SALON

Friday, Jan 15, 1999 8:00 PM UTC

Cracks in the bipartisan fa

As House Republicans tried to depict their impeachment vendetta as a brave civil rights struggle, the important action was all taking place off-camera.

By

Topics: Bill Clinton, Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Susan M. Collins, Jeff Sessions, Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine,

If you missed Day 1 of the impeachment trial proceedings, don’t worry. The House Republican managers’ presentation offered little new or unexpected for anyone who is remotely familiar with the case against President Clinton. Network coverage began to drop off early, which made sense, because the real action was all taking place off-camera.

There were a few notable exercises in hyperbole. Recognizing the profound unpopularity of the impeachment proceedings, especially among women and minorities, Republicans are now going to great lengths to remind Americans that the Monica Lewinsky mess grew out of the president’s alleged efforts to obstruct a federal civil rights case — and that’s Civil Rights, with a capital C and R. To hear Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R.-Wisc., defend the House case, you might have thought Clinton was on trial for bringing back Jim Crow, not lying about a sexual liaison with an office subordinate. After recounting the civil rights gains of this century, Sensenbrenner told senators “it’s not time to abandon” the country’s heroic struggle for civil rights. He challenged them to follow in the footsteps of those “who achieved equal rights for all Americans during the 1960s in Congress, in the courts and on the streets and in the buses and at the lunch counters.”

But besides Sensenbrenner’s amusing performance, there was almost no reason to watch the proceedings. They provided little clue to the only real question at issue: When will the acclaimed bipartisan agreement on trial proceedings last Friday break down? The truly significant event of recent days — and the one that points to the direction of the rest of the proceedings — was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s decision earlier this week to sidestep the original agreement by coordinating with House Republicans on the issue of witnesses.

In a move that many Senate Democrats see as a violation of the bipartisan agreement, Lott appointed a three-man committee made up only of Republican senators to coordinate standards for deciding how and when witnesses should be called. The committee is made up of Jon Kyl of Arizona, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Jeff Sessions of Alabama — each of whom have publicly called for a trial with witnesses. Senate Democrats were later invited to join the committee — as was the White House — but both declined. Both sides may argue over who is to blame, but the important point is that both sides have parted ways.

The reality is that bipartisan proceedings are all but impossible, because the underlying legitimacy of the trial itself is hotly disputed. Stung by Lott’s original attempt to organize a short trial without witnesses, House managers have stepped up their lobbying for a so-called full trial. Anything short of that would hang them out to dry, they argue, and cement the impression that the House decision to impeach the president was a rash and reckless move by a willful partisan House. That argument has gained some currency with Senate Republicans. So the GOP House managers have been pushing the Republican senators ever more aggressively to press for a full trial, not only with witnesses, but potentially with witnesses like Kathleen Willey, the former White House volunteer who was allegedly groped by the president in the Oval Office. The New York Times also revealed that the House managers tried to speak with Lewinsky, but were rebuffed by her lawyers.

Senate Democrats are beginning to realize that getting the votes to dismiss the charges against the president will be an uphill struggle at best, as will efforts to block the testimony of witnesses. John Chafee, the long-serving Rhode Island Republican, is the prototypical Northeastern Republican moderate. And he signaled over the weekend that he believes some witnesses should be called. So do Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and the normally moderate Specter.

This all puts the Senate Democrats in a funny position — similar, but significantly different from that which their House colleagues faced in late December. If the upcoming votes on dismissal and witnesses come down to party-line votes — as the shenanigans over witnesses seem to foretell — there will be little the Democrats can do but grin and bear it. With a mere 45 votes, Democrats can do nothing to affect the course of trial without a half-dozen defections from the other side. They can, of course, guarantee an eventual acquittal for the president — as long they do not suffer massive defections from their own caucus, something that seems unlikely.

That means that while Clinton will almost certainly be acquitted at the end of the trial, the Lewinsky crisis itself will almost certainly drag on. The trial’s legacy won’t be truth for the nation or vindication for the president, but bitter partisan division. The real verdict on this whole sordid mess will only be rendered when voters return to the ballot box.

Joshua Micah Marshall, a Salon contributing writer, writes Talking Points Memo. More Joshua Micah Marshall.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
294 points295 points | 68 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
262 points263 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
198 points199 points | 1 comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
56 points57 points | 8 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
49 points50 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations