Views on Clinton Seem Unaffected by Historic Vote

All the turmoil in Washington seemed far away when hundreds of walkers, bird-feeders, joggers, bench-sitters and boaters filled Lake Eola Park here on Saturday afternoon.

But it didn’t take much poking to find strong emotions about the votes in the House of Representatives to impeach President Clinton. Sitting near the lake, Gilbert Medina and his wife, Arelis, enthusiastically took up posts on the opposite sides of the argument that has consumed the capital and alternately fascinated and horrified the country.

“What the Republicans are doing is wrong. This is a setup, truly unjust,” insisted Gilbert, who works at a parts warehouse. “How is the country in jeopardy? How is that impeachable?”

His wife was unconvinced: “But what tone is he setting? That he is above the law? I tell you, most women are not offended on the fidelity issue, but because he lied.”

What was striking about this exchange was not only the intensity of the couple’s views--but their consistency. Neither had their assessments changed at all by the House’s approval Saturday of two articles of impeachment against the president.

And judging by national surveys, neither did many other Americans: In a CBS/New York Times poll Saturday night, just 5% said the House debate affected their views one way or the other.

For now, that’s left the balance in public opinion still tilting clearly toward Clinton--with most Americans continuing to oppose his impeachment and believing he should serve out his term rather than resign, as many Republicans are demanding. Just 31% of those surveyed in the CBS/New York Times poll said the country would be better off if Clinton resigned. In an NBC poll Saturday, Clinton’s approval rating even increased to 72%--his best showing yet in the network’s polls.

Public views may not have changed much after the historic House votes partly because relatively few of those in Orlando--and other communities where The Times conducted interviews Saturday--were riveted to the lengthy proceedings last week. But the stability of public opinion also points to another conclusion: After nearly 11 months of saturation media coverage and passionate political argument, most Americans appear to have made up their minds--both about the nature of Clinton’s offenses and the level of punishment they demand.

“We all know what happened,” sighed Ethan Miley, a mechanical engineer in Boulder, Colo. “It just keeps going and going.”

In Orange County, Pat Wiseman of Laguna Beach does care, however, and is closely following the impeachment proceedings.

“Clinton’s been lying to us for too long,” Wiseman said. “I’d like to see him lose his job.”

Others are plain bored by the Clinton imbroglio.

Erica Sarabia of Westminster said she ignores the updates about the impeachment proceedings.

“I don’t think he should resign,” said Sarabia, 15. “That’s his personal life; who cares?”

Jeff Lyon, a Huntington Beach lawyer, thinks Clinton’s behavior in the Oval Office was reprehensible, but Lyon is disgusted with bipartisan bickering, which he believes fueled the Republican push to remove Clinton from office.

“This is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor,” he said. “We need to get a new generation of Republican leaders in Congress and get them focusing on the future.”

The Times interviews found that rank-and-file Republicans remain committed to forcing the president from office, but also that the House vote did little to shake Clinton’s support among rank-and-file Democrats. That means Democratic senators are likely to face pressure from their base not to abandon Clinton as the struggle moves to the upper chamber.

“The impeachment is the most horrible miscarriage of justice I have ever seen,” said Nancy Miller Lewis as she lugged two bags of Christmas presents through an upscale shopping mall in Troy, Mich. “This is all about politics and not about what the people want. I hope all those people who voted for impeachment get voted out of office.”

Even so, the interviews found faint cracks in Clinton’s support among voters who have been dubious of impeachment.

Impeachment Vote Spawns New Feelings

Charles Fortney, a retired printer in the park in Orlando, is the kind of voter who’s giving White House aides nightmares these days.

Fortney, a Democrat who voted for Clinton twice, finds the president’s impeachment unjustified and vindictive: “Censure and a fine would have been enough,” he said. “The Republicans are mad at him because he won’t do what they want him to do.”

But now that the House has acted, Fortney isn’t sure what he wants to happen next. “I don’t really want Clinton to resign,” said Fortney, who wrote three letters to his congressman, Republican Bill McCollum, opposing impeachment. “But now it may be better for the country. We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars on this crap.”

Fortney, however, was the exception in the four communities where Times reporters inquired whether Saturday’s vote had eroded Clinton’s public support. Each was in a county that is generally closely contested between the parties, but where Clinton has run well in the past.

Contempt in Affluent Detroit Suburb

The president found the least sympathy in Oakland County, Mich.--an affluent Detroit suburb and traditional Republican redoubt that Clinton broke through to carry in 1996. Here, many traditional Republicans, like Charlie Karadsheh, could barely conceal their contempt for Clinton. “We have to set a precedent for our children,” he said. “If you do something wrong, you have to pay for it. The office of the president has to be held to a very high standard.”

Karadsheh, a doctor, wants the Senate to forge on and remove Clinton from office--a sentiment common enough among GOP partisans that it may make Republican senators think twice about negotiating a quick deal with the White House to avoid a trial. Better yet, Karadsheh says, Clinton should “do the same” as House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston (R-La.), who announced his resignation Saturday after acknowledging adulterous affairs.

Yet other Michigan voters said the shame of the House vote on impeachment was punishment enough for Clinton. Lyle Dahlberg, an attorney and registered independent from Bloomfield Hills who voted for Bob Dole in 1996, supported the vote to impeach Clinton because he believes Clinton committed perjury by lying under oath.

But he is troubled by the partisan nature of the proceedings and wants the Senate to allow Clinton to finish his term. “I don’t think what he did rises to the standards spelled out in the Constitution of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ ” he said. “I hope the Senate would set down a statement that what he did was inappropriate but not remove him from office.”

Impeachment Opposition

Opposition to impeachment was strongest in Boulder, a comfortable, cappuccino-and-backpacking university town near the front range of the Rocky Mountains that was shivering under the season’s first snowstorm. Conversations Saturday in the Boulder Bookstore found little support for the House’s action. Max Burns, a medical resident in psychiatry who voted for Clinton, eagerly agreed that the president had “messed up.” But he added: “I don’t think what he did merits impeachment. Americans think they are electing people who are super-humans. They aren’t. They are electing flawed humans. Humans mess up.”

Cormac H. McCarthy, a journeyman electrician, worried that continued turmoil over Clinton’s fate might unsettle the economy. “I have a good job,” he said. “I’m happy with it. My future is looking promising. . . . To undermine him [Clinton] takes away strength, not just from our military, but from our country.”

A few stores away, in an artists’ co-op, Republican Brad Morgan applauded the House decision. “If you listen to the arguments, the Republican arguments, by and large, have been very sound, the Democrats’ haven’t been,” said Morgan, who owns a health services company. “My belief this week is that Clinton has diminished the value, power and respect for the office with what he’s doing. That’s not grounds for impeachment, but if we let our highest officer commit perjury and walk away, we are setting the ground for chaos.”

Economy Helps Clinton Near L.A.

Conversations Saturday in Fontana, Calif.--a classic middle-income political battleground about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles--found much the same mix of views: anger at Clinton among Republicans, but relatively little support for his removal among anyone else. Clinton carried the city in 1992 and 1996--largely because of anxiety about the economy in 1992 and enthusiasm about it four years later. Now, economic satisfaction remains a bulwark under Clinton here.

At the Bel Air Swap Meet--a contemporary casbah just off Interstate 10 where you can buy everything from yo-yos to HUD repo homes--retired carpenter Bill Knox wasn’t buying the effort to oust Clinton. From his vantage point, the entire struggle in Washington seemed distant and obscure. “Most people couldn’t care what Clinton did as long as they got jobs,” he said. “They’re working now, and they weren’t working before. I don’t think it would matter to them if he were King Kong, if they had jobs.”

Besides, Knox said, the allegations against Clinton hardly seem weighty enough to justify all this tumult. “If he’d done something that really hurt the country, that’d be different. I’d say, ‘Get him out of there,’ ” Knox continued. “I wish something could be done to get them to stop fighting with themselves. . . . Otherwise, as soon as a Republican gets in there, it’ll just be get-even time.”

The prospect of a Senate trial also seemed out of whack to Kirk Miller, a Republican who has never voted for Clinton but prefers censure. “He should be the law-abider in chief, and he lied, so we’ve all learned a lesson. But I understand why he did it. I myself have lied about the same thing. If he’d just cop to it, we could all move on,” Miller said.

Yet Republicans seemed to be making some ground here with their insistence that Clinton needed to be held accountable. Renato Eottevarria originally brushed aside the scandal; now he wants Clinton to resign.

“He lied. He lied too much,” said Eottevarria, who was selling videotapes at the swap meet. “Clinton has been a good president, yes. But he did something stupid. . . . The way the Republicans talked, it makes more sense.”

In Orlando, too, the dominant view was that Clinton should remain in office. Like the Detroit suburbs, Orlando and surrounding Orange County, Fla., symbolize Clinton’s success at broadening the Democratic coalition: Although Orange County has long been a Republican stronghold in presidential politics, Clinton ran virtually even with Dole here in 1996.

Now, even after the impeachment vote, Clinton continued to receive good reviews from most of those interviewed in Lake Eola Park. “I think Clinton has done a wonderful job,” said Ric Sagowitz, who just retired as a printer.

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This story was reported by Times staff writers Mike Clary in Orlando, Fla., Julie Cart in Boulder, Colo., Donald W. Nauss in Oakland County, Mich., Terry McDermott in Fontana, Calif., and Elaine Gale in Orange County, Calif., and was written by Ronald Brownstein in Washington.