Clinton May Run Into Not-So-Friendly Senate

Long before today’s historic debate, the White House calculated that even if President Clinton were impeached by the House, the less partisan Senate would never expel him from office.

Now, though, as Senate Republicans dismiss any talk of compromise and at least a few Senate Democrats speak privately of resignation, the White House is beginning to fear that Clinton may not find the Senate as friendly a forum as he once had hoped.

So concerned is the White House staff that it already has shifted its lobbying focus from the House to the Senate, where Clinton has few friends.

There is a growing consensus among Republicans on Capitol Hill that any early deal with the president--such as the censure proposal advanced this week by former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole--is off the table.

“We will go to a trial. And there won’t be any deal-making as we begin our job,” Senate Majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Thursday.

That is a formula for keeping the issue before the public for weeks or even months, which could further undermine support for the president.

“It’s a fair reading to say that there are at least a few Democratic senators who privately believe that it would be the best thing to have the president resign,” said former Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

However, Simon added, Democrats recognize that Clinton is a fighter and no one is trying at this point to urge him to leave the White House voluntarily.

“There’s a general feeling that he wouldn’t consider doing it . . , so that I think it’s unlikely a delegation would go and ask him to,” Simon said. “Now it could be that a month from now, two months from now, three months from now, if the situation deteriorates, it could happen,” he said.

The Senate arithmetic appears to work in Clinton’s favor. Conviction requires the votes of 67 of the 100 senators. Even if the 55 Republicans vote as a bloc, they will need help from 12 Democrats. (In the House, where a majority can pass articles of impeachment, Republicans need no Democratic support and they expect little.)

But the president may face a more delicate problem than the numbers suggest. While there may never be the votes for conviction, a request from members of his own party that he resign--as key Republicans asked of President Nixon in 1974--would be equally damaging. Clinton’s supporters are trying to stop any such movement before it gets started.

Publicly, Democratic senators brush aside talk of resignation. “I have not heard that,” said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.).

Helping the Democrats keep close ranks is the sharply partisan tone that the Republicans have taken toward Clinton. “The fact that the impeachment vote was so partisan and the debate so strident has helped solidify Democratic support,” said Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.).

Further uniting Democrats were the comments Wednesday of Lott and other Republican leaders publicly questioning Clinton’s motives in attacking Iraq on the eve of the impeachment vote. The tone struck even some hard-line GOP conservatives as over the edge and Lott backpedaled from his remarks within 24 hours.

Yet fear of defections persists. Several senior Democratic congressional aides said that Democratic senators who face tough reelection battles in two years are particularly vulnerable to the wish that Clinton would just go away.

White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and other senior officials have started to assess the likely votes of individual senators of both parties and are hoping to be able to make a deal that would avoid a long trial.

At this point, said a senior White House official, “there’s an overwhelming majority of Democrats who will not support impeachment.” But the official conceded that does not mean the Democrats will resist starting a trial.

However White House officials face a tough audience in Democratic senators because Clinton has few, if any, close allies among them.

“The difficult part here for the president is that he doesn’t really have any close friends in the Senate,” said a senior Democratic Senate aide. “The president is reaping what he sowed, not just in terms of his extracurricular activities, but in his failure over the years to till the Democratic field.”

The prospect of a trial is filled with political uncertainty for both parties. While it could make Republicans look like they are dragging things out and failing to work on issues that matter to the country, it could also lead more people to view the president as the problem and put pressure on Democrats to end it all quickly by asking for his resignation.

For that reason, Democrats are pressing for a speedy trial.

“We ought to begin immediately so this can be dispensed with immediately,” said Dodd. “Having an American president dangling too long as an impeached president can impose some serious problems for foreign policy as well as domestic policy.”

“The Senate has to begin a trial,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who has been a strong critic of Clinton’s behavior but has refrained from calling for his resignation. Lieberman, like several other Democrats, appears to favor beginning a trial but cutting it short if a majority of senators come together around a proposal to censure Clinton.

“A trial can be stopped at any point by a majority of senators,” Lieberman said.

“The difficulty is navigating to that point, to a position in favor of some kind of strong censure,” added a senior Democratic aide. “If the Republicans are able to rig the rules so that it’s conviction or nothing, that puts us in a very tough position.”

All sides agree that the situation in the Senate is extremely fragile. Either party could get the upper hand. The equation could be tipped by how the public regards the performance of Clinton and the Republicans over the next few days of the House impeachment debate and vote and the Iraq bombing raids.

Just as Democrats are working for a speedy trial, Republicans appear to be betting that a long one could build momentum for Clinton’s resignation. Already one House Democrat, Louise McIntosh Slaughter of New York, has said that Clinton should quit if he is impeached.

“During the course of a trial, public opinion could well change,” said Ed Gillespie, a Republican strategist and former aide to House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. “It’s hard to conceive of that right now, but then a month ago nobody thought the votes were there to impeach either.”