Short, if Not So Sweet

Preparing for its impeachment hearings, the House Judiciary Committee on Monday sought the opinions of 19 legal experts and historians on whether the allegations raised against President Clinton meet the standards of impeachable offenses intended by the framers of the Constitution. Predictably, there was no consensus on that question, and just as predictably, the minds of committee members appeared to be unchanged by their daylong colloquy with the scholars.

Republicans are determined to bring articles of impeachment against Clinton, while Democrats--eyeing the diminished GOP majority in the next Congress--may be inclined to drag things out until January by asking to hear from a long list of witnesses. The committee that is notorious as the House’s most partisanly divided is again showing how it got that reputation.

In the end, the whole exercise could well be without result. While articles of impeachment seem sure to be sent to the floor on a straight party-line vote by the committee, party cohesion from that point on seems destined to melt away. A substantial number of Republicans have signaled they are far from eager to vote for impeachment. Some decided early on, others have been influenced by polls consistently showing that about two-thirds of Americans don’t want Clinton forced from office. Add to that the results of last week’s midterm elections. If a majority of the House fails to support impeachment, the process dies right there.

Is some lesser punishment possible? The committee was reminded on Monday that congressional censure of Clinton, often mentioned as an alternative, has no basis in the Constitution and--given the Constitution’s separation-of-powers provision--no means of enforcement. Politically, Congress can pass any kind of nonbinding resolution it wants. Legally, the choice is between impeachment and nothing.

“God, I’d like to forget all this,” committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) blurted out Monday. It was a kind of political primal scream from an experienced legislator who can see that the impeachment process, even though it appears headed for a dead end, could drag his fractious committee through a very smelly swamp before it gets there. What Hyde can do--and he’ll need Democratic support to do it--is run the hearings as expeditiously as he promised they would be run, with a short witness list and with a determination to rein in political posturing. The outcome of this process is now foreseeable. There’s no reason for the journey to be a long one.