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Commentary

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Commentary

9-1

On August 17th, the President gave a second deposition, this time to a Grand Jury, investigating the truthfulness of his statements in the earlier deposition. [59] There was widespread speculation that if President Clinton did not testify truthfully to the Grand Jury, an impeachment might result.

On August 31, 1998, nine days before the Starr report went to Congress, a 1 page US News article appeared titled: "The heir apparent has a problem of his own", with the subtitle "Did Al Gore knowingly solicit illegal money?" Reno was faced with the option of extending a 30-day review of fund-raising allegations, to an "additional 90-day inquiry — the next step towards appointing a special prosecutor. That timetable could help or harm Gore. A 90-day review would last through the November congressional elections..." [60]

On September 9th, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, after a careful investigation, presented an overwhelming mass of evidence to the House of Representatives, including a strong showing that the President had committed perjury and obstruction of justice. In October the House voted 256 to 178 to begin an impeachment inquiry. A subdued, "lets not talk about it" Congressional election campaign followed, resulting in a Republican loss of five House seats. Campaign finance reform, and the possibly illegal 1996 Clinton fundraising, were not major issues in the campaign.

After the election, many assumed the question of impeaching President Clinton had been effectively resolved by the Republican House losses. However, the House Judiciary Committee went forward with hearings, on a tight timetable, and voted Articles of Impeachment in December, largely along party lines, based on their conclusion that it seemed likely that the President was guilty of both Grand Jury perjury and obstruction of justice. The House of Representatives, on a largely party line vote, concurred that President Clinton should be impeached for likely Grand Jury perjury, and for obstruction of justice based on apparent attempts to influence what his secretary, Betty Currie, might have said in possible future testimony as a witness.

The Senate was then faced with a complicated, technical legal case, involving massive amount of evidence, and a reasonable claim for the need to both examine and cross examine many witnesses, and to recall witness based on later testimony. The Senate agreed to proceed with an abbreviated trial that would not require the institutions of government to be diverted for months by an attempt to fully accommodate the requirements of trial on the legal issues associated with possible violations of Federal criminal statutes. After a long, secret deliberation, the 100 Senators, acting in a way analogous to jurors, returned a verdict of not guilty on all Articles, on a largely party line vote.

It was over. In the process, all the other "Clinton scandals" had been largely sidetracked. Campaign finance reform had been sidetracked. Everyone was sick of the whole thing.

At the beginning of this chapter, I suggested that the Clinton administration was probably doomed from day one to either some kind of an impeachment proceeding, or to re-election defeat. In the course of this chapter, you have seen the basis for this assertion. Were actions taken and events shaped by anyone before Clinton’s Paula Jones deposition to "set the stage" for the actual impeachment proceeding that occurred? Was Starr "entrapped", or "entripped", into going after a "fake" impeachment, leaving the reporting and pursuit of more serious wrongdoing to be buried in an avalanche of news coverage of a diversionary scandal? Based on the circumstances presented, this seems to be a possibility. Looking back on this history, and to the Nixon House Judiciary Committees’ discussion about "essentially private" wrongdoing, it does strike me that the actual Clinton impeachment proceeding that occurred in 1998-99 was relatively "benign" in terms of an absence in the Impeachment Articles of allegations of serious and pervasive misuse of institutions of government. Other kinds of impeachment proceedings, on other kinds of issues, appear to have been at least within the realm of possibility in early 1998. An impeachment proceeding based on the 1996 Clinton campaign finance abuses might have had an underlying basis closer to the grounds for Impeachment Articles approved by the House Judiciary Committee against President Nixon. It also strikes me that many parties to the impeachment proceeding, including the Clinton Administration, Members of Congress, and Corporate and special interest campaign contributors, all could be viewed as benefiting from a relatively "benign" impeachment — one that would discharge the antagonism of the Republican and Democratic core supporters, but would not upset the campaign finance apple cart.

This brings me to two further points. First, the question of Presidential impeachment and removal must be viewed in the context of this fact: if we are going to have laws regulating Federal campaign finance, there will be the possibility that these laws will be broken. If these laws are broken, what are we going to do? Second, if Corporations and special interests continue to dominate Congress, there will always be a "built in" institutional preference against impeachment — instability and disruption is bad for business.

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