Bill Clinton in his Presidential days
The headline isn’t a rhetorical question — I’m really undecided and would be very interested if others want to weigh in.
Background
I wholeheartedly opposed Clinton’s impeachment at the time, and there were a lot of good reasons to do so. The Republicans had hounded him almost from the day he was elected, for manufactured and bogus scandals. It started with “Whitewater,” a failed land deal that had occurred years before Clinton was elected President. (And don’t forget “travelgate” and “filegate”.) It was never clear exactly what Clinton was supposed to have done, but there were all sorts of innuendos and unsubstantiated allegations, largely fueled by unofficial investigations funded by right-wing billionaires (primarily Richard Mellon Scaife) for political purposes. See The Hunting of the President by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason for details. Members of the press, wanting to be their generation’s Woodward and Bernstein, flocked around like sharks smelling blood, and created so much smoke that politically, Clinton was forced to appoint a special counsel to investigate. The special counsel Robert Fiske (a republican), however, couldn’t find anything incriminating and was getting ready to close the case. Then lo and behold, a Republican Senator had lunch with ultraconservative DC Circuit Court judge David Sentelle, who stepped in to arrange the appointment of Ken Starr as an “independent counsel,” a position with much more power and independence than special prosecutor (for example, the independent counsel did not answer to the Attorney General), which has since been abolished due to potential for abuse. Starr was a zealot who knew there must be something wrong, and was determined to find it. But he could find nothing, until he caught wind of Clinton’s consensual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This was a purely personal matter, and by definition was not in itself a high crime or misdemeanor. (Not that I’m defending Clinton; the relationshipt was totally inappropriate, and arguably abusive due to the disparity of power, but totally unrelated to any political or governmental duties.) But when Clinton was asked about the relationship during a civil deposition, he was at the very least misleading in saying “there IS no relationship” (which led to the notorious “it depends what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”). Aha — Starr now arguably had perjury, and an excuse to smear Clinton’s tawdry sex life all over his report to Congress. The republicans impeached Clinton and the democratic senators, along with several republican (how times have changed!), voted against conviction and removal. Ultimately, Clinton gained in popularity due to the public perception that he had been harassed for political purposes — which was true.
Discussion
As I said, I (and virtually every democrat) opposed the impeachment. While Clinton was obviously guilty of poor judgment and lack of impulse control, it was irrelevant to his political and governmental duties (except that it gave republicans a sword to attack him), and was in a sense a set-up — the deposition was in the context of a bogus case and from a human perspective, what did you expect him to do, admit to an extramarital affair? My view at the time was that Clinton had been hounded by an out-of-control prosecutor who abused his power for political purposes until he found something he could use — a view that in retrospect continues to appear to be valid.
So why do I now wonder if it would have been better, in the long run, to have taken a “Caeser’s wife” position and go along with the Republicans to convict and remove Clinton?
As I said, I’m not sure, but here’s the argument:
(1) It may have been politically advantageous. Gore would have replaced Clinton, and thus would have been an incumbent and a known quantity when he faced Bush in 2000. It was a historically close election, so this very well could have made a difference. Obviously our country would have been far better off with Gore President, as opposed to Bush: No Iraq war, action on global warming, competent handling of Katrina, and possibly an effective response to the financial crisis that would have prevented or at least ameliorated the great recession.
(2) Democrats are, as a rule, less corrupt and more honest than Republicans. By emphasizing the importance of honesty in public life, the impeachment might have advantaged democrats generally.
(3) Counterfactuals are by definition not real, and their ramifications are thus impossible to determine. For example, a successful Gore presidency may have precluded a subsequent Trump presidency. But laying that aside, if Trump were nevertheless “elected,” the bar for impeachment would have been much lower. Recent precedent would have been that both parties were willing to remove a President, even of their own party, when there was evidence of wrongdoing. While republican hypocrisy can never be overestimated, it would have been a lot harder for them to justify a vote against impeaching Trump for the “perfect phone call.”
(4) For that matter, if a recent President had been removed from office merely for lying about a blowjob, would Trump even have dared to run? It appears there have been more than a few illicit blowjobs in his past. He may well have been more cautious about exposing his multiple crimes to public scrutiny, and perhaps would have been deterred from running, if subject to removal even for such a minor “crime.”
To counter that, of course, one can argue that republicans wouldn’t care about the standard set by precedent — regardless of what happened to Clinton, they would gather as a tribe to defend Trump or any other republican. That may well be the case. What do you think?
