Impeachment Stress Spreads Like the Flu

There is more than a lot of talk around Washington by impeachment critics who say that it is time to stop this unpopular spectacle and get back to the nation’s business. But the nation’s business is not the only business that has gone neglected during the trial of Bill Clinton.

This protracted saga has put a crimp in the lives of more than its main players--the president whose family life is said to be “decimated” and the former intern who cried all night at the thought of testifying before the Senate.

It has now reached into the homes of a supporting cast of thousands who are called to duty, regardless of their political beliefs, to make this thing happen--the faceless work force putting in six-day weeks, 14-hour days on a drama that doesn’t know how to end.

They are the California House aide whose 15-month-old baby is eating Cheerios with bananas for dinner because she can’t get to the grocery store. They are the Capitol Hill police officer who works overtime guarding the door outside the Democratic caucus room and can’t get out to pick up his uniform shirts before the dry-cleaner closes at 7.

While the story on newspaper front pages is of senators haggling over the president’s fate, the story in the Capitol hallways is of aides asking cabdrivers to escort their children from school to dance lessons. Of prescriptions unfilled, no milk in the refrigerator, bounced checks, unpaid bills, no clean socks, overworked baby-sitters and pizza boxes lined up outside the door at week’s end--monuments of guilt to parents who can’t get home in time to cook.

Even Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale), a linchpin of the House prosecution team, drew the line when he passed on an invitation to debrief Monica Lewinsky at the Washington Mayflower Hotel so he could take his twin daughters to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

“It was a tough call,” Rogan said. “Monica Lewinsky or the aquarium? Well, not a tough call from the kids’ point of view.”

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Sometimes it’s easier to draw the line when you’re the boss. Lowly Senate staff members find it hard to ignore a call to arms, a measure of the obsessive work ethic that grips Washington and makes California look like Club Med.

When an ice storm paralyzed Washington in Week 2 of the trial, people lost heat and lights. Schools closed, but a lot of parents went to work anyway. One Senate aide confided that he had left his three children at home stoking a fire for warmth. “We found them huddled in front of it, in the dark,” he said. “I worried about the house burning down.”

To make matters worse, some sort of flu is spreading through the Capitol. Several senators have reported feeling dizzy. Barbara Boxer rolled into the chamber in a wheelchair a couple of weeks ago, and last week Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) checked into a hospital for wooziness and underwent surgery to remove her gallbladder.

But the worker bees just keep showing up, sick or not.

“Everyone is sick, everyone,” wheezed one California Senate staffer. “It’s like an epidemic. Everyone’s hacking.”

They stopped lamenting about canceled vacations and lost weekends a long time ago. This demanding drama is cutting now into the fiber of daily life, the health and well-being department.

Jeff Solsby, who was a 23-year-old specimen of health from Newport Beach when he took the job as Rogan’s press aide two years ago, recently learned he is now a 25-year-old specimen of stress with his weight up 10 pounds and his blood pressure up 10 points.

“You were in great shape. What happened?” the doctor asked.

“See’s candy, crappy food and pizza,” he confessed.

The staples of impeachment.

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Much has been made of Clinton’s behavior and its affront to women everywhere. Much has been said about his political foes who have thrown a wrench into the federal government works. But little has been said about the consequences paid by the people consigned to clean up the national mess, many of them working parents.

One mom/reporter who moved her family in with neighbors when the aforementioned ice storm left them without heat or electricity was greeted one late night by her 4-year-old, who threw up all over her black dress and tweed jacket. She spent the night nursing him through the stomach flu and was back in the Senate chamber, sleepless, by morning.

Another parent walked in after a long day to find a bottle of bleach had bounced off the washing machine, spilled on the rug and polluted the house with fumes. She was calling poison control before she had a chance to hang up her coat.

They say no man is an island. Washington is like a small town and Clinton its most famous neighbor--what happens to him, in one way or another, happens to everybody on the block.

And Washington has never been very good at keeping its priorities straight in times of turmoil. Although occasionally, somebody in town has an outburst of sanity.

That prize most recently went to Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, who bugged out of the most dramatic part of presidential defense attorney Charles Ruff’s memorable presentation to watch his 4-year-old daughter dance in her first recital.

“I figured either way, I’d be seeing history,” he said.