Impeachment Backlash an Iffy Prospect

On paper, things don’t look so hot for U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell of San Jose right about now. Republican ratings are driving through the basement, a disconcerting enough prospect for a member of that party, as Campbell is.

Moreover, the party is tanking, at least for now, because of its avid pursuit of President Clinton’s impeachment. Which makes things doubly difficult for Campbell and others like him, since he spent the weekend voting to approve the very same impeachment that Americans disapprove of, and since he has statewide political ambitions.

Much has been made of the fates of representatives like Campbell, the iconoclastic or moderate Republicans who seemed at least more likely than their rock-ribbed conservative brethren to side with Clinton, although in the end few of them did.

The theory, inasmuch as there was one in the dramatic surges that construct the national political scene these days, is that voter revenge will be exacted upon Campbell and his ilk, particularly in districts such as his Silicon Valley nest, which overwhelmingly supported President Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

Well, maybe the pundits are right. And maybe, given that they have been wrong about almost everything pertaining to the scandal-that-ate-America, they are wrong about this too.

It’s happened before.

*

To William R. Keech, watching the Washington pontificating from his perch as head of the department of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the predictions of revenge have a familiar ring.

He recalls the threats after the passage several years ago of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which organized labor opposed with all its organized might. The word went out that Democratic defectors--that particular political battle’s focus--would be crushed for their disloyalty to the party’s traditional ally.

In the end, NAFTA meant nada.

“They tried to carry out this threat, but it was by no means successful,” Keech said, and he drew this lesson for Republicans concerned about the predictions this time out:

“The public’s attention may just go on to other things.”

Of course, one can argue that NAFTA did not, on the surface, engender the same sort of national paroxysm as a presidential impeachment. But, Keech argues, NAFTA--unlike impeachment--stood to hit people right in their wallets. As such, he says, it arguably served as a more defining issue for many voters than impeachment, which may incite activists but does not have wallet impact for many voters.

“Now it’s a much more dramatic issue, and considerably more politically important, but there’s also indications of public indifference,” Keech said. “I’m pretty doubtful that this is something that will work against the Republicans.”

Far more likely, he said, is that voters will base their decisions on the state of the economy. As they almost always do.

This all must feel faintly familiar to Tom Campbell too, the threat that a national issue will be used as a bludgeon at home. When he ran for his seat in 1995--his first foray into Congress ended with an unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid in 1992--Democrats pronounced that they would turn the election into a referendum on the unpopular Newt Gingrich.

They tried. They failed. Campbell won, 59%-36%, a sweeping sanction of the notion that all politics is local.

*

Campbell does have some things going for him this time. A recognized brainiac--he is a Stanford professor on his congressional off-days--he was one of a few Republicans to oppose Gingrich’s election as speaker in 1997, before such a position became fashionable. He did so on the grounds that Gingrich admitted making misleading statements in an ethics committee investigation--a tidy balance to his vote against a president who admitted making misleading statements in an independent counsel’s investigation.

Campbell also shored up his moderate credentials by framing much of the decision for his vote in terms of the importance of protections against sexual harassment, since Clinton’s statements were first made in a deposition for Paula Jones’ harassment suit.

For the record, Campbell says now that he has no ambitions for 2000 beyond his congressional district, where he would have the advantages of incumbency. He has talked in the past about running for the U.S. Senate, but that appears unlikely in the next election unless the incumbent, Dianne Feinstein, reverses her decision to run again.

Ironically, his biggest challenge in a statewide race would probably be from the very Republican conservatives who so wanted Clinton’s impeachment but have never warmed to Campbell.

In an interview, he declined to discuss the political ramifications of his vote, saying that he made the decision on the merits of the case.

“It’s about as serious as anything I’ve voted on, other than the Persian Gulf War,” he said. “I just want to let it be.”