IMPEACHED
Clinton: 'We must stop the politics of personal destruction'
BY PETER BAKER and JULIET EILPERIN
The Washington Post
The House of Representatives impeached the President of the United States on Saturday for only the second time in American history, charhing William Jefferson Clinton with "high crimes and misdemeanors" for lying under oath and obstrutcing justice to cover up an Oval Office affair with a young intern.
At 1:25 p.m. on a day of constitutional drama and personal trauma, the Republican-led House voted 228 to 206 largely along party lines to approve the first Article of Impeachment accusing the Democratic president of perjury before a grand jury. Within the hour, lawmakers went on to pass another article alleging he tampered with witnesses and helped hide evidence, but rejected two other articles on perjury and abuse of power.
A solemn, all-Republican delegation led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., then marched across the Capitol to formally deliver the articles of impeachment to the secretary of the Senate, triggering what promises to be the trial of the century to determine whether the 42nd president will be removed from office. At the same time, scores of restive House Democrats piled into buses to drive up Pennsylvania Avenue and rally around their embattled leader at the White House.
Flanked by those Democrats and Vice President Gore, the president decried the partisan vote against him and brushed aside calls for his resignation by vowing to serve “until the last hour of the last day of my term.” Hillary Rodham Clinton, who gave her own passionate defense of the president before the vote, stood at his side.
The historic votes in the grand chamber at the Capitol came just hours after the newly anointed House speaker, Bob Livingston, R-La., called on Mr. Clinton to resign and then, abruptly and unexpectedly, took his own advice. “I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow,” Mr. Livingston said, announcing he will step down because of the extramarital affairs he had reluctantly revealed on the eve of the impeachment debate.
Rarely has the capital been so whipsawed by events, as the nation's top leadership was left in disarray at the same time U.S. military forces mounted a final day of bombing runs against Iraq. Perhaps the last time a single day combined twin moments of history like this was Jan. 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president just minutes before 52 long-held American hostages were released by Iran.
Yet unlike that dramatic day, few in Washington found much to celebrate on Dec. 19, 1998. Mr. Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky had unleashed the full force of a constitutional process. Now, the impeachment and pending trial of a president who is popular with the public may redefine the constitutional relationship between executive and legislative branches for decades to come. And shellshocked lawmakers found themselves struggling to make sense of a new politics of turmoil that to different degrees and for different reasons has now claimed Mr. Clinton, Mr. Livingston and retiring Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
In his six-minute address on the South Lawn, Mr. Clinton blamed a toxic Washington for his plight. “We must stop the politics of personal destruction,” he said. “We must get rid of the poisonous venom of excessive partisanship, obsessive animosity and uncontrolled anger. That is not what America deserves.”
Republicans, queasy themselves about the quickly shifting personal code of conduct for politicians, echoed the general sentiments, although they were quick to add that the president had no one to blame for his predicament but himself.
The votes that followed made Mr. Clinton the only chief executive other than Andrew Johnson to be impeached by the House and forced to defend his presidency in a trial where Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will serve as presiding officer and all 100 senators will sit as silent jurors. Under the Constitution, conviction and removal from office requires a two-thirds vote, meaning 67 senators would have to declare the president unfit for the White House.
Like Mr. Johnson, who escaped the ultimate political punishment by a single vote in 1868, Mr. Clinton could hang on to power. With Republicans controlling the Senate 55 to 45, few in either party anticipate that enough Democrats would cross party lines to convict Mr. Clinton. Yet a trial heralded the prospect of months more of the unseemly political crisis that has polarized and paralyzed Washington since the Lewinsky affair was revealed on Jan. 20.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., Saturday began preparing for a trial. “Senators will be prepared to fulfill their constitutional obligations,” he said. But he did not outline any schedule, noting that Mr. Clinton could file motions or other pleadings before a trial commences.
Mr. Clinton and his allies still hope to avert a Senate trial through some sort of agreement in which Congress censures him for his admitted misconduct while allowing him to serve out his term through Jan. 20, 2001. Such an alternative was blocked in the House Saturday by Republican leaders who called it unconstitutional. To protest, Democrats staged a brief walk-out as voting began on Article I of the impeachment resolution.
Republicans derided censure as illegitimate, calling it “impeachment lite,” as Mr. Hyde put it. Impeachment was the remedy envisioned by the Constitution for Mr. Clinton's misdeeds, GOP leaders insisted.
“If our country looks the other way, our country will lose its way,” said Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla.
The two articles of impeachment approved Saturday charge that Mr. Clinton “undermined the integrity of his office” in trying to impede Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit and independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's subsequent criminal investigation.
Article I alleged that Mr. Clinton committed perjury when he testified before Mr. Starr's grand jury via closed-circuit television hookup from the White House on Aug. 17. While he acknowledged an improper relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, he denied that they engaged in “sexual relations” as defined by Ms. Jones's lawyers or by his own definition because they did not have intercourse. While implicitly conceding that Ms. Lewinsky performed oral sex on him, Mr. Clinton denied that he ever touched her in intimate ways that would have been covered by the Jones definition of sex.
Article III alleged that Mr. Clinton obstructed justice both in the Jones case and the Starr investigation by encouraging Ms. Lewinsky to file a false affidavit denying their affair, allowing his attorney to introduce that document during his Jan. 17 deposition in the case and coaching Oval Office secretary Betty Currie the next day to agree that he and Ms. Lewinsky never had sex and never were alone.
Latest updates from Associated Press