Anxious Moments

Let’s face it, the long-term implications of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial are meaningless. With the exception of a few historians and Clinton, of course, who really cares?

Think about it. Most of you will be dead before the historical measure of the Clinton presidency is settled. The real implications of this whole sorry mess is the political devastation, both short and long term, of the Republican Party.

Never has a party so clearly on the brink of long-range prosperity managed to blow such enormous political advantages in such a short time. After the 1994 landslide, the GOP was on the road to decades of congressional domination that could have rivaled the Democratic dominance of 1932-80.

But they are on the verge of blowing it. Why? Because of the conservative obsession with getting Clinton. In a single year, conservatives’ deep-seated hatred of one man has taken a party from its first positive congressional poll ratings in decades to negative ratings rivaling those of the Watergate years. The GOP conservative wing has done more damage to its party than the left did to the Democrats in the 1960s and ‘70s.

What’s more appalling is that the evidence of self-destruction is so apparent. Time and again, conservative attacks on Clinton have backfired. Each time, the public, through countless opinion polls, warned the GOP it was sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Many smart Republicans saw it, as well, but were too intimidated by the right to stop it. As one former Democratic congressman observed, “The Republicans have a right, a far right and a religious right.” Try to stand in the way of that train.

From Whitewater to the day the Monica S. Lewinsky story broke, the Republicans found every conceivable way to shoot themselves in the foot. First, they became so obsessed with what, they thought, was finally their chance to get Clinton that the hunt became the GOP’s only message. Believing that the public’s apathy was a simple lack of information, conservatives abandoned virtually all their agendas, particularly tax cuts, to get the public to join their outrage.

They missed the point. The public was outraged, but not surprised. Voters have known since 1991 that Clinton was a bad boy, but he was doing a good job managing the economy, and the public figured, correctly, that nothing they could do was going to take the bad out of the boy.

While the conservatives rushed to the heights of piousness, Clinton took to grabbing the politically popular parts of the right’s agenda and putting a Democratic happy face on the best bits. Remember: “The era of big government is over”--but Clinton also affirmed the need for federal government, just leaner and more efficient. In one grand statement, Clinton stole the GOP’s most venerable issue and put a moderate Democratic stamp on it.

Or take crime, a GOP mainstay. Not only did Clinton call for more cops and tougher penalties, but he did it just as crime rates were plummeting across the country. Don’t forget guns. The GOP took time off from the Clinton hunt to side with its old pals at the National Rifle Assn. against Clinton’s ban on assault weapons and cop-killer bullets. The police loved him for it, while the GOP was seen as deeper in the NRA’s pocket.

Because the GOP spent the summer of 1998 on the Clinton lynching bus, it forgot to do what it was put in power in 1994 to do: make government work better. Republicans fell behind in virtually every appropriation bill until the last week of the session. In a crucial election year, this gave Clinton enormous leverage as GOP poll numbers collapsed, forcing the Republicans to capitulate on key issues like more teachers and tougher environmental regulations.

But the most crucial victim of the Republicans’ preoccupation with getting Clinton was losing their most reliable message: tax cuts. Can you believe that when the federal government showed its first budget surplus in 40 years, a GOP-controlled Congress didn’t pass a tax cut? Sure, the House passed a measly $80-billion cut in September, but Republicans in the Senate killed it. If a tax cut had passed, Clinton could never have vetoed it; if he had, the GOP would have had a powerful issue in the fall elections. Instead, Republicans found themselves defending their preoccupation with getting Clinton and trying to explain why the GOP Congress had accomplished nothing.

For the record, Democrats didn’t win seats in November because people were mad about the attacks on Clinton: 60% of voters said in exit polls that they didn’t even like Clinton. No, they were punishing the GOP for not earning their pay. That’s why so many conservatives didn’t even bother to vote.

Now comes a critical strategic moment for the Democrats. They have the GOP coffin almost nailed shut. The retaking of the House is within sight, maybe even the Senate. It is not the time to let the GOP off the hook. Stop this pious call for the end of the impeachment trial.

Every day the trial lasts, the GOP’s wound deepens. Every day it goes on gives Clinton a chance to grab more of the issue agenda while Republicans are literally glued to their chairs.

Leave them there. I don’t care if Clinton wants it over. Those of us who have defended this guy for six years owe him nothing. He’s history. The party will go on, maybe even prosper, while Clinton retires to Little Rock or Hollywood.

He’s got one thing left to give us: a deal on Social Security and Medicare. The Republicans need one badly, and it is the only thing they will work on with Clinton when the trial ends. After that, let Clinton gas up Air Force One and do what lame ducks do: go on foreign junkets. In fact, the more time he’s overseas in 2000, the better for all Democratic candidates.

The Republicans are in a circular firing squad. For god’s sake, fellow Democrats, do not help them straighten out the line.*