Shaking Heads, Shrugs in the City of Big Shoulders

For Andrea Kessler, the mental picture of impeachment hearings in the Capitol and bombs falling in Iraq was as hard to sort out as the scene before her: a giant Picasso sculpture looming over miniature Alpine lodges where vendors from Bavaria sold socks to American holiday shoppers.

“I just can’t believe it,” the 23-year-old Chicagoan said with a shake of her head. “Because it’s so unbelievable.”

As Congress moved toward impeaching President Clinton and American and British forces continued to attack Iraq on Friday, hundreds of people wandered through Chicago’s Daley Plaza, which is hosting its annual German-themed Christkindlmarket.

They purchased incense burners from Saxony and pewter crucifixes from the town of Rossdorf, filed civil lawsuits at the Cook County Courthouse and applied for jobs at the Chicago Police Department. And in between, shivering against the first serious chill of the season, they pondered the increasingly strange confluence in the United States of politics and adultery, sexual harassment, war and holidays.

Although many disagreed with Kessler’s view that the impeachment inquiry should be dropped posthaste, most did agree that an already curious year in American politics had, in the last few days, become “just nuts,” as one woman put it.

A week ago, Midwesterners, like most Americans, could largely be divided into two camps--those who would go forward with an impeachment inquiry and those who would not. But the timing of the Iraqi strike and the growing meanness in Washington have complicated even that formerly yes-or-n1864368129question. At the end of a crazy week, few were defending the president--or any politician, for that matter--and most seemed in sour, unseasonable spirits.

“We ought to impeach him,” declared Elizabeth Mitchelle, who works as a secretary on the 12th floor of the Daley Center, where children are made wards of the state and bitter custody disputes play out daily. But we shouldn’t impeach him quite yet, she said.

“I think we should focus on Iraq. No one’s dying in the impeachment.”

Mitchelle’s husband, who has since died, served in the Persian Gulf War, she said. “We have people over there. We ought to pay attention to them.”

For Ken Arvidson, a financial planner, the one-day delay in the impeachment hearings after Wednesday’s initial airstrikes represented a “one-day delay in getting rid of the president.”

With a three-branch system of government, impeaching the president while simultaneously prosecuting a military campaign is entirely feasible, Arvidson said, as he and two colleagues headed off to find lunch. “That’s what’s great about our government.”

Like many in the populated square, Stephen Hahn had other things on his mind Friday, important things, but he almost couldn’t avoid the topics of impeachment, Iraq and now House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston’s confessed marital infidelities, even if he’d wanted to.

“It was on five channels in the hotel,” said Hahn, 27, a Lexington, Ky., MBA student lugging an exceptionally broad briefcase on his way to an important job interview.

“I have a couple of friends who are Marines in the Gulf right now, and they’d probably say go right on ahead and impeach him,” the tall, lanky Hahn said. But, he added, “I don’t think he went to war to save himself. I don’t think we elected a guy twice who is that crooked.” Then, Hahn hoisted his briefcase, smiled, and headed off to his interview.

He and everyone else had things to do, gifts to buy, worries and plans that had nothing to do with Washington or the Middle East.

Goekhan Kurtbay of Munich, Germany, was trying to find a way to sell more of his Bavarian socks. Quite inexplicably, few people were buying.

“First it was too hot,” he said. “Now too cold.”

Chuck Nagel and his son Tom, who runs the family roofing business, predicted the bombing of Iraq would do little, called Clinton “arrogant” and wished his impeachment Godspeed. But there was something else to remember this time of year, the two said, as they closely studied a Nativity display.

“We’re Christians,” the younger Nagel said.

“Born-again Christians,” added his father.

Maureen Harton and James Isom had some celebrating to do. A former prosecutor-turned-family lawyer, Harton had just helped Isom, her client, secure a divorce settlement that pleased them both.

She believes Clinton should resign. He believes the impeachment investigation has been a monumental waste of tax dollars. They agreed to disagree on this one, and both were smiling as they walked away.

J. Brown was not. A security guard, Friday was Brown’s first day at Daley Plaza, right in the heart of the Chicago’s Loop, with the Picasso sculpture one of the city’s best-known tourist attractions.

“I think he probably designed [the airstrikes] to save his own tail,” Brown said. “It’s a shame you got to kill people for that.

“The Iraqis will probably blow up a building here now or something,” Brown added, scanning the crowd over and over. He pulled flaps of his blue cap down around his ears. “Clinton should have taken his punishment like a man.”