RICHARD WARREN FIELD'S INTERNET COLUMN
Clinton Impeachment Post-Mortem: The Five Blunders
(First posted on February 13, 1999)
History will judge the final result of the impeachment of William Jefferson
Clinton as appropriate. But history will also judge the impeachment process
as a major fiasco, and will point to five main blunders that led the process
limping to the two suspense-less final votes, short of even a simple majority.
Blunder One: William Jefferson Clinton’s Failure to Settle the Paula
Jones Lawsuit. This blunder defies logic. The President is a lawyer.
He retained the finest legal minds in civil litigation. They all should
have been aware of the types of evidence plaintiffs in sexual harassment
lawsuits are allowed to pursue in discovery. Any skilled negotiator will
tell you that if you are holding a bad hand, you settle, and settle quickly
before anyone sees your worst cards. President Clinton knew he held the
Monica Lewinsky card in his hand. It has been publicly acknowledged that
President Clinton suspected she would not keep their “inappropriate conduct”
secret, despite her assurances to the contrary. Of course, his attorneys
didn’t know specifically about the Lewinsky card, but we have to believe
they cautioned him that if there was anything like the Lewinsky affair
lurking in his background, he would be vulnerable. So was it stupidity,
negligence, or astonishing arrogance and over-confidence that caused William
Jefferson Clinton to go forward with the defense of the Paula Jones lawsuit?
Blunder Two: Failure of William Jefferson Clinton to Deliver a Sincere,
Effective Mea Culpa Speech. His initial “confession” speech seemed
almost calculated to infuriate. The speech was a petulant, begrudging admission.
He admitted to some vague wrongdoing while attacking the people who had
discovered his transgressions, as if they were to blame for his conduct.
His words were clearly chosen to avoid accepting full responsibility, crafted
carefully with legalese and hair-splitting. His attitude begged for a fight.
And the partisan House Republicans, bruised by years of battles with Clinton,
and Democrats across the aisle, did not need a lot of encouragement to
pursue the unrepentant President vigorously.
Blunder Three: The Mishandling of the “Starr Referral” by the House
Judiciary Committee (Particularly the No-Witnesses Decision). The
Republicans should have paid much closer attention to the precedents set
by the Rodino committee, which brought impeachment articles against Richard
Nixon in 1974. The Rodino committee examined the evidence carefully and
directly, behind closed doors. This occurred over an extended period of
time, which assured that the committee would avoid rash decisions. If the
Hyde committee had followed the same procedure, they would have either
developed a stronger case against the President, or would have determined
that there were serious problems with both the facts, and whether the allegations
were really impeachable offenses. Then, they could have abandoned the process
before egos had been invested in it. By creating an immediate public spectacle,
they guaranteed that committee members would dig in their heels and take
inflexible positions before becoming familiar with all the facts. Face-saving
then became one of the most important considerations driving the entire
process.
The mostly unfavorable public reaction to the “Starr referral” also drove
Henry Hyde into a terrible decision—limiting the time the House Judiciary
Committee would spend on the matter.This led to the no-witnesses decision.
Hyde was clearly influenced to rush his committee’s work because of the
public’s distaste for the case. When the Rodino committee first took up
the Watergate case, and related matters, public opinion was split. Many
sincerely felt that a partisan Democratic Congress was manufacturing a
scandal out of a “third-rate burglary.” If the Watergate case had been
dumped on the public the way the Clinton impeachment case was, would the
outcome have been different? The process certainly would have been—members
of Congress would have rushed to politics over statesmanship, and partisanship
over solemn cooperation.
The Republicans argued that they had evidence already gathered by the independent
counsel. The Rodino committee could have relied on evidence gathered in
the Senate Watergate hearings. But the Rodino committee correctly did their
own work. The Hyde committee did the equivalent of copying an encyclopedia
article and turning it in as their own term paper. Were they in a rush
to deal with the “Starr Referral” before the new Congress took office in
1999? If this is true, then have proven themselves to be the vindictive
partisans their opponents have accused them of being.
I suspect that even Kenneth Starr expected the House to do their own work.
I do not believe he will merit a lot of blame from historians for the impeachment
fiasco. The law that created his office will receive considerable blame,
and we can expect to see that law changed expeditiously. But the independent
counsel should have been no more than a catalyst—his work should not have
turned into the only direct evidence the House would rely on to vote the
matter into Senate consideration.
Blunder Four: Congress’s Failure to Understand Fully its Constitutional
Role. The impeachment section of the Constitution was clearly intended
as one of the famous “checks and balances” built in to the Constitution.
Congress has the same powers of impeachment and removal over the Judicial
Branch. The idea was to protect the citizens of the United State from a
President who has become so corrupt that he endangers the function of government
in a free society. “Punishment” is not the role of the Congress. Congress’s
only Constitutional role as “punishers” is clearly defined in Section Five
of Article One, and that role is limited to punishing their own members.
Otherwise, their sole Constitutional role is to impeach and remove, or
not to impeach and remove. In fact, the way our government is set up, the
Legislative branch is the only one of the three branches that has no direct
role in the punishment of United States citizens. But the “punishment”
red herring had Democratic House members trying to draft and consider censure
resolutions, and Senators flirting with such strange concepts as “findings
of fact” and their own versions of censure. “Blunder Two,” President Clinton’s
failure to take responsibility or show remorse, contributed to this mistake
by causing members of Congress to feel they had to let him know he had
committed some serious wrongs. But punishment is up to the Executive and
Judicial branches, and they may yet have business with William Jefferson
Clinton.
Blunder Five: Failure to See the Applicable Lessons from the Johnson
Impeachment. The United States of 1868 seems totally alien to the
present day. But history will record that there was one common bond between
these impeachments—rabid partisanship. The United States of 1868 had just
completed a cataclysmic Civil War. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was so conscious
ofnational unity that he chose a border-state Democrat as his running mate,
and they ran as a Union ticket, not a Republican ticket. He was obviously
sensitive to avoiding partisanship and regionalism. With victory in hand
in 1868, the Republicans now controlled all the mechanisms of government,
except the Presidency.
William Jefferson Clinton is the first post Cold War President. Partisanship
lines have grown sharper and harsher. Now that the United States has lost
its adversary of the last fifty years, the need for unity at home may seem
diminished. Could it be that without the Communist/Soviet Union threat,
we have people turning their energies against each other, as they reach
for power in the absence of a common enemy? And is this what they have
in common with their post Civil War historical colleagues? This could turn
out to be the least evident, but the most substantial blunder of the group,
because the American people will grow tired of petty partisanship, and
naked grabs for power at the expense of effectiveness and fairness. This
will lead to more third party runs, more Jesse Venturas, maybe even at
the national level, if the current partisanship rages on.
So President Clinton has avoided becoming the first President to be removed
as a result of the impeachment provisions in the Constitution. And, this
was the correct judgement under the circumstances. History will vindicate
the final result. But the impeachment process fiasco will forever exist
as an example of how government is made up of individuals, and individuals
even at these levels of power, are capable of multiple incompetent blunders.
Copyright © 1999 by Richard Warren Field
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