Impressionist There, Surrealists Here

It was more difficult this week to get tickets to the Van Gogh exhibit at the National Gallery than seats at the hearing where a congressional committee is about to vote to impeach the president.

So Kathleen Solares, who came East to see the work of her favorite artist, did impeachment before she braved the lines for Impressionism.

“The hearing is sort of interesting although hard to follow,” she said. “Who’s winning? Who’s losing? Hard to tell yet.” A notary from Oakland, Solares spent most of a day with other tourists occupying the dozen hearing room seats reserved for the public. Some of them had no wait at all to get a seat.

Oddly, even here, the impeachment hearings are registering more like a business crisis in the Cayman Islands than a crisis involving the Constitution.

For all the analogies made to great congressional hearings past--the president’s defenders marched out a whole panel of Watergate ghosts Tuesday--this impeachment proceeding has not quite risen to the level of Iran-Contra, Clarence Thomas or the McCarthy hearings. The networks refuse to break away from the soaps for the proceedings.

Neither side has called a single key witness in the tale of Monica and Bill. Neither side seems eager to have that sexy story retold in public. Rather, the White House lawyers and the Judiciary Committee lawmakers mostly tried to score points and pay attention.

“These things have their rhythms,” Jim Jordan, the Democratic committee spokesman, explained with a wink. “We’ll have the uptick when it’s all over.”

In fact, while Democrats began the week panicky, they had moments, perhaps hours, on the upswing Wednesday.

The president’s chief lawyer, Charles F. C. Ruff, scored big by narrating his version of events in a deliberate tone that made him sound like Alistair Cooke on “Masterpiece Theater.” His deadpan condemnation of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s editing of the Monica-Bill story may not have changed a single Republican vote, but he at least riveted almost every committee member to his or her seat. For an entire hour.

“Mr. Ruff hit a home run,” said Rep. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat. “I don’t think the Republican side of the committee laid a hand on him.”

The Republicans, particularly Rep. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, tore into Ruff, but Ruff remained unruffled.

There were notable exceptions, however, in attention spans.

Rep. Howard Coble, a courtly Republican from North Carolina, spent a good part of Wednesday morning listening to the proceedings in the doorway to the committee room while he smoked a cigar. And for awhile the faint smell of smoke was a nostalgic reminder of the days when the whole mess would have been settled in some back room.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, usually naughty and jacketless, spent the morning with his jacket buttoned and his behavior in check, for the most part. He had brought his white-haired mother, Elsie, to the hearing. He couldn’t keep from a little kibitzing with or about her.

“I brought her along to meet [Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde] in case either one of them ever needs a hair transplant,” he joked, after introducing her around.

During their few sanctioned opportunities to make a break from the committee room, the members mostly headed for the bathrooms and the Rayburn Building foyer where the electronic media have been encamped. (There, the smell was pure Chinese takeout.)

Rep. Steven R. Rothman, a New Jersey Democrat with every black hair on his head in order, acted annoyed at having to spend the 10-minute morning break in front of a Court TV camera. But after all, he said, he had his constituents to think of.

“If they watch constantly they get only five minutes out of every five hours to see me on television,” he said. “This way they get an extra three minutes, uninterrupted.”

Certainly reporters, who relish wars and car wrecks, were edgy about being a part of what they, too, see as something of a charade. Both Republicans and Democrats have been privately acknowledging to them the probable outcome of events: a committee vote for impeachment by the week’s end and then next week a vote by the 435 House members that at this point is looking bad for the president. Then, if impeachment articles are passed, on to a Senate trial and who knows how many months of rehashed rhetoric.

“The whole thing is so fundamentally disingenuous,” said a local television reporter, who, taking after a politician, asked to remain anonymous. “That’s why the public isn’t watching.”

But hope, here in the nation’s Capitol, springs eternal--and not just because this is the season of good cheer.

Several hallway experts, lawmakers and aides predicted that the surreal--all the solemnity juxtaposed with trivializing gives the feeling of a group of lawmakers writing an 11th Commandment about parking violations--will become all too real after a committee vote for impeachment.

“I predict a massive public awakening,” said Jordan, “by Monday or Tuesday.”