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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 February 1999 Issue No. 417 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 February 1999 Issue No. 417
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Is the Clinton trial over?
By James Zogby *When the votes were finally counted, the Senate did not convict President Clinton and remove him from office. The trial was over, but no one declared victory. No one celebrated, because everyone lost.
Months of humiliation have left the nation embarrassed. Months of partisan bickering and posturing have left the nation exhausted. And months of a pointless trial have left many simply bored and alienated.
It was pointless, because for so long now it has been clear that the Senate could not muster the votes needed to convict the president. The impeachment case was too weak and too partisan. The charges were simply too insubstantial to meet the requirements for removal.
The longer the trial went on, the more pathetic it became. The hardline prosecutors picked by the House of Representatives to present their case before the Senate were, at one point, reduced to whining. "Please don't dismiss this," they urged. "Please give us the chance to bring witnesses before you," they pleaded. And, in the end, "Please don't embarrass us by voting against our case."
Time and again, the Republican leadership in the Senate gave their colleagues, the Republican House prosecutors, the opportunities they asked for. And all the while, it was clear that the case could not succeed. In the last few days, pundits began to strategise an "end game" which would allow the Republicans to exit gracefully from their prolonged agony. But there was no graceful exit. The only possible end was to vote to acquit the president, and then move on. And so they did.
While the trial in the Senate is over, the final chapter in this sordid affair has not been written. The Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, whose personal crusade against the president brought the impeachment charges to the Congress, is still planning the next phase of his crusade.
Starr, according to several reports, is continuing to work on several fronts. He may yet indict the president on criminal charges and seek to try him in court, either before or after he leaves office. Similarly Starr is continuing to press ahead with efforts to prosecute a number of individuals who were only peripherally involved in the many investigations against the president. Starr already has a number of trials of Clinton associates pending. According to a recent Senate report, the Independent Prosecutor may even begin a new investigation to see whether or not the White House has "taped" Oval Office conversations between the president and his staff.
But while Ken Starr continues his seemingly unending efforts to bring Clinton's presidency to a disgraceful end, he is also himself under investigation. A federal court is examining whether or not Starr and his associates have illegally leaked information to the press in an effort to embarrass the president. The Attorney General (AG), the Administration official to whom Starr is ultimately responsible, is also reportedly investigating whether or not Starr is guilty of "acting improperly" in an effort to coerce Monica Lewinsky to turn against the president, and whether or not Starr had inappropriate contact with Paula Jones' attorneys. If this latter claim is true, then the AG may find that Starr lied when he claimed that he "had no contact with [Jones'] attorneys."
So while Starr plods on with his 50-million-dollar campaign against the president, the Clinton administration must now decide whether they have enough evidence of Starr's misdeeds and enough public political support to remove Starr from his job.
Meanwhile, the true fallout of the impeachment saga will be felt elsewhere. The hardline right-wing ideologues in Congress and on the radio talk shows are determined to continue their campaign against Clinton. They never accepted his victory in 1992. They were devastated by his repeat victory in 1996 and have now been driven wild by his having escaped conviction. Their efforts are fed by a hardcore 30 to 35 per cent of the public, who share their views and their hatred of the president.
Already some Republican candidates for the 2000 presidential nomination are seeking to make Clinton's behaviour and his impeachment an issue in their campaign. If this group will not let the matter rest, neither, apparently, will some Democrats. Reports have been circulating in recent days that some of the House Managers (as the Republican congressional prosecutors were called) are to be deliberately targeted for defeat when they run for reelection to the Congress in the year 2000.
It is unclear how this matter will play out over the next year. Will the public punish those Democrats who defended the president, or will they punish those Republicans who sought to remove him from office? Or, will they simply tune out, indicating by their resounding absence that they have no desire to replay this sordid saga?
For his part, the president has continued, as he promised months ago, to press ahead with matters of state. To some extent this tactic has worked. While Republicans focused on impeachment and then conviction, their popularity ratings fell substantially below those of the Democrats. Currently, one poll shows the Republicans favourable rating at 40 per cent, as compared to 57 per cent for the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, most polls are showing that Clinton's job performance rating is up in the mid-60 per cent range. And in a recent poll evaluating presidential "greatness", Clinton's 43 per cent rating surpassed George Bush's 42 per cent, and almost matched Eisenhower's 43.8 per cent rating. Far down the list were Carter (31 per cent), Nixon (21 per cent), Johnson (18 per cent) and Ford (17 per cent).
This is not to say that the president has not been damaged by the events of the past year. While his defenders have been as vigorous in defending him as detractors were in attacking him, his image has been tarnished. His ability, however, to win public support for the initiatives of his presidency, however, does not seem to have been so badly affected, even if he is now a "lame duck", reduced to merely serving out his last two years. Clinton's ability to convince Congress to support him in whatever he may try to do is doubtful. Despite calls by backers of both sides that the impeachment matter finally be forgotten so the White House and Congress address the nation's business, it remains to be seen whether or not the president can pull them behind him.
So the Senate trial might be over, but the media are still ravenous for a good fight, and the 2000 election season is coming up soon. Even if the majority of Americans don't want to hear another partisan word spoken as long as they live, the political battles of this last year look set to run and run.
* The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab-American Institute.
