By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
Sepbember 25, 1998
The Clinton support team was out in force yesterday on the airwaves demanding that the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee "wind up" their consideration of the several thousand pages of Grand Jury evidence, negotiate some sort of plea-bargain arrangement with Bill Clinton and "get back to the issues the nation is concerned about." What issues, you ask? Well, one pressing issue is saving Medicare for baby boomers. Another pressing issue, is that old chestnut, Health Care Reform.
This is exactly the opposite of what the Clinton support team was saying less than two weeks ago. "When we first started this, my colleague from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, said, `Why rush? Why do we want to even start this process now?,' '' said Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark. `` `Why don't we wait until after the election?' And now the message is, `Let's get it done, let's get it over with, let's get it behind us, let's set a deadline.' '' Now the demand is, "It needs to be wrapped up in 30 days."
We also hear often that it is a "serious thing" to "reverse the will of the people" by impeaching an elected president. Then, there are those who darkly warn that talk of impeachment may damage the economy.
It all reminds me, as many things in Washington do these days, of a Bible Scripture. Jesus said, and it's been quoted a few times recently by supporters of the President, "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
And that is exactly what Bill and Hillary Clinton are so worried about. It must give them nightmares to think they may be judged with the same judgment they so strongly urged on the nation when the President was Richard Nixon.
The 92nd Congress which considered the Nixon impeachment was strongly Democrat - 255 Democrats to 177 Republicans. The Senate was 54 Democrats to 44 Republicans. It also was determined to oust Nixon. All the arguments being used by the Clinton camp would have been far more pertinent if Nixon had used them.
First, an apology. Clinton had been told fairly bluntly by Sen. Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, that an apology would perhaps head off impeachment - if there were no more serious infractions than Monica Lewinsky. On August 17, we heard no apology and by September 8th, when the Starr Report was made public, we found the President was still clinging to an absurd defense - i.e. oral sex is not sex and therefore he was "legally" telling the truth.
Compare that with Nixon taking responsibility, and apologizing for the actions of a "national security concern gone awry." The "Plumbers" who broke into the Watergate Hotel arose from legitimate concerns over the theft and publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 which, the Justice Department contended when it obtained a temporary restraining order against further publication by the New York Times, would cause "the national defense interests of the United States and the nation's security (to) suffer immediate and irreparable harm."
The "Plumbers" President Nixon claimed, were trying to find out who was leaking information about sensitive national security operations to the press." Remember, a war was going on and leakage of national security operations could and did mean that Americans died in Vietnam. On June 17, 1972, the "Plumbers" broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate hotel to place bugging devices. Nixon found out about it six days later and, the tapes showed, was furious. What he did then was cover up the matter, protecting his aides.
He neither approved nor knew about the break-in. He did cover it up. What Clinton has done is engage in perverted sex, quite similar to that Paula Jones claims he wanted from her, and then has not simply lied about it; he has wrecked people's lives and caused them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves - and him.
As for the argument that the "people have elected" the President, and the Congress should avoid "undoing the will of the people" - Richard Nixon in 1972 won in a landslide victory, with more than 61% of the popular vote, and 520 electoral college votes to McGovern's 17. Clinton won in 1996 with 49% of the popular vote and 379 electoral college votes to Dole's 159. In 1974, the Democrats did not think the overwhelming majority of the voters who elected Richard Nixon were a problem.
In fact, William Jefferson Clinton in 1974 said of President Nixon: " Yes, the president should resign. He has lied to the American people, time and time again, and betrayed their trust. He is no longer an effective leader. Since he has admitted guilt, there is no reason to put the American people through an impeachment. He will serve absolutely no purpose in finishing out his term; the only possible solution is for the president to save some dignity and resign." - William Jefferson Clinton, 1974.
Somehow 24 years ago that judgment meted out to Richard Nixon by a young Bill Clinton seemed just about right, even though the country was in the middle of a recession combined with galloping inflation. Economist Sylvia Porter said of the year 1974, "No one could have anticipated...how the Watergate affair would paralyze all government economic policy making for most of the years." In other words, the Democrats in Congress were so engrossed with the opportunity to get rid of Richard Nixon, they totally neglected everything else.
Compare that with the rule Newt Gingrich pushed through which prohibits members of the House from making speeches in which they mention the President negatively. This has resulted in the work continuing as the same pace in the House while the Clinton Scandals are handled by the Judiciary Committee.
Also, so far as the "will of the people" is concerned - what do you suppose Clinton's chances of election would have been had the American people known about what he was doing with Monica during the December 1995 Government Breakdown - in the midst of a major national emergency? If the voters knew in 1996 what they know now about Clinton, would he have been elected?
By early 1975, six months after Nixon resigned, and we had both a president and a vice-president that the people had not elected. The unemployment rate had risen from 4.2% to 7% and the leading business indicators were plunging at the steepest rate in more than 23 years. The securities industry dropped to the lowest level since the 1800s. The year 1974 was the worst stock market decline since the 1929-1932 crash almost a half a century before. But, at the time, the Democrats were not blamed for the situation.
In foreign affairs, Nixon had, as he promised, brought home the troops from Vietnam, winding down an unpopular war that had occupied two previous Democrat administrations - Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy. His determined policy of relaxing Cold War tensions resulted in an agreement to sign a treaty with USSR chief Leonid I. Brezhnev limiting nuclear weapons and opening up China.
And, then, of course, there were the Nixon tapes - tapes of conversations with his aides inside the Oval Office. Nixon and the Justice Department believed that those tapes, which were made to have an accurate history of his presidency, should not be made public. What other chief executive in a dangerous world would think it a good idea to make public discussions inside the Oval Office when a Cold War was going on?
Of course, the tapes were made public. Years later that same Supreme Court decision required Senator Packwood to release to the public his private dairies. Yet, in 1998 Bill Clinton tried to keep his aides from testifying before the Grand Jury on a trumped up claim of "privilege." Hillary Rodham Clinton as a young attorney personally helped bury the very notion that President Nixon had any privileges. Now she claims that "a right-wing conspiracy" is the cause of people "hating" her husband. Now the game plan appears to be an effort to look really busy and claim loudly that there is no time for an impeachment because all his attention is required to "do the people's business."
Yet, we have found recently, Bill Clinton is quite capable of "compartmentalizing" to such an extent that, during the government shut-down in 1995 he somehow managed to find the time to engage Monica Lewinsky, an intern, in oral sex while simultaneously discussing the shut-down on the telephone with Senators and Representatives. Sort of like Dick Morris engaging in sex with his prostitute while talking to Pres. Bill Clinton on the telephone.
In 1996, when the story about Dick Morris and the prostitute broke in the Tabloids, Clinton personally fired Morris, his top political adviser. Two years later, at his own admission to the Grand Jury, we find that the President has not only engaged in such conduct on the job, in the Oval Office, but has committed perjury, obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses.
If he thought Morris' sexual behavior was enough to fire him from being a political advisor, why are we even talking about not firing Clinton? Morris didn't commit perjury, obstruct justice or tamper with witnesses. He just was having an affair with a prostitute. Was this a temporary lapse into right-wing extremism on the part of Clinton? Based on what we are being told now, Dick Morris should not have even been reprimanded.
So, why do we have the almost hysterical demands now from Democrats for a 30 day "wrap-up" of the Clinton investigation? Why the sudden about face? Well, if, as expected, the Clinton scandals result in a larger Republican plurality in the Congress after the November 3rd election, the 106th Congress may easily have the needed two-thirds majority in the Senate to impeach. They don't want to face the Congress after the people have voted. They believe Clinton's best deal would be with the 105th Congress.
The Democrats know that, should Chairman Henry Hyde carry through with his promise to conduct the Clinton Impeachment using the model they developed during the Nixon Impeachment, they are in big trouble.
The last thing the partisan Democrats want is to permit the American people a referendum vote on this subject in the November 3rd General Election where they choose members of Congress AFTER they have been told the truth about Bill Clinton and Monica, obstructing justice, abuse of power, perjury - and perhaps Campaign Finance Reform, Filegate and Travelgate.
To comment: mmostert@ waveshift.com