SUNS  4358 Friday 22 January 1998

United States: Clinton trial grinds on...



New York, Jan 20 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- U.S. politicians have argued for months over whether President Bill Clinton should be removed from office for allegedly lying under oath about an affair with a former White House intern, but most of the public simply sees the trial as an annoyance that will not end.

Ironically, as the Senate trial of the president ground on this week with Clinton's defence presenting his case, the U.S. public - in polls and in comments - seemed to be paying much more attention to his policies than to his alleged perjury.

A CNN-USA Today poll this week estimated that 58 percent of the public want the Senate trial ended when the body is slated next week to vote on whether to curtail any further action. In several polls, two-thirds of all voters have consistently stated that they do not wish to see Clinton removed from office over his efforts to hide an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Most of the people watching last month's impeachment of Clinton by the House of Representatives and this month's Senate trial were unimpressed by the efforts of the majority Republican Party to argue that Clinton lied under oath when he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky a year ago in a civil case.

"It makes me angry - it seems like this is never going to end," said Talley Stanley, a staunch Republican voter in New Hampshire, normally a bastion of support for the right-wing party.
"There's so many things the government could do, but all I hear about is Monica Lewinsky."

Clinton has capitalised on public frustration with the unending impeachment proceedings by emphasising policy matters, such as his effort on Tuesday to use a budget surplus to shore up the Social Security pension-fund system. Oddly, the past few weeks have seen the president's highest-ever approval ratings in a wide range of polls even as voter discontent with the Republican-led impeachment effort grows.

For all that, this week offered several signs that the impeachment process will last for weeks longer, and possibly even months.

On Tuesday, Senator Tom Daschle, leader of the Senate Democrats, conceded that the Republicans - who have a 55-45 majority over the Democrats in the Senate - were likely to approve a motion to hear witnesses next week on a party-line vote. Some Republicans have argued that they are also ready to vote against any effort to end the trial next week or to decide on a simple resolution to censure Clinton but not remove him.

In essence, the Republican effort is a huge gamble: they are doubling the unpopular drive by House Republicans to impeach Clinton last month in the hope that any new information from witnesses will finally turn popular support against the president.

Yet for the president's defenders, any new testimony on the Lewinsky matter - following several months in which almost all data, including taped conversations between Lewinsky and a former friend, Linda Tripp, have been widely broadcast - is besides the point.

Charles Ruff, Clinton's attorney, told the Senate Tuesday that it was difficult to understand why, if the Republican prosecutors from the House of Representatives believe witnesses are so important, they did not call them during the House impeachment proceedings last month. Clinton was impeached last Dec. 19 on a party-line vote in which only five Republicans voted against his removal and only five Democrats voted for it. Ruff added that no one had yet made the case why
Clinton's alleged conduct, even if proven, warrants removal from office as the only solution.

"Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs," Ruff said. "It's a method of removing someone whose continued presence in office would cause grave danger to the nation."

Only one previous president, Andrew Johnson, was ever impeached, but Johnson avoided removal from office by one vote in the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 once it became clear that the House would begin impeachment proceedings against him.

By and large, Clinton has enjoyed strong support for his continuation in office even though many Americans believe that he did in fact have sex with Lewinsky - contrary to his testimony in a civil deposition last January, and then to a federal grand jury last August, that he did not. The Republicans suffered setbacks in legislative elections last November, including the loss of several major Clinton critics, such as North Carolina Senator Lauch Faircloth.

The Republicans' problems are many in pushing the case to a conclusion. An impeachment vote needs the support of two-thirds of voting members in the Senate to win removal from office, but all sides concede that the 55 Senate Republicans are well short of winning the 12 Democrats they need to meet that target.

Worse, the Republicans have been the losers so far in all attempts to make political hay out of the scandal. House Republican leader Newt Gingrich was forced to step down after the poor November election showing, and his favoured replacement, Bob Livingstone, announced his retirement last month after a pornographic magazine revealed that he, too, was involved in an extra-marital affair.

Two of the Republican representatives prosecuting the case against Clinton - Henry Hyde of Illinois and Bob Barr of Georgia - have also been tarred by allegations of affairs in recent weeks.

The rash of charges on their side would appear to have dampened Republican hopes that public disgust at Clinton's affair would lead to his ouster.

Some Republicans, however, fear that if the trial ends now, their party will be the only one hurt by the scandal. So the impeachment process grinds on, despite the touching faith by the public that the state will once more concentrate on policies rather than scandals.