For Managers, a Tough Loss to Stomach

Nobody thought they would ever win.

Persuading a dozen Democratic senators to oust President Clinton was not going to happen. It was about as likely as the president breaking down and confessing or secretary Betty Currie pointing the finger at her boss.

Everybody had to know how this case would turn out, even the 13 House managers who fought for it with such fury.

But when they retreated from the glare of the television lights to the congressional command center that became their second home, the prosecutors blocked out that grim reality.

“I had hope,” said Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.), who tried in vain last week to elicit new information from star witness Monica S. Lewinsky. “All of us did. There was handwriting on the wall, but we kept our eyes on the case.”

Now the death of that hope is making the Senate’s expected vote to acquit Clinton all the tougher for the managers to take. So intense was the belief among them that somehow they could seize the momentum, members now say, that at one point they debated walking out in the middle of the Senate trial to protest senators’ restrictive rules. Their fervor also sparked infighting at times over how to proceed.

They lived and breathed this case--with its tens of thousands of pages of testimony, hours of audio recordings and lab tests of the president’s DNA. They dreamed about it. One of them, Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), almost missed the birth of his daughter because of it.

The managers knew they would not win. Still, there were enticing, if far-fetched, possibilities: What if everything went right, surprise evidence surfaced, the public soured on the president, a presidential ally defected, the president’s lawyers stumbled and the managers did win?

Hoping to Change Voters’ Minds

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that he watched the polls even as he discounted them, hoping voters eventually might see the case as he did and pressure Democrats to vote for conviction.

“We did feel that if we could get the story out in a coherent fashion the public might be informed and a change in the public’s mind would reach the senators,” Hyde said. “It’s essential, for impeachment to prevail, to have bipartisan support. We never had it.”

As they pushed and pushed their longshot effort, the managers bonded even as they grew sick of one another. Factions developed. So personally did they take some of the slights from the Senate that they once talked of giving it all up and telling the senators to stuff it.

“I took the position we should not proceed, that we should just pick up and politely walk back to the House,” said Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), who emerged as one of the most vehement prosecutors. “It might have discomfited a few of them but nothing of a permanent nature.”

The managers had defied the odds before, they reminded themselves during low moments.

Nobody thought they would ever get the case out of the House Judiciary Committee, with the polls so lopsided against them. Nobody thought they would ever actually impeach a president for the first time in 131 years, even if two of their four articles of impeachment died in the process.

In his summation of the case earlier this week, Hyde, who for better or worse became the case’s most public face, portrayed his team’s mission in the stark terms they all seemed to embrace.

This is about nothing more, each of them intoned over and over, than right and wrong.

“You know, all a congressman ever gets to take with him when he leaves this building is the esteem of his colleagues and his constituents--and we have risked even that for a principle, for our duty as we have seen it,” Hyde said.

Turning to his fellow managers, Hyde continued in his closing: “I have gone through it all by your side: the media condemnation, the patronizing editorials, the hate mail, the insults hurled in public, the attempts at intimidation, the death threats and even the disapproval of our colleagues, which cuts the worst.”

As the deliberations continued Wednesday, some Republican senators began to turn their back on Hyde’s team in earnest, declaring publicly that they will not vote to convict.

The managers’ House colleagues did their best to soften the blow. On the House floor, the managers received words of encouragement and slaps on the back. “Managers feel they were left out to dry,” said Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who was not on the team. “It was a harrowing ordeal, but they’ve come through.”

“Commiserating” is how Hyde characterized the support.

“In the long run, they come out of it just fine,” remarked Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Hyde’s counterpart as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They held their own against some of the best lawyers in the world . . . , more than held their own.”

The managers had always banked on solid support from Republican senators. At the very least, they figured, a trial would give them 55 votes for conviction, less than enough to remove the president but plenty to sully him for posterity.

But then the House managers watched with mouths agape as their Senate colleagues seemed to get cold feet.

The Senate allowed the managers to take depositions from what Hyde deemed “a pitiful three” witnesses. Live testimony, the staple of every other trial, was ruled out.

“It looked like a trial,” Rogan complained. “It sounded like a trial. The press called it a trial. But if you take two steps back and look at it, I wouldn’t call it that.”

With the rules against them, the prosecutors slugged it out among themselves over how to win. Committee members shot down the suggestion that they walk away in protest to stand up for the dignity of the House. But just mulling it over made them smile.

Some Pushed Tougher Tactics

The freewheeling Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) pushed his colleagues to pursue the “Jane Does”--other women linked to the president. But Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), one of the leaders of the pack, dismissed that approach as “chasing rabbits.”

In honing the witness list, the team split on whether to summon Dick Morris, the president’s former advisor. House investigators had questioned Morris, but his own sex scandal, and his erratic testimony, gave some managers pause.

Morris never made the witness list. Instead, it consisted of Lewinsky, presidential confidant Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, none of whom advanced the prosecution case.

To the end, prosecutors held out the hope that somehow a fourth witness might appear: the defendant himself.

Rogan said Hyde tapped him early on to question Clinton, should White House lawyers somehow recommend that he come forward. Rogan was ready.

There were many decisions they made that, looking back, may have been miscalculations.

As the verdict neared, Bryant wondered whether the managers should have called witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee, when they were running the show. Others questioned whether all 13 of them should have spoken so often during the trial. Perhaps the case should have been expanded early on, Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) argued, to include campaign fund-raising and other areas of possible misconduct.

“There are 1,900 different things we could ask ourselves,” Canady said. “We could have done this or we could have done that. I’m not going to start asking those questions until this is all over. Not now.”

Now, with their bold speeches behind them and the outcome crystal clear, the managers appear bruised. Taking little comfort in the present, they talk of how future generations will see the case. They search hard for vindication.

“What we’re hoping for on at least one of the articles is a majority vote,” Bryant said glumly as the senators deliberated behind closed doors. “You find your victories where you can.”

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Art Pine contributed to this story.