Clinton Trial Is Lost in Translation for Envoys

If Americans find themselves confused about President Clinton’s impeachment trial, they should spare a moment for the hundreds of Washington-based foreign diplomats, increasingly hard-pressed to explain the proceedings to their home governments thousands of miles and several giant cultural divides away.

First, there are the technical questions from confused and far-off capitals. Can the president travel outside the country during the trial? (Yes.) Is the option of censure prohibited under the Constitution? (No.) Can the Senate vote to dismiss the charges at any time? (Yes.)

Then questions melt into bewilderment: How can the president deliver a State of the Union speech to his jurors and accusers in the House of Representatives chamber, the very room where he was impeached only a month before? And how can senators--now the president’s de facto jurors--actually show up at a White House state dinner last week in honor of Argentine leader Carlos Menem, a dinner hosted by the trial’s defendant, Clinton.

Like American political analysts and commentators, diplomats based here also struggle to assess the longer-term implications of the trial and what it means for their countries.

“We try to reflect the conventional wisdom, but it hasn’t helped that this wisdom has been largely wrong,” noted one West European diplomat ruefully.

Great Cultural Divide Widens

Amid these complexities, the impeachment process has brought home a larger lesson to virtually all foreigners in Washington caught up in the task of explaining it to their citizens back home: It is a reminder of how unique America’s democracy is and how vast the cultural gap can be that divides the United States even from nations Americans consider like-minded.

“It’s difficult to explain the combination of justice and politics,” admitted Lenny Ben-David, the second-ranking diplomat at the Israeli Embassy. “If this is a judicial process, then why is it that politicians are doing the judging? There’s also the philosophical problem of whether one’s private behavior should be the cause of bringing down a president. In Israel, there have been some cases of politicians who have private affairs, but they don’t make headlines, let alone bring down a government.”

What Ben-David calls “the philosophical problem” is also a stumbling block for continental Europeans, who try to explain how the impeachment process manages to go on at all.

“We just lack the words to explain this; this is our main difficulty,” summed up a French envoy. “Conveying the impact of what we in France would consider a private matter is not easy.” Added a diplomat from another European country: “There’s a great sense of astonishment [among people at home] about this. The longer the process goes on, the deeper the sense of astonishment. They want to know why it’s taking so long, why it’s happening at all when public opinion isn’t supporting it and why it trundles ahead if it’s not smart for the Republicans.”

An Asian diplomat finds himself staring across a different cultural abyss, having to explain to his bosses at home how a president so deeply embarrassed by such a tawdry affair musters the brass to stay in office at all.

“Ours is a culture of shame, not guilt,” the diplomat said. “If the exact same thing happened to a major politician in my country, he’d lose his political base no matter how nice he said what he said. He couldn’t argue he was not legally guilty because that wouldn’t matter. His arguments wouldn’t be heard by the people.”

U.S. World Leadership an Issue for Envoys

For Washington-based diplomats, observing Clinton’s trial is no detached, academic exercise because one simple fact makes the trial nearly as important for them and the citizens of their countries as it is for those who live in the United States:

Like it or not, Clinton remains the world’s most powerful individual, the leader of a nation that is the ultimate guarantor of stability in Europe and Asia, peacemaker in Ireland, broker of a shaky accord in the Middle East and the determinant voice on crises that simmer from the Balkans to Baghdad and beyond.

“All this not only involves just high politics in the United States, but it has also raised the whole question of America’s world leadership and international stability, where the United States is supposed to play the leading role,” noted a West European envoy. “OK, he may have lied about sex, but is that sufficient cause for placing all this at risk?”

At formal meetings, cocktail parties and lunches, Washington diplomats chew over the potential effect of impeachment on issues of global importance but which divide the president and Congress--including payment of nearly $1 billion in back dues to the United Nations, ratification of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and a global environmental agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.

Despite the intensity of their efforts, however, they admit they have few answers.

Some diplomats also worry privately that a misreading of America’s domestic political crisis could embolden some foreign leaders in ways that threaten the stability in some regions.

“There is a fear that leaders of rogue countries may think they can take advantage of a perceived weakness,” noted an Asian diplomat. “This [weakness] may not necessarily be reality, but they see it that way.”