Shamefully Clueless

The impeachment trial of President Clinton opened in the Senate Thursday on a note of solemn drama, only to revert almost immediately to something approaching political farce. After swearing for just the second time in its history to impartially judge the guilt or innocence of a sitting president charged with high crimes and misdemeanors, the Senate promptly adjourned, apparently without a clue about what will happen when it reconvenes next week. A process of historic importance that ought be clear in its aims and certain in its direction instead commences in a muddle.

Any remaining doubts about the essential partisan nature of the Clinton impeachment should have been put to rest by this week’s antics in the Senate. The perfectly sensible idea of limiting the proceedings to brief presentations of the case for and against the president, followed by a vote that would tell if the requisite 67 senators were inclined to vote for conviction, was discarded after conservative protests. Vigorous objections from the House managers--the Republican prosecutors in the case--and from a significant number of GOP senators prompted Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to look for other ideas. There are plenty of those, but so far none has come close to winning strong bipartisan backing.

Clinton’s severest critics insist that witnesses are needed to give heft and credence to the charges against him. The White House wants a fairly short, no-witnesses process and warns that if testimony is taken it will insist on calling its own witnesses, maybe plenty of them. The implicit threat is that this could prolong the trial for weeks or even months, producing a spectacle most Americans say they do not want to see. Obvious political blackmail this may be, but it is not without a fair point. Once witnesses against Clinton are called, he has every right to try to discredit or offset their testimony. Once the first witness is heard, the process properly becomes open-ended.

Were the outcome of this trial in doubt, an unrestricted hearing could be warranted. But everyone agrees there is virtually no prospect that 67 senators will vote to convict Clinton, and certainly most would agree that little is likely to be substantively added to the familiar evidence at the heart of the case. So the best course is still to get this trial over with as quickly and fairly as possible. To do that, though, first requires that senators agree on what the rules of the game should be, and here the Senate has so far failed shamefully.