Thrown to the House

In the end, the House Judiciary Committee stood where it had at the beginning of its impeachment hearings. The long and tedious days of presentation, arguments and rhetoric produced four articles of impeachment but left the positions of the panel’s 21 Republicans and 16 Democrats virtually unchanged. President William Jefferson Clinton now stands formally accused of perjury and obstruction of justice. Pending is a vote on a final article alleging the abuse of presidential power.

Next Thursday the 435 members of the House will hear arguments on these grave accusations and then turn to their solemn duty of deciding whether, for only the second time in the nation’s history, a president should be impeached.

The House result is not a foregone conclusion. Some crossover voting is expected, and the final tally could be very close. The last and greatest hope of the White House is that enough Republican moderates will agree with most of their Democratic colleagues and the great majority of Americans that the context in which Clinton’s misconduct occurred does not justify the dire punishment of impeachment, a view we share. But that hope has faded.

It almost surely would be different had Clinton let his lawyers concede to the committee that he had indeed lied under oath as he sought to hide his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, or better yet, had he at last admitted it himself when he spoke Friday in the White House Rose Garden. Such an admission would expose Clinton to possible prosecution once he is out of office. But a readiness to run that risk might well have been taken by moderate Republicans as evidence that Clinton was sincere in his repeated expressions of contrition, allowing them to vote in good conscience against impeachment and so spare the president--and the nation--the ordeal of a Senate trial.

There has been much to deplore since the Lewinsky scandal broke last January: the overly zealous actions of the independent counsel’s office; the bitter, often blind, lock-step approach of the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee; the excesses of some news media coverage. But most deplorable of all--because it is at the source of this whole ugly mess--has been the president’s behavior, first recklessly conducting a sexual affair, then arrogantly trying to bluff his way out of his self-created problem. In refusing to admit the truth, in wantonly misleading his colleagues and the American people, Clinton deserves opprobrium. But his actions do not call for impeachment.

The president’s obligation is to “set an example of high moral standards and conduct himself in a manner that fosters respect for the truth.” Clinton has “egregiously failed in this obligation, and through his actions has violated the trust of the American people, lessened their esteem for the office of president and dishonored the office they have entrusted to him.” Those are the words of a resolution of censure drafted by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

We think a joint resolution along these lines, signed by Clinton in acknowledgment of his reprehensible misconduct, would provide a responsible alternative to impeachment. That is what most Americans continue to favor, not least because they wisely want to bring this dirty business to a rapid end. The House should be provided the chance to vote on that alternative.