Democrats, Too, Poisoned the Impeachment Well

A view that has gained considerable currency in the course of the impeachment hearings by the House Judiciary Committee is that the party-line votes and the rancorous debates were solely the result of Chairman Henry Hyde’s failure to run the hearings in an impartial fashion and the Republicans drive to cleave monolithically to a pro-impeachment agenda. But it is important to recognize that when a set of hearings polarizes as rigidly as did this one, it is rarely the fault of only one side. It takes two parties to achieve bipartisanship and the Democrats were as much to blame for the acrimony that infected the panel as the GOP members. More so, perhaps.

With a few exceptions--most notably Rep. Howard Berman of North Hollywood and Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia --the committee Democrats acted like a pack of Tasmanian devils. Perhaps because he is so fast with a quip, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts set the tone by the indiscriminate nature of his attacks on the Republicans and a defense of President Clinton that consisted of little more than ragging on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and griping about the fairness of the proceedings.

Equally distressing was the self-proclaimed “fairness cop” of the committee, Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, who ignobly played the race card. Overlooking the fact that the president enjoyed the services of a retinue of $400-an-hour lawyers, Waters ludicrously likened Bill Clinton to an indigent criminal defendant who was being railroaded by a vengeful and bigoted jury. To add intimations of racism to an already explosive atmosphere was base and unworthy.

Another dubious Democratic contribution came from Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida, the virtuoso of the stentorian sound bite. Abandoning reasoned argument, Wexler dealt in hyperbole and bombast designed for the evening network news programs. They obliged him by featuring his overwrought outbursts as highlights of the day’s proceedings.

Ranking minority member John Conyers of Michigan deserves a rap on the knuckles for not restraining the members on his side when they ventured into the realm of vituperation. Indeed, he contributed his own tinder to the fire.

It may be assumed that a certain amount of this theatrical outpouring of moral indignation and wounded innocence on the part of these members was for the benefit of their electoral base. Those are voters who looked upon the inquiry into the president’s conduct as the moral equivalent of the martyrdom of Joan of Arc. The phrase “witch hunt” became a mantra, as if the president’s flimflamming of the courts and the people was the figment of the malicious imagination of the Republicans. If these performances wore insincere and designed to curry favor with their most dogmatic constituents, they are even more deplorable because they damage the institution of Congress for mere political advantage.

Perhaps the only way to deal with inveterate Clinton-haters like Republican Bob Barr of Georgia or Bob Inglis of South Carolina is to turn the Judiciary Committee into a Punch and Judy show, but I believe that the Democrats might have been able to peel away a Republican or two if they had not defended an indefensible president by their attacks on the opposition.

In some ways, the role of the minority party is more crucial in setting the tone of a set of highly charged hearings than that of the majority. It was the minority Republicans, far more than the majority Democrats, whose open-mindedness and reluctance to recriminate that served so well the Senate Watergate investigation and the Nixon impeachment hearings.

Indeed, by its conduct, the congressional minority can shape powerfully the public’s perception of the fairness of a set of proceedings. From the outset, the attitude of the Democrats was to find fault, to be quarrelsome and even disrespectful of the Republicans. With a few exceptions, they acted not as the loyal opposition but as the avenging angels of the White House. It was they, not the Republicans, whose departure from rigid and unyielding party solidarity might have really made a difference. Being on the short end of every vote gains you a certain amount of public sympathy, but Democrats might have enhanced their underdog stature by conducting themselves with more restraint and more respect for a chairman who did seem to be doing his level best to conduct a fair hearing. That he may have failed was less his fault than that of some of the members sitting to his left.