They Can Run; However, There’s No Place to Hide

In the impeachment trial of President Clinton, some senators want justice, some want vengeance, some simply want closure. But what all seek--but very few will publicly confess to--is that most precious of all commodities for officeholders in tight situations: political cover.

Here’s the problem: Both sides know that a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict the president is about as likely to carry as a resolution granting honorary citizenship to Saddam Hussein. On the face of it, then, Democrats should be smugly happy.

The cloud on their horizon is that a simple acquittal leaves the impression that Clinton has once again eluded accountability for his misbehavior. Even the tongue-in-cheek vow by presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart on Wednesday that in the aftermath of an acquittal, the White House would be “gloat-free zone” is not reassuring to anxious Democrats. The president’s most vocal defenders tremble at the thought of a saturnalia of champagne, cigars and bongo drums in the Oval Office the night the Senate lets Bill Clinton off the hook.

Such a spectacle would not necessarily displease Republicans. The yawning gap in the public opinion polls between Clinton’s lofty job rating and his abysmal character ratings argues strongly that even though the public doesn’t want Clinton drawn and quartered, they do want the Senate to take him to the woodshed. If acquittal appeared to be exoneration, Democrats would have some explaining to do, especially if Clinton gleefully romps away like the Gingerbread Man.

No sane Republican believes Clinton will be removed, but what might be worse than an acquittal is a kind of attenuated homeopathic censure resolution that writes off the president’s transgressions as mere naughtiness. With the knowledge that removal is a lost cause, some GOP senators shopped around the idea of a finding of fact to accompany the acquittal. It would have been, in effect, a verdict without a punishment. For Democrats, who want the president chastised but not condemned, the preferred instrument is the censure after acquittal.

In the Senate, then, it has really come down to a kind of metaphysical debate over degrees and modalities of punishment and how senators can emerge from this melee with their reputations intact and their reelection prospects undimmed.

Inasmuch as no Democrat, especially those up for reelection in 2000, wants to go before the voters having issued Clinton a free pass, and no Republican in the same election cycle wants to invite a primary challenge from conservatives angered over a conclusion that produces nothing more than an insipid declaration or disapproval, it becomes a matter of how many lashes are laid on Clinton and with what degree of vigor.

The quest for a kind of Golden Mean in the chastisement of Clinton is not restricted to members of the U.S. Senate. Although he certainly cannot profess any enthusiasm for a stiff rebuke, Vice President Al Gore also needs to have Clinton spend some time in the national dog house. Despite his apparent domination of the Democratic presidential primary field for 2000, Gore’s burdens would be greatly increased by having to defend total exculpation of Clinton.

In fact, the scars of the president’s transgressions are borne by almost everyone in national politics, and all are seeking a way to prevent permanent disfigurement.

If the denouement of the Senate trial seems to be bogged down in haggling over what kind of rebuke to Clinton might risk becoming a constitutionally impermissible bill of attainder or what the durability is of resolutions of censure, it is only because Clinton, by his actions, has put a lot of politicians in a very uncomfortable spot. The outcome will depend less on their feelings toward him than on the requirements of their own survival.