Lawmakers’ Impeachment Stand: No Comment

Just days before they are likely to cast an epic vote on whether to impeach a president for only the second time in U.S. history, most members of Congress can be found hiding under their beds.

A usually long-winded group known to wax on effortlessly about everything from what to name an airport to the price of wheat, the majority of them clam up when the subject turns to impeachment.

And in a city where lawmaking can be as predictable and scripted as a situation comedy, it is a rare event indeed for Washington to be this tongue-tied.

One House member instructed her staff to respond to all impeachment inquiries by saying that she was unavailable or by calling back after the reporter’s deadline.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) will not answer impeachment questions and has threatened to give a foreign policy speech on the House floor every night in an effort to change the subject.

Rep. John Edward Porter (R-Ill.) came out early against the president’s removal, then promptly dropped from sight.

And after one of their weekly Tuesday lunches, Senate Democrats who normally race in front of waiting cameras of the Washington media ducked out a separate exit to avoid questions about the president’s fate.

California Delegation Stays Mostly Mum

The California delegation mirrors the rest of the House. After volumes of depositions, hand-delivered copies of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report, four weeks of Judiciary Committee investigations and hours of talk show spin, two-thirds of the Californians say they have yet to make up their mind.

“I think most of them are hoping something will turn up at the last minute--the proverbial other shoe will drop,” said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont. “But if you look around, Washington is littered with shoes and Bill Clinton is still standing.”

All but four or five Democrats are expected to vote against impeachment if, as expected, the matter reaches the House floor in mid-December. All but a small group of liberal and moderate Republicans are expected to vote for it. But the issue is now so toxic that many in Congress are reluctant to talk about it.

If there was ever any doubt that the impeachment process is politically charged, their silence speaks volumes. Many members of Congress are standing with their finger in the wind, faced with performing a task that a whopping 68% of the American people do not want performed.

It is as though they were hearing voices in their head. For many, the moral compass tells them that the man lied under oath; should he get away with it? Their constituents scream that they are sick of this; move on.

And all of a sudden, nobody is holding cue cards. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is riding out of Dodge after a disappointing election. His successor, Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, is telling his ranks to “vote their consciences.” Some of them aren’t sure how to do that.

The result: The Big Stall.

“Congress is a big body of people, and, in the course of regular deliberation, they get led,” said Mark Petracca, chairman of the political science department at UC Irvine. “Now the leaders have effectively said: ‘You are on your own.’ And I’m not sure the body works well that way.”

Once the House was cruising toward a vote to impeach along party lines. Then came a midterm election of historic losses for the majority party. The brakes could be heard screeching all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue.

No Idea of Outcome Before Crucial Vote

Lawmakers started running in circles, like potato bugs exposed to light. The Judiciary Committee said it would investigate alleged presidential campaign violations. Then it said it wouldn’t.

“This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Thomas Mann, a specialist in Congress at the Brookings Institution. “I honestly don’t have a clue--no one does--who is steering this operation.”

And as the year winds to a close, leaders of both parties are eager to figure out who is for impeachment and who is against it. Because rank-and-file members are so tight-lipped, they are heading toward one of the century’s most monumental votes with no idea of the outcome.

“Virtually every Republican voted for the impeachment inquiry. That was before the election. Now it’s after the election, the impeachment issue looks like a loser and they are doing what politicians do: cut their losses and retreat,” said James P. Pinkerton, a lecturer at George Washington University.

Some members have been uniquely outspoken in their views for weeks. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a Los Angeles Democrat, declared in a Times opinion piece in October that he opposes impeachment: “I don’t want any part in keeping this circus going.”

Rep. George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) respects his colleagues’ decisions to chew on the matter but minced no words about his intention to vote for impeachment: “This to me is a no-brainer. . . . To say a president should not be indicted because he has committed perjury is laughable. That’s something schoolchildren can figure out.”

Some know precisely how they will vote but decline to state, hoping the whole thing might go away before they have to take a stand. Even some congressional staff members are puzzled by such reticence.

“To be honest with you, I don’t know what they are all waiting for,” one Democratic congressional aide said. “The election is over, for God’s sake. None of our constituents want this to happen. I don’t know what all the secrecy is about.”

Still other members seem genuinely tied up in knots--usually moderates caught between conscience and constituency. Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego) is still recovering from his near-death experience Nov. 3 when he won reelection by a scant 3 percentage points--a squeaker he blames on the impeachment controversy.

Congressman Lobbied From Both Sides

His position officially undecided, Bilbray is getting lobbied from both sides. The right wants Clinton to fry. The left wants this case closed. And the congressman spends a lot of time thinking about history.

“This is not politics as usual. This is a vote my grandchildren will ask my son and daughter about,” he said.

Bilbray said he is seeking more guidance on this vote than any in his two terms in Congress but that he is turning to his wife and mother, not his colleagues. “What do they know?” he asked.

There may be a method to some of the silence. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), considered a giant among thinkers on the Judiciary Committee, has been uncharacteristically mum. When Starr testified before the panel, Berman asked one question. When scholars and convicted perjurers testified last week, Berman was not there.

Some congressmen are saying Berman is quietly staking out the middle, distancing himself from any extreme view so he can cobble a compromise in the end. But for other lawmakers, the reticence seems mostly cautious, the collective hush of political calculation, which has added nothing if not an air of mystery to the nation’s capital.

It might all come down to the wire. Undecided Republicans--and even the leadership does not know how many there are--could make up their mind when Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the venerable Judiciary chairman, presents his case in a closed-door meeting of House Republicans just before the vote.

“They want to get into that caucus room one last time with Chairman Hyde, have him look them in the eye and say, ‘This is why we are doing what we are going to do,’ ” one GOP senior staff member said. “For many of them, that will be the moment of truth.”