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Senate fails to convict President Clinton on impeachment
"As the other managers [and I] were walking into the rotunda in the Capitol, a group of citizens broke out into spontaneous applause. That tells me, more than anything, that we did the right thing, that the Constitution is alive and well and was strengthened by the [impeachment] process." -- Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), one the House managers who prosecuted the president in the Senate trial "Today was a victory for the Constitution .... If we had seen a successful action, from the House managers' point of view, we would have lowered the bar for impeachments of presidents." -- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) (CNN) -- Perhaps the best summary of the country's mood on the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton came from Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden when he spoke to his Senate colleagues on February 12. Just hours later, the Senate's votes on both articles of impeachment fell far short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution to convict the president. "There are no good guys in this sordid affair," Biden said. "Rightly or wrongly, the public has concluded that the president is an adulterer and liar; that Ken Starr has abused his authority by unfair tactics born out of vindictiveness; that the House managers have acted in a narrowly partisan way and are now desperately attempting to justify their actions for their own political reputation. Finally, they have concluded that Monica Lewinsky was both used and a user, while Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg, Paula Jones and her official and unofficial legal team are part of a larger political plot to 'get the president.'"
Clinton's presidency was without a doubt damaged by revelations that he broke his marriage vows during his affair with Lewinsky before and after she left the White House as a 20-something intern in the mid-1990s. The scandal outraged most Americans, as nearly every opinion poll indicated. The question was whether Clinton's legally dubious attempts to conceal the affair were impeachable offenses serious enough to remove him from office. Conservative politicians thought so, and so did a great many other people. But opinion polls showed most Americans just wanted the economy to continue rolling along with the lowest inflation and highest employment in decades. To them, the impeachment trial was unnecessary, a distraction, and a disgusting regurgitation of lurid facts they would just as soon forget. The Senate may have failed to convict Clinton on one count of perjury and another of obstruction of justice, but that didn't impede Arkansas federal district Judge Susan Webber Wright, who had been hearing the Paula Jones sexual harassment case that had triggered most of the president's problems. In an unprecedented ruling against a sitting president, Wright in April found Clinton guilty of contempt of court, fining him $90,000 for giving "false, evasive and misleading answers" in his 1998 deposition in the Jones case that were "designed to obstruct the judicial process." Clinton did not protest and paid the fine. By year's end, independent counsel Kenneth Starr had left office, taking this parting shot, "I think it is an unfortunate effort to try to find scapegoats rather than to come to grips with what he has done. And for the sake of the presidency, and for the country, I think it would be a good thing if he recognized and acknowledged his wrongdoing with respect to the judicial process."
For his part, Clinton said he was "profoundly sorry" for the burden he imposed on Congress and the American people. Having survived his impeachment and trial, he appears settled into an unremarkable final two years in office. Clinton's sexual escapades will likely merit more than a footnote in his biography. His personal weaknesses, after all, did almost bring down his administration and made him only the second president to be tried by the Senate on impeachment. Whether the scandal will have more immediate consequences depends on the collective memory of American voters. A year from now we will know whether Vice President Al Gore survived his association with Clinton, and whether First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton managed to turn her twin roles of betrayed wife and policy wonk into a U.S. Senate seat from New York.
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Who said that?
