Hope for Bipartisan Hearing Lost in Shuffle

Ten months ago, when impeaching Bill Clinton seemed farfetched, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) made one point over and over: If impeachment ever happened on his watch, it would have to be bipartisan.

“Ultimately, this has to be a bipartisan exercise,” he said then. “It’s important that we have the confidence of the American people.”

“It has to elicit bipartisan support,” he explained in another interview, “because at the end of the day, the Senate has to vote on whether or not to remove the person from office by a two-thirds vote.”

But now the Judiciary Committee Hyde chairs is rolling inexorably toward a party-line vote to recommend Clinton’s impeachment--despite public opinion polls that show 60% or more of the public opposing such a move.

And when the committee’s anticipated impeachment resolution reaches the House floor next week, the prospect is for a close, nearly party-line vote as well.

It’s Spoken of in Sarcastic Jibes

In Hyde’s quarrelsome hearing room, bipartisanship has been honored mostly in sarcastic jibes. At one point this week, reminded by a witness of his virtuous intentions, the chairman said that it all depends on what the meaning of the word “bipartisan” is.

“What I really said was that the impeachment would not succeed without bipartisan support . . . in the Senate,” he said. “I never really expected a lot of bipartisanship here.”

The panel’s 37 members sat dutifully through more than 20 hours of testimony from the president’s defenders Tuesday and Wednesday. But neither the earnestness of Gregory B. Craig, Clinton’s designated contritionist, nor the doggedness of Charles F. C. Ruff, his gravelly chief counsel, appeared to change a single mind.

In the committee, the outcome has never been in doubt: At least one article of impeachment, and probably three or four, will be approved with all 21 Republicans voting in favor and all 16 Democrats votes against.

The vote on the House floor will be closer--but almost as partisan. Only three Republicans have said that they will vote against impeachment, although as many as two dozen are uncertain. Only five Democrats--or fewer--are expected to vote in favor.

Some Republicans point with pride to the fact that they are deliberately ignoring the polls in their march toward impeachment.

“Someone said that if Jesus had taken a poll he would never have preached the Gospel,” Hyde told one witness, the Rev. Robert J. Drinan, a Jesuit priest and former congressman. (“That’s beyond my realm,” Drinan replied.)

But in an age when many politicians chart their courses based on relentless polling, it is a striking phenomenon. Indeed, some Clinton advisors have admitted that they underestimated the Republicans’ zeal for impeachment in part because they could not imagine the GOP leaders setting a course so contrary to what the polls dictate.

Anti-Clinton Vote Easily Understood

Inside the political microclimate of the House Republican majority, though, the reasons in favor of impeachment seem clear.

One is a genuine distaste for Clinton, coupled with a legacy of bitterness between the Republicans who swept into power in 1994 and a president who has frustrated many of their dearest goals.

“People said the same thing in 1974, that the impeachment process was tearing up the country,” said Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), one of the president’s fiercest opponents. “But the truth is that it is President Clinton’s fault because it is his actions that are tearing up the country.”

But there are political reasons as well. One is the increased polarization of the House, which has fewer moderates and more confirmed conservatives and liberals than in past years.

“What we’re seeing is really the fruit of the 1994 congressional election: a fundamentally conservative Republican conference and a fundamentally liberal Democratic caucus, with only a small group of moderates in between,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.

“The Judiciary Committee is not typical of the country as a whole,” he added. “These are very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans, including some people who really are profoundly angry at Clinton.”

Perhaps more important, most House members do not need to pay attention to national polls. Their political bases are more partisan and local--and their biggest worry is often of a primary challenge from an even more ideological candidate.

The polls Republicans read, in short, look different.

In many parts of the country, “a fairly solid majority of Republican voters think that Clinton should be out of there,” said Eddie Mahe, a GOP political consultant who has advised several House members.

As a result, “any Republican who’s vulnerable to a primary challenge would find it difficult to vote no on impeachment,” Mahe said.

“I think Houghton may find he has that problem,” he added, referring to Rep. Amo Houghton of New York, a moderate Republican who has announced that he will oppose impeachment.

Mahe also was skeptical of predictions that Republicans from swing districts who support impeachment will lose substantial support among moderate voters. “You could take all the people who will vote on the basis of something that happened two years earlier and fit them into a very small auditorium,” he said.

Political scientist Baker agreed. “The Republicans’ principle concern is this: A vote against impeachment would open them up to a primary challenge within their own party,” he said.

“As a consequence, what you see is members paying their most serious heed to the most intense elements in their base. The fact that Clinton might be popular in their district is not their main problem. They face that all the time.”

Indeed, most of Clinton’s critics on the Judiciary Committee had no difficulty winning reelection last month, although they were already on record leaning toward impeachment. Hyde won his 13th consecutive House campaign with a comfortable 67% of the vote; Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) won 89%; Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) ran unopposed. Barr of Georgia, who attracted strong Democratic opposition because of vehement anti-Clinton views, won with a more worrisome 55%.

The dynamics in the Senate will be different, Baker said. Not only must a vote to remove the president from office win by two-thirds, or 67 of 100 members, but those members are likely to be more serious about bipartisanship.

“On the Senate Judiciary Committee, you sometimes see cooperation between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah),” he noted. “It’s very different from the House.

“And in the Senate, you have people who represent a much more diverse collection of interests. You have southern Republicans who have African American constituents. . . . Senators just have to balance their votes. It’s in the nature of the institution.”