White House Sheds Gloves, Lashes Out at GOP Senators

After weeks of circumspect rhetoric, the administration has shifted tactics and is using the White House podium to pound Republicans who are weighing impeachment of the president.

As of last week, White House officials still were saying that they hoped for a fair trial. This week, presidential aides attacked the impeachment proceedings as a right-wing effort designed to cause as much pain and embarrassment as possible to President Clinton.

And White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said Friday: “We don’t believe that the American public shares the belief that we should be using the impeachment process to pursue a partisan agenda.”

But even friends of the White House believe that the complaints are too intense, given that the president is likely to be acquitted and out of peril within a few weeks.

“There’s all this whining and complaining out of the White House, [but] I think things are going extraordinarily well,” said one former senior official who advises the White House. “Given the facts, you couldn’t ask for anything better--other than that he kept his hands off of her in the first place.”

The president’s advisors took aim at Republicans on Friday for insisting on calling witnesses and for retaining the right to make public videotapes of the depositions of the three witnesses: Monica S. Lewinsky, Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and Sidney Blumenthal. And they criticized Republicans for considering back-to-back votes--first to decide whether the president should be convicted and removed, which requires a two-thirds vote, and then to decide whether the GOP case against the president is proved, which requires only 51 votes but would not cause Clinton’s removal.

“This is about running a trial to potentially convict and remove the president. And we’re making up the rules literally on the back of an envelope right now,” Lockhart said. “That . . . raises some issues about whether that’s fair to all sides. And I think what we need is a process where there’s some certainty to all sides that, no matter which way this goes, we’ll reach some conclusion. And if it goes in a way that doesn’t suit the majority, they won’t rip up that envelope and write a new one.”

The new White House antagonism toward the Senate majority comes after more than a third of the Senate, 44 Democrats, voted this week to dismiss the trial, indicating that there are not enough votes to convict the president and giving officials the security to lash out.

“When 44 senators said you cannot remove this president, that changed everything,” said one senior political advisor to Clinton. “Everything that happens from now on [in the trial] is needless.”

A partisan vote Thursday shaping procedures for the rest of the trial prompted the White House verbal attack.

“We’re right back into the same partisan posture that we had in the House,” said the advisor. “It seems to me it’s because the Republicans are afraid of the Republican base. It’s a sad thing to see a bunch of powerful senators cowering in fear of the ultra-right. That’s what’s going on.”

In contrast with the White House, top Senate Democrats were hesitant to assail the process as completely unfair. Although Republicans passed the procedures they wanted on the party-line vote Thursday night, Democrats won a key concession, giving Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) veto power over whether House prosecutors would be permitted to expand their investigation after next week’s depositions.

Despite prompting from reporters, Daschle hesitated to criticize his GOP colleagues.

“While we worked diligently and I appreciate very much Sen. Lott’s willingness to consider many of the concerns we had and I certainly don’t fault him for his inability to address each of the concerns that we had, we simply couldn’t bring this matter to a successful bipartisan conclusion,” Daschle said.

Pollsters said that White House officials do not need to do much to convince the public that the Senate trial is a partisan endeavor.

“They may think they need it, but they don’t,” said Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “The public is still thinking that this is as partisan as the House process is. I don’t think there is any letup in disappointment with Republicans.”

Kohut cautioned that it would be “ineffective and probably unwise” for the White House to make too much of a fuss over Senate efforts to declare the House impeachment case against the president proved without removing him from office.

“If they seem to be complaining about it, they seem to be making the case for the president to get off scot-free,” Kohut said.