A National Election With Overarching Scope

With the nation fast moving toward a national political culture, supported by network TV and 24-hour cable news, by national newspapers and the Internet, President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) have together brought America to the verge of a new kind of congressional election. Our political system will never be the same, regardless of the merits or the formal outcome of the House impeachment proceedings against Clinton, over which Gingrich will preside in the next Congress.

Instead of a diverse competition among candidates in various local constituencies, the November congressional contests will be more like a parliamentary election, fought nationally by our two most important elected leaders and political innovators. As framed by Clinton and Gingrich, it is no less than an election between two parties supporting sharply different political programs, one liberal and the other conservative; between the Democratic president and the Republican Congress, as well as their respective branches of government; and, at its heart, between Clinton and Gingrich.

In this larger political context, Clinton and Gingrich are not just the most powerful members of their parties, they are their intellectual, ideological and strategic leaders. Even when their followers in Congress are unruly, or motivated by their own ambitions, Clinton and Gingrich are their parties’ most influential spokesmen because they best understand the political uses of media, particularly television. For the national media, the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal is the story of the year (and probably next year, too). It is hard to imagine it will not profoundly affect the November vote.

Most politicians and pundits continue to say that this election is like any other midterm, that “all politics is local,” as an earlier speaker, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, said. After all, there are no presidential coattails for congressional candidates to ride, and no overriding issue of war or economic policy. Only a handful of candidates are campaigning on their support for, or, still less often, their opposition to Clinton’s impeachment.

Moreover, the Constitution’s separation of the legislative and executive branches was itself designed to avoid the instability of parliamentary elections that can change an entire government in a day. The president is elected separately from the Congress. Moreover, under the Constitution, members of Congress are elected state by state and in local congressional districts, with no provision for national parties.

But this is a midterm election turning on an unusual circumstance: the looming question of whether Congress will impeach the president. Many voters will rightly see this election in terms of choosing between Clinton Democrats and Gingrich Republicans, since both parties have recast themselves ideologically under their respective leaders. In his 1992 win over an incumbent Republican president, Clinton emphasized economic growth and an activist government as core Democratic Party values. Just two years later, Gingrich enjoyed unexpected success in nationalizing the 1994 midterm election with his “contract with America.” Based on tax and spending reductions and on social issues, Gingrich’s campaign led to the first GOP Congress in nearly 50 years.

In doing so, Gingrich made the speakership into both a truly national office and the leadership position in his party. No other Republican figure inside or outside Congress has such power or prominence. Neither the Constitution nor political tradition confers comparable status on the Senate majority leader, who does not run for election at the same time as most of his colleagues and does not control the upper house in the same manner as the speaker. Gingrich, more than his Senate counterpart, has also used his position to more clearly distinguish House Republicans from Clinton’s policies, even risking his speakership in the government shutdown that followed his first budget battle with the president. It is the House, not the Senate, that initiates impeachment under the Constitution.

This is why the impeachment process is so important. As in 1994, it is the political process designed by Gingrich to turn this year’s elections into a single national election, not precisely a referendum on impeachment, but a device for bringing down Clinton politically and defeating his programs. Although he did not control the timing of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report on the Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich did turn aside requests earlier this year for an interim report on the older Whitewater investigation. Gingrich also orchestrated the rapid-fire release to the public of Starr’s report, Clinton’s videotaped testimony and the Linda R. Tripp transcripts.

The country has already watched Gingrich presiding over the GOP majority’s vote in favor of an open-ended impeachment inquiry. The political significance of these events cannot be overstated. After a House Judiciary Committee vote on straight party lines for an open-ended investigation, not a single Republican voted against the committee’s resolution on the House floor. Despite good personal and political reasons to the contrary, Democrats voted against the resolution by 175-31. While observers emphasized the votes of most Democrats for a narrower inquiry, only half the predicted number of Democrats crossed party lines.

After next month’s election of the new Congress, there will almost certainly be another, stricter party-line vote, again presided over by Gingrich, to approve Clinton’s impeachment. Clinton’s removal from office by two-thirds of the Senate would mean victory for Gingrich, but it is considered politically impossible. Former President Gerald R. Ford, who succeeded Richard M. Nixon after his resignation, has already suggested that Clinton should stand in the well of the House, below the speaker’s podium, to accept the House’s censure. Others have suggested that the House’s vote on impeachment, or a majority vote in the Senate, will force Clinton to resign. As many Democrats have come to realize, all these scenarios would be disastrous for them.

Since the House Ethics Committee only last week completed its proceedings on Democratic charges against Gingrich, who was censured for “misleading” the committee in his sworn testimony and had to agree to pay a $300,000 fine, the impeachment process can be seen as a personal fight to the political death between Clinton and Gingrich. Many see it as a political sideshow, a distraction from more important business. But it is what politics is about: a struggle for power and position by mobilizing public opinion, raising campaign contributions, enlisting interest groups, building electoral majorities and controlling public policy.

For Gingrich Republicans, the impeachment effort, particularly in the context of a sex scandal, seeks to cement support from the religious right and others who see abortion, adultery, divorce and other social issues as the nation’s most pressing problems. At the same time, the prospect of unseating a liberal activist in the White House has broader appeal to more traditional conservatives who support laissez-faire economics and legislative localism. But the symbolism of the impeachment process now underway is so great that it has made it possible for Clinton to raise public fears about privacy and sexual McCarthyism.

Not surprisingly, Clinton also has seized the opportunity to present his own “contract with America”: save Social Security first (before reducing taxes), hire 100,000 new teachers, give patients a bill of rights, stop selling cigarettes to kids and limit campaign contributions. While roughly two-thirds of the electorate now approve Clinton’s job performance and oppose impeachment, it is not likely that the Clinton Democrats in Congress will pick up seats in Congress.

Come January, Clinton will still be president and Gingrich still speaker when Clinton stands before Gingrich to deliver his State of the Union Address on the eve of the House impeachment vote. It’s must-see TV.