Now the Focus Is on Real Costs of Impeachment

Now that the House of Representatives has launched its formal inquiry into impeaching President Clinton, its members are beginning to focus on a much more daunting question: How far do they mean to go?

Do they really want to approve articles of impeachment and press for Clinton’s trial by the Senate? Or will they step back from impeachment and settle for a lesser penalty?

An increasing number of House Republicans, weighing the suddenly real prospect of impeachment, are making a perhaps unexpected argument: Whatever we do, let’s not throw Bill Clinton out of office.

“We have nothing to gain, politically or any other way, by impeaching the president,” warned Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.), a moderate-conservative leader of the House’s freshman class. “That is roundly felt in the Republican conference.”

Northup said she isn’t sure yet whether Clinton merits impeachment. But she wants her colleagues to be cautious--and to consider ending the drive toward impeachment if the grounds do not appear convincing.

“You can demonstrate your bigness by saying that while this is wrong, the evidence doesn’t justify [impeachment],” she said. The House should not send articles of impeachment to the Senate “unless they are pretty compelling, both in evidence and severity.”

Northup is more forthright than some of her colleagues, but she is not alone.

Over the last two months, Democrats have been on the hot seat, agonizing over how far to defend their president and how far to condemn him. Now the tables have turned: It is Republicans who have the toughest choices to make.

“This is a lose-lose situation for us,” fretted a Northeastern Republican who asked not to be named.

“I do not look for an impeachment,” Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), one of the most moderate GOP members, told the Sun in Baltimore. “I hope they don’t find grounds for it.”

At this still-early stage, the House’s GOP majority appears split three ways: among militants who yearn to put Clinton on trial, moderates who pray that impeachment will die a natural death and an uncertain majority in the middle. But except for a few radicals, open enthusiasm for throwing Clinton out of the White House is hard to find.

Backlash Feared if Inquiry Drags Out

Some candidly prefer a weakened President Clinton to a presumably stronger President Gore.

“This member of Congress does not want to see William Jefferson Clinton removed from office,” said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego). “He’s a millstone for the Democratic caucus. . . . He’s their problem.”

Others fear that the Republicans would look foolish if they vote for articles of impeachment only to find that the Senate refuses to take the next step and put Clinton on trial. “That would be a repudiation of the House,” Northup noted.

And almost all Republicans say they want to finish the inquiry before the public turns against them for prolonging the nation’s most-loathed scandal.

“The potential for backlash is there if we drag this out,” warned Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), an influential member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the inquiry. “The American people want the truth, and they want it fast.”

House Republicans describe two principal scenarios for the anxious journey ahead.

In one, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) holds hearings, the Republican majority decides that the evidence warrants impeachment and the House, after an epic debate, sends articles of impeachment to the Senate. (At this point, most senators--including Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the conservative chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee--say it appears unlikely that Clinton would be convicted by the necessary 67 votes in the 100-member Senate, so the issue could die there.)

Vote Expected on Basis of Evidence

In the other scenario, Hyde holds his hearings, examines the evidence, takes the public temperature after next month’s election--and then decides to back off. “Could happen,” said Northup, although she noted she wasn’t necessarily predicting that outcome.

Either way, the Judiciary Committee’s hearings will be a critical phase in determining the outcome. “Most members I know, Democrat and Republican, will vote on the basis of the evidence,” said Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Long Beach). “If the evidence proves overwhelming, people who go in with one view might come out with another. But if there isn’t much there, people might say, ‘Gee, I don’t think I can go with it.’ ”

Hyde is meeting with committee members and staff this week to work on issues that appear procedural but could well shape the outcome: Will the committee call witnesses? If so, how many? Will it restrict its deliberations to charges stemming from Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky or expand into issues surrounding the Clintons’ Whitewater land deals in Arkansas, the White House handling of confidential FBI files and Democratic fund-raising practices during the 1996 campaign?

Hyde, seeking to meet a self-imposed deadline of Dec. 31, has so far limited his inquiry to the Lewinsky matter. But Horn and other Republicans have pressed for a broader inquest that would almost certainly last well into 1999. “This should not be a Monica thing; this should be about the larger issue of abuses of power,” Horn said, including some issues “going back 20 years.”

Hyde has said he will hold no public hearings before the Nov. 3 congressional election. “We don’t want to be accused of politicizing this,” he said last week, without even a hint of irony.

But the oncoming election weighs heavy on congressional minds nonetheless. In a year when both parties are struggling to prod their most loyal voters to come to the polls, the election has had the effect of polarizing congressional behavior: Republicans feel they cannot risk appearing soft on the president, and most Democrats decided they could not afford to vote against him.

After the election, several members said, the pressure to toe the party line may ease--at least a bit.

On the other hand, if voters elect dozens of new conservative Republicans on Nov. 3--and if pollsters conclude they voted that way because they want Clinton removed--that could send the House rolling more surely toward impeachment.

On the Judiciary Committee, members to watch as leading indicators of Republican sentiment are Hyde, Rogan (who did a study of impeachment for the chairman), Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) and Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “Most of us who aren’t on the committee aren’t focused on the details of the issue,” said Bilbray. “We’ll be watching what they do.”

In addition to the hearings and the election, two more factors are possible wild cards.

One is the potential appearance of new charges against Clinton. Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr said last week that he could send another report to Congress if his investigation turns up significant evidence of more potentially impeachable offenses.

A second wild card is the Senate. Paradoxically, the fact that the Senate appears unlikely to remove Clinton from office could make it easier for the House to approve impeachment--because the House’s action would not have irrevocable consequences. “It’s scary, but I think it’s true,” Bilbray said.

But that is a double-edged sword, Northup noted. “If we passed articles and there was a sense that only 30 senators would support them, that would be a repudiation of the House. If that were the case, we should reconsider.”

Northup, who represents Louisville, said she has been struck by how her constituents’ opinions have solidified into two opposing camps, with little middle ground. At a Kentucky art fair last weekend, she said, she was lectured by people on both sides--all of whom were disappointed to find that she had not made up her mind.

“The biggest concern for me is how polarizing this is and how many people feel absolutely that they know what we should do--on both sides,” she said. “The middle ground is not enough for them.

“You just have to depend on the process. Wisdom sort of comes.”

Still, she added: “I think the closer you get to it, the more sobering it is. . . . It’s like watching a trial on TV. At the beginning, it’s easy to sit at home and say, ‘By God, I hope he gets the electric chair.’ But as the process goes forward, the reality gets more sobering.”

Times staff writers Janet Hook and Marc Lacey contributed to this report.