the matter with or without a censure.
But if the public turns strongly against Clinton in the coming weeks, a trial would probably proceed, because it would then be quite thinkable that 12 or more Senate Democrats might join the 55 Republicans (minus any defectors) to produce the 67 votes needed to convict and remove the President.
While polls have for months shown strikingly consistent opposition to impeachment, Clinton’s support is neither as wide as the spinners pretend nor as deep as it is wide. Despite the President’s suggestion on Dec. 13 that ”some three-quarters of the American people” opposed impeachment, the anti-impeachment poll numbers have never been higher than 60 percent to 67 percent. Much of this anti-impeachment sentiment has apparently reflected a simple desire that the whole spectacle stop. More people may now see that the way to stop it is to get rid of Bill Clinton, not Kenneth Starr.
Among the scattered signs that public opinion is on the move is a Dec. 14 CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, reporting that anti- impeachment sentiment had dropped from 66 percent to 59 percent in a week, and a Dec. 15 John Zogby poll, putting it at 52 percent. Most stunningly, a Dec. 15 ABC News-Washington Post poll reported that 58 percent of respondents said that if Clinton is impeached, he should resign rather than fight removal in a Senate trial. If that 58 percent holds, and if it translates into clear majority support, the President could well lose his job.
Public opinion has been shaped, until now, in substantial part by the Clinton propaganda machine’s campaign to distort the evidence and law and to demonize his adversaries, rather than by close scrutiny of the facts and the legal and constitutional standards. But with the focus on a Senate trial, the White House would not have Starr, Newt Gingrich, or Tom DeLay to kick around any more.
As the Clinton camp’s diversions and distractions give way, the focus will settle sharply on the facts. Meanwhile, the Clinton camp’s claims that a Senate trial would be a yearlong, X- rated national nightmare will be exposed as wildly exaggerated. It would be reasonably dignified, simple, and short, with perhaps three days to three weeks (as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has forecast) of floor action.
Most of the factual allegations underlying the House vote to impeach are either undisputed or supported by overwhelming evidence. The central contested issues of fact are whether Clinton lied under oath, especially in his Aug. 17 grand jury testimony, about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, his alleged efforts to coach her and his secretary Betty Currie to lie and hide gifts, and his dealings with Vernon Jordan regarding Lewinsky’s affidavit. So the only witnesses the House managers would need to call would apparently be Lewinsky, Currie, Jordan, and perhaps one or two others.
Their testimony would not take long. Any Lewinsky testimony deemed by a Senate majority to be too salacious for public consumption could be heard in closed session or off camera. (Remember, federal criminal trials and Supreme Court proceedings are always off camera.) Nor would it take long for the President to testify in his own defense, should he choose to do so.
The only way the trial would take more than a few days would be if the President were to drag it out by (for example) calling witnesses of marginal relevance to attack Lewinsky’s credibility by detailing her admitted tendencies to lie and embellish. But this seems a counterproductive and thus improbable defense tactic, because it would be a transparently dishonest and abusive effort by an incorrigible liar to fight the facts–and to savage his former 22-year-old girlfriend–to the bitter end.
Lewinsky’s credibility is relevant only with regard to a few elements of the case, in particular the proof that Clinton lied when he swore to the grand jury on Aug. 17 that he had never touched her intimately, and thus never had ”sexual relations” even under his own narrow, after-the-fact, implausible interpretation of that phrase as defined at his Jan. 17 deposition. Almost nobody will ever believe that, no matter how much the Clinton team tarnishes Lewinsky, and Clinton would be blamed for forcing the sort of long, ugly trial he has said would hurt the nation.
If Clinton’s support does crumble, clearing the way for either conviction or a bipartisan move to force his resignation, might he resign?
Probably not. But perhaps so, if something were in it for Bill Clinton. One possible inducement would be a bipartisan Senate vote calling upon Cli nton to resign and upon Vice President Gore to pardon his crimes if (and only if) Clinton does resign.
I, for one, would rather see a bipartisan vote to convict and remove the President. Let Gore pardon him then, if he wants.