Cold Reality Comes Back to the Capital

A real-world crisis collided with a political crisis Wednesday, and the flesh-and-blood crisis won.

For a week or more, as the House of Representatives has rolled inexorably toward impeachment, Washington has been strangely missing any palpable sense of constitutional crisis.

No demonstrations roiled the streets. Members of Congress hid in their districts, as their leaders reassured the nation that impeachment did not mean actually removing the president from office. Even President Clinton behaved as if it was business as usual, working on Social Security reform and visiting the Middle East.

On Wednesday, that changed. Clinton’s decision to launch air and missile strikes against Iraq, coupled with the return of House members to vote on impeachment, abruptly restored a cold sense of reality.

In the White House, where aides had seethed in frustration for weeks over their inability to stave off the tide of impeachment, there was at least a momentary sense of relief at a chance to change the subject.

“We know how to do this kind of crisis,” said one aide.

In Congress, where anticipation had been rising of a decisive vote for impeachment after a series of moderate Republicans announced their intention to vote against the president, there was confusion.

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the powerful Republican whip who had pushed the House toward impeachment, was said to be visibly upset; for at least a few days, Clinton--not the House--would be driving events again.

House Republican leaders said they would postpone a vote on impeachment for the duration--if not of the military action, at least of the first wave of strikes.

House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.) cited the classic definition of foreign policy bipartisanship in announcing the delay: “Politics ends at the water’s edge.”

But several hawks, reflecting the poisonous polarization that has dominated the impeachment debate, accused Clinton of launching the assaults--and putting American pilots in danger--for base political gain.

Even Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), breaking with a tradition of bipartisan support for military action, said he found the timing “subject to question.”

“I cannot support this military action,” he said.

And more moderate Republicans said the crisis in Iraq raised anew the question of whether Clinton should resign--because the impeachment debate has damaged his credibility as a foreign policy leader.

In short, within minutes after the first missiles landed, the two crises--Iraq and impeachment--had merged.

White House officials carefully refused to acknowledge that there could be any connection between their strategies in the twin crises--let alone give voice to hopes that war in Iraq might somehow divert the Republican onslaught at home.

But if nothing else, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared to have handed Clinton at least a chance to slow the march toward impeachment, and a day or two of extra time to lobby the few remaining undecided Republicans.

White House officials said the strikes would not cause them to suspend their efforts to win over more.

“I don’t think it changes anything,” a senior aide to the president said.

Even Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), one of Clinton’s most ferocious opponents, acknowledged that the military action could do the White House some good. Barr said he knew Clinton would “try to pull something out of a hat. Whether it is a red herring or a rabbit remains to be seen.”

The immediate fate of Clinton’s presidency seemed almost to hang, oddly, on quirks of the calendar.

House leaders want to vote on impeachment as soon as possible; the articles of impeachment approved by the Judiciary Committee last week are due to expire at the end of the year. If they do expire, a new Judiciary Committee will have to endorse them anew. In addition, next year’s House will have five more Democrats, meaning slightly worse odds for impeachment.

Some Republicans suggested that Clinton should have delayed the assaults until the weekend, after the House completed its debate on impeachment.

Clinton spoke to them directly in his television statement on the bombing Wednesday evening, when he said the strikes had to be immediate both to deny Iraq time to prepare and to avoid the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this weekend.

Instead of impeachment affecting the timing of military action, in other words, the crisis with Iraq might derail the timing of impeachment.

Clinton touched on the impeachment issue only lightly in his television statement on the attack.

“Saddam Hussein and the other enemies of peace may have thought that the serious debate currently before the House of Representatives would distract Americans or weaken our resolve to face him down,” he said. “But once more, the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America’s vital interests, we will do so.”

Clinton’s press secretary, Joe Lockhart, made the point more directly: “I think that as Republicans, and particularly the leadership, look at [impeachment], they should take into consideration the disruption to the country. While they try for partisan reasons to move this forward to the Senate . . . this has consequences.”

In an old-fashioned military crisis, with the president acting as commander in chief, the message was not lost on most Republican leaders. By the end of the evening--despite the initial complaints of Lott, DeLay and others--they formed patriotic ranks behind Livingston, who offered full support to the troops and referred to impeachment only as “other legislation.”

But to at least one exhausted Republican congressional aide, a foreign policy crisis was merely one more disruption of the week before Christmas.

“Impeachment was bad enough,” he sighed. “Now this on top of it.”

Times staff writers Janet Hook and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.