White House Lets Democrats Try to Sell Censure Option

The White House has given tacit approval to a movement led by former Democratic officials to have Congress censure President Clinton rather than impeach him. And it hopes that Bob Dole, Clinton’s unsuccessful Republican opponent in the 1996 election, and several other former GOP officials will join the campaign.

With congressional Republicans pressing ahead with plans for an impeachment inquiry, the president, according to a senior aide, was “strongly encouraged” by Dole’s comments at a recent meeting with Clinton at the White House. Dole, the aide said, told Clinton that, while Republicans would move ahead with impeachment proceedings, they “won’t do anything to hurt the country.”

“A number of former Republican leaders,” who are concerned about public opposition to impeachment and a possible backlash that could hurt the GOP, “also would like to see this thing worked out,” said one of several former Democratic officials spearheading the censure movement.

However, Dole and former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.) have said it is too early to consider negotiating a compromise. And Republicans in Congress so far are opposing the idea of censure, just as Democrats opposed that alternative when Republicans introduced a censure resolution during the Richard Nixon impeachment proceedings in 1974.

White House Keeps Distance From Effort

The Clinton White House is staying at arm’s length from any direct involvement in the censure movement, the senior aide said, for fear that “if the White House promotes the idea, it is a non-starter.”

Leading the censure movement is Lloyd N. Cutler, who served both Jimmy Carter and Clinton as White House counsel. Democrats working with Cutler include former Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine and Leon E. Panetta, former Clinton chief of staff.

Dole briefed Clinton at the White House on Sept. 18 on his recent trip to Bosnia as chairman of the International Missing Persons Commission. During the conversation, the senior aide said, talk “drifted” to the House Judiciary Committee’s consideration of impeachment proceedings against Clinton for his false denial of an affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Dole was not available for comment. The Hill, a weekly newspaper that specializes in congressional coverage, has quoted him as saying he told Clinton at the meeting that he doubted he could negotiate successfully on the president’s behalf.

“ ‘It’s the Democrats he needs to watch,’ ” Dole is quoted as saying he told the president. “ ‘He needs a party loyalist--the way Nixon needed Republicans during the Watergate hearings.’ ”

On other recent occasions, Dole has said that “it’s way too early to even speculate” about censure and suggested that Clinton’s chances of surviving in office after an impeachment inquiry are only 50-50. He has also said that a partisan Republican vote to impeach the president would not wash with the American public.

Censure With Fine Urged by Ally

Cutler, the leading Democrat behind the censure movement, declined to comment about the group’s efforts. But Lanny J. Davis, Clinton’s former White House counsel, said that Cutler has been urging Democrats in Congress to consider a censure resolution that would include some kind of fine, a punishment that could be modeled on the House’s 1997 reprimand of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) for ethics violations.

Davis, although not a member of Cutler’s group, said: “I believe it’s necessary for the president to be held publicly accountable by a vote of Congress for his conduct in the Monica Lewinsky case. There should be some form of reprimand or accountability, but way short of impeachment because even in the worst case his conduct doesn’t involve abuse of power.” Several sources said that Democrats overwhelmingly agreed that any censure resolution with a chance of passing Congress would have to inflict on Clinton a level of pain that Republicans would perceive as severe and that the president would accept only grudgingly.

The movement 24 years ago to censure Nixon, by contrast, included no punishment beyond admonishing him for his “insensitivity to the moral demands, lofty purposes and ideals” of his office and for committing “acts of grave misconduct, obstruction and impairment of justice, abuse and undue concentration of power and a contravention of the laws governing agencies of the executive branch.”

Moreover, the censure resolution, written by Republican Reps. Paul Findley of Illinois and Delbert L. Latta of Ohio, praised Nixon for his “great achievements in foreign policy.”

In an interview, Findley recalled that the Nixon White House publicly kept a safe distance from the censure movement even as James D. St. Clair, Nixon’s lawyer, privately encouraged it.

Fear of Disabling the Government

Findley, who retired from Congress in 1983, said he and Bryce N. Harlow, a longtime Nixon advisor, devised plans for the censure resolution because “we felt it would be a mistake to have the country endure the ordeal of impeachment proceedings that might disable the government.”

The resolution, signed by 60 members of Congress, mostly Republicans, was introduced immediately after the House Judiciary Committee had voted three articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Among the Republicans who signed the censure resolution were Trent Lott of Mississippi, now the Senate majority leader; Charles E. Wiggins of California and J. Edward Hutchinson of Michigan, senior Judiciary Committee members, and three House Republican leaders: John J. Rhodes of Arizona, Robert H. Michel of Illinois and Les Arends of Illinois.

But House Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma and other Democratic leaders rejected the idea of censure and insisted on a House vote on the impeachment articles.

Soon after that, Nixon, responding to a Supreme Court order, released the famous “smoking gun” tape establishing that he had taken part in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

That prompted Wiggins, who had led the anti-impeachment Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, to announce that, if Nixon failed to resign, he would vote to impeach him. He was promptly joined by the rest of the Judiciary Committee Republicans, and Nixon quickly resigned.