A Nation Refuses to Sit By Quietly

The icy streets of Washington have been deceptively quiet. No demonstrators. No placards. Not a sign that the republic is riven over the legitimacy of this presidential impeachment.

But don’t be fooled by the wintry calm. The American people are speaking. And speaking and speaking and speaking. They are speaking so much that the Senate e-mail system overloaded last week when the usual influx of 70,000 messages a day shot up to a whopping half-million.

Correspondence hovered in electronic limbo for up to three days before landing.

The phones, meanwhile, hardly stop ringing in offices of the 100 senators or anybody else prominently associated with the trial of President Clinton. Evidently, some faction of the population sits with the remote in one hand and the receiver in the other because every time Glendale Congressman and House prosecutor James E. Rogan goes on television, the phones light up in his Washington office.

“I am watching him on ‘Larry King’ right now,” a caller from Atlanta immediately reported to Rogan’s harried staff one night last week.

“He’s all done,” barked another viewer before the show was over. “Tell him to enjoy it while he can.”

Public opinion polls are one thing. But this tidal wave of e-mail, faxes, telegrams, letters and phone calls are the unfiltered voice of the people, the true measure of a nation that is incensed, fixated, bored and exhausted by the latest trial of the century, all at the same time.

In the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) sit four big white plastic bins overflowing with mail. Two of them are marked “Pro-Clinton or censure,” the other two, “Impeach Prez Clinton.”

They hold the pulse of the people expressed in eclectic style, from block letters on a giant piece of shocking pink cardboard to dainty floral stationery bearing an elderly scrawl. They are the sentiments of a diverse population--a World War II veteran, a mother of two young girls, a doctor specializing in diseases of the chest--an hors d’oeuvre tray of emotion from a population that has been fed the evidence raw and is busily digesting:

Pointed: “A note on a busy day. . . . If you support impeachment. . . , I will never vote for you again.”

Cynical: “If they want a saint, they will have to wait for the Second Coming.”

Even More Cynical: “He lied. He acted like a bozo [for which it appears he must take a number and get in line].”

Conflicted: “Thank you for your support of President Clinton, even though we all feel some level of sadness and betrayal.”

Determined (scribbled on a piece of yellow legal paper cut into quarters): “I am spending the holidays with my family in Pennsylvania. This is the only paper I could find but I felt I must write to you. . . .”

Courtly: “Dear Madam:”

Spelling-impaired:: “I am appalled and ashmed to call myelf an american. Ken Starr is no better than Larry Flint.”

Threatening: “These vindictive hypocrites will be voted out of office in 2000.”

Screaming: “I CAN’T STAND IT AND GET ANGRIER EVERY DAY THIS GOES ON.”

Blunt: “Tell the lying fool to leave for the good of the country.”

Forceful, Ungrammatical: “As my representative, I direct you to remove Clinton in the most expeditious and economical way possible.”

Plaintive: “God help us all if this continues.”

One flight down from the overflowing mail room is Feinstein’s reception area, staffed by three aides who spend every moment on the telephone. Three blinking lights help them keep pace: Yellow means one caller holding, orange means two callers holding, red means three callers holding and one of them is about to be dropped so better kick somebody off the line.

The red light is on. The aides struggle to be polite but firm. Every call must be answered and no constituent offended. Senator’s orders.

“OK, sir. I’ll pass that along, sir. . . . Sir, I can’t let you finish, sir. . . . We’re getting flooded with calls.”

They call all day, regardless of the hour. When Rogan aide Myron Jacobson walked in at 8 a.m. one day last week, the phone was already ringing. The caller ID flashed a Los Angeles area code.

“It’s 5 a.m. there,” he said. “Who in their right mind gets up at 5 a.m. and says: ‘Hey! I’m going to call my congressman!’ ”

Just then, Rogan’s mug pops up on the television set in the back office. He’s being interviewed on Cable News Network. Three, two, one. Riiiinnnnnggggggg!

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll pass that along to the congressman,” a staffer politely chirps.

Modes of communication have changed but not the swell of public sentiment. Engravings of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson show citizens storming the doors of the Senate gallery for a peek. The matter was contentious and public opinion strong, although mail was slow and only the rich could afford telegrams, historians say.

Now the feedback spikes every time the impeachment soap opera heats up.

No lawmaker pretends to read it all, and some take it more seriously than others. But as the trial rolls on in a capital that can be tone-deaf and out of touch, the public noise is a daily reminder of one certain thing: Somebody is out there listening.

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Getting in Touch

Here are the e-mail addresses for California’s two senators:

* Barbara Boxer: https://www.senator@boxer.senate.gov

* Dianne Feinstein: https://www.senator@feinstein.senate.gov

The e-mail addresses and Web sites for every senator can be accessed from this Web site: https://www.senate.gov/

Readers can also communicate by going to The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/congress