 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 February 1999 Issue No. 417 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 February 1999 Issue No. 417
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Back to the grindstone
By Mohamed HaqqiWhen 'Monicagate' first hit Washington last year, many political analysts predicted that US President Bill Clinton would eventually either resign in disgrace, or be driven out of office.
However, at the end of the day, Clinton proved to be remarkably resilient -- a survivor if ever there was one.
Now the questions are different. They concern not the president's immediate fate, but the aftermath of the trial. How will his remaining two years in office play out? How will the impeachment process, and his acquittal, impact the political process? And will the American people continue to hold the institutions of governance in the same high esteem as they did before?
As one of the most astute political observers in Washington, E.J. Dionne, Jr., has argued, the danger is that this acquittal may turn out to be the main feat for which the president is remembered. "You could say that this is Clinton's legacy, his great achievement, proof positive that he is a political miracle worker," wrote Dionne, commenting on the impeachment verdict. "You could also say that this is a victory the president bought at an exceptionally steep price. The cost included lying for at least seven months, lowering the standards of political discourse, ensnarling his allies in the defence of behaviour they repeatedly called reprehensible and squandering his obvious political gifts in defence of his own foolishness. He used his genius not to build his version of a New or Fair Deal or to march us into New Frontiers, but to hang on to office after a breathtakingly irresponsible affair."
Looking jubilant after his acquittal US President Bill Clinton on a whirlwind visit to Merida, Mexico, jokes with President Ernesto Zedillo
(photo: Reuters)
Dionne is not the only one to have attacked the subject. Hundreds of commentators and op-ed writers have joined the fray. National Public Radio asked listeners and experts for essays on the subject, which it is now broadcasting almost incessantly. So intense is public -- or at least media -- concern with the topic, that Larry King no longer has one guest on his famous programme every evening, but instead six and sometimes even seven formidable figures: senators, congressman, governors, prosecutors, White House defence lawyers, cabinet secretaries and political analysts line up for their chance to offer an opinion. And the questions are all about the same thing: the effect of the trial on the political agenda, on the coming elections in the year 2000, and on what is left of Clinton's term in office.
As would be expected, opinions vary. It depends on who you are listening to: the office of the presidency itself has been weakened; or the Clinton presidency has been damaged, nothing more; or the office and the institution have both emerged intact, if not in fact strengthened by the valiant defence of all those jealous guardians of the Constitution.
Some say the trial was so partisan, so divisive, that bad blood is bound to dominate the political landscape for years to come. Some say that the ideological divisions are so pervasive and the political interests so disparate that they doubt bridges can be rebuilt between Clinton and the Republican majority in the Congress.
Statements widely attributed to President Clinton have also caused a great deal of concern. It is claimed the president said that he was personally going to go after the thirteen so-called "managers" -- the Congressmen who acted as prosecutors in the case -- at the next elections. The Republicans were quick to denounce what Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, termed the politics of revenge. The White House was equally quick to deny that this was what the president had said, and described it as a "dumb" idea. Yet almost everyone is predicting that bipartisan cooperation will not be on the cards for quite a while, and that there is little hope for any legislative progress in the coming months.
There are voices, especially among the Senators, who claim that the trial, in a curious way, has forged new alliances -- enhancing understanding between the two sides of the political duarchy. In their view, a new spirit of cooperation has been forged out of the heat of the trial. As Republican representative Peter King put it, "The president has been badly damaged by this. He has to be aware of that. We have to realise that we were badly hurt by impeachment, and we have to show we are a governing party."
Of course, almost everyone agrees that partisan politics represent an evil that both parties have now to overcome. Yet some still think that bipolar jousting, properly conceived, can be a force for good. It demands commitment -- not just to individuals, not just to the pursuit of power, but to a set of ideas and principles. A contest between parties is, at best, an opportunity to clarify the choices that citizens have to make. They fault Clinton not only for his childish affair, but for not being committed enough to these liberal ideas. They also criticise the Republican Party for being a prisoner of the right wing, which continued to push for the impeachment trial against all the evidence that a majority of the American people, though disgusted with Clinton's behaviour, did not want him removed from office.
In a closely divided Congress, of course, partisanship may be complicated by the need for each party to create new majorities by drawing on votes from the other side. Representative Martin Meehan (Democrat, Mass) believes that his party could now profit because many moderate Republicans who supported impeachment need to reburnish their centrist credentials. They can best do this by voting with the Democrats on the minimum wage and campaign finance reform, among other issues.
Nevertheless, there is still a great deal of scepticism, not to say pessimism, in the air. The Senate's acquittal of President Clinton may yet usher in a new era of distrust in Washington. The Democrats may seek to capitalise on impeachment fatigue by confronting and demonising the Republicans in order to retake Congress. The Republicans, for their part, are divided, perplexed and wary of Democratic motives. But, as an editorial in the New York Times recently warned, any attempt to punish the House impeachment managers could easily backfire, reinforcing the image of an unrepentant president. Most of the House managers are in any case from extremely safe districts. In the last elections, the majority of them ran unopposed .
There are still many unknowns in the situation. It is possible Clinton may yet find himself embroiled in another sex scandal, which would complicate the situation even more. The Republicans may continue their unrelenting war against the president, thus drawing yet more public anger. General elections are still more than 21 months away, yet already several Republicans have declared their candidacy for the presidency, while many Democrats are talking about Hillary Clinton running for the Senate seat currently held by Daniel Patrick Moynahan.
The overall result, though, is a poisoned atmosphere -- one in which the politics of revenge seems set to dominate for months, if not years. This is how things have gone after every major battle between the Republicans and the Democrats -- after McCarthyism in the fifties, or Richard Nixon's scandals in the seventies, or the nominations of Judge Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. But what the American people now expect, and will demand in every possible way, is that both sides go back to the important business of protecting and furthering the common interests of the nation.
That may seem an easy request to satisfy, given the relative prosperity of America today. But there is still a great deal for the president to do domestically, in the fields of social security, medicare, and education. If Clinton were to be allowed to concentrate on these issues, who knows? He might even manage to restore the peoples' faith in the political system.
