It’s Politic’s, Stupid

First things first. This is a political crisis. It is not a constitutional crisis. Everything that’s happening is explicitly provided for in the Constitution, step by step. Which is why even harsh partisans like House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) have assumed a certain magisterial demeanor. “I would have to say to any member who believes this is a time for partisan antics, Pity for you,” Armey said on Wednesday.

The stakes are rising fast. President Bill Clinton made a particularly contrite and emotional confession at a prayer breakfast on Friday. “I was not contrite enough,” he confessed. “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned.”

At the same time, the president held fast to the distinction between private behavior and public performance that has sustained him for the last eight months. On public performance: He expressed gratitude for the support of those Americans “who somehow, through it all, seem to still know that I care about them a great deal, that I care about their problems and their dreams.” On private behavior: He expressed gratitude to those “who say that, in this case and many others, the bounds of privacy have been excessively and unwisely invaded.”

Indeed, at a meeting with his full Cabinet the day before, the president lashed out at Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala for daring to challenge that distinction. Shalala is reported to have rejected Clinton’s implication that policies and programs were more important than moral leadership. The president replied that the public character matters, too, and that if her logic had prevailed, Richard M. Nixon would have been elected in 1960 instead of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy is Clinton’s lifelong model as president--in many ways, as we now know.

For the president to survive, the distinction between public performance and private behavior has to hold. It’s under severe challenge right now, within his own Cabinet and from some of his oldest allies like Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). Lieberman said on the Senate floor on Sept. 3, “No matter how much the president or others may wish to compartmentalize the different spheres of his life, the inescapable truth is that the president’s private conduct can and often does have profound public consequences.” Like, Lieberman said, exposing the president as a hypocrite when he talks about values, and undermining people’s ability to trust his word.

The president’s contrition on Friday was matched by the details in the Starr report. Stories about particularly gross behavior by the president--lurid tales of fondling, oral sex, phone sex and cigars. Stories that will hold the president up to ridicule forever.

Plus stories about particularly flagrant evasions and deceptions by the White House. Like the president’s inability to remember, under oath, whether he had ever been alone with Monica S. Lewinsky--after what he now acknowledges were a half-dozen “inappropriate” encounters. (She claims 10.) Like the president’s defiant insistence that his “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky did not amount to “sexual relations.” To which the entire world will say, “Oh, please.”

What can we expect now? Anger, for one thing. The same kind of anger that greeted the president’s confession on Aug. 17. People were not surprised to hear the president say he lied. Polls show they suspected it all along. His confession made people angry because he had forced the country to go through a wrenching seven-month ordeal--more than 80 witnesses subpoenaed, constitutional showdowns over Secret Service testimony and attorney-client privilege, millions of dollars spent. All because he didn’t tell the truth in January.

Now people are being forced to pay attention to mortifying news reports about genitalia and oral sex. The White House claims Starr is trying to humiliate the president. But Starr claims he has to refute the president’s argument--made as recently as Aug. 17--that his testimony denying a sexual relationship was “legally accurate.” Once again, the response is likely to be anger at the president for forcing the country to endure such a tawdry spectacle.

Clinton will survive only if the distinction between private behavior and public performance holds. Because impeachment, in the end, is a political process, not a legal one. The Constitution says a president can be impeached by the House of Representatives for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” What are “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Then-Rep. Gerald R. Ford said, back in 1970, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

In other countries, a government can be brought down if it loses the confidence of the legislature. But an American president is elected by the American people, not by Congress. Can a president be impeached because he loses the confidence of the voters? If so, an awful lot of presidents--Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George Bush--would have faced impeachment.

No, the Constitution sets a higher standard. “This is a constitutional responsibility,” Armey said on Wednesday. “And, quite frankly, from my point of view, it’s awesome.” What is that “awesome responsibility”? Just this: the determination that a president is unfit to serve. The political reality is, that’s what “high crimes and misdemeanors” means.

A president may be considered unfit to serve for moral reasons--say, if he shows up drunk every day--even if he has not committed a crime. And if the president has committed a crime--say, lying under oath about a sexual affair--that offense may not be considered serious enough to make him unfit to serve.

To impeach is to repudiate the mandate of the American people. That’s a deeply political act. Does the president have a political strategy to fend off impeachment? Sure he does. He’s campaigning--exactly what he does best. In a campaign, the first thing you do is define your message. Last week, the message was, “I’m sorry--very, very sorry.” He apologized to House Democratic leaders, to senators, to Democratic contributors, to his Cabinet, to Lewinsky, to everybody. That’s called “staying on message.”

The target of his campaign is the Nov. 3 midterm, now shaping up as a crucial vote of confidence on this president. The problem is, Clinton can never say the election is a referendum on him. It would bring out too many anti-Clinton voters. So the president is saying this election is not about him. It’s about the nation’s agenda. It’s about Social Security and education and HMO reform. Issues on which he and his party speak with one voice. As Clinton told Florida Democrats on Wednesday, “A whole lot of people in Washington would like for something going on in Washington to be the subject of the election in November, instead of what’s going on in the lives of the American people--your families, your communities and your future.”

The problem is that the Starr report is sucking all the oxygen out of the 1998 campaign. With a question as big and as serious as impeachment looming, it virtually guarantees that the voters will see the election as their only chance to register their sentiments. If Democrats do well, or even just hang on, it will be seen as a big victory for the president. And he may survive. If Democrats suffer a big setback at the polls, it may seal Clinton’s fate.

For Congress to proceed with impeachment, it will have to convince the American people that Clinton is unfit to serve. That’s something most Americans have not concluded at this point.

Prior to the release of the Starr report, Clinton’s job-approval rating still hovered around 60%. Last week, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) warned his colleagues what would happen if they tried to impeach a president the voters still have confidence in: “If sometime in the future, the American people should come to believe that this president, or any president, has been driven out of office for what they may perceive to be political reasons, their wrath will fall upon those who jump to judgment prematurely.”