Friday, January 8, 1999 -- Washington, DC -- Yesterday morning, Arkansas Congressman Asa Hutchinson arose earlier than usual. He was one of the more thoughtful Republican members of the House, but still a card carrying young turk in a deliberative body that hadn't deliberated much of anything for years now. Hutchinson was uncomfortable in the early morning chill. He was partly to blame for the do-nothing Congress that had degenerated into a sideshow for most of 1998. Now he was a "manager" -- one of thirteen Republicans who would try to convince the United States Senate that William Jefferson Clinton had committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States because he wouldn't cooperate with either a trailer tramp's extortion or an effeminate prosecutor whose only goal in life was to destroy him.

Asa showered, shaved and thought of his brother Tim -- a U.S.Senator from Arkansas and one of a hundred "jurors" who would begin the trial of a sitting president today. Asa had been excitable during the past few months. He was a politician above all, and so many times he had smelled the blood of the Democrat president, a man he simultaneously respected for his uncanny political skills, and loathed because Bill Clinton consistently got of the hook with American voters. Sometime this month he would be presenting his case against the President to his brother. "Talk about insider trading," he chuckled as he pulled on his socks over still-damp feet.

Tim Hutchinson was a Senator without seniority. But he was more mature than his brother and worried about this day ahead. He knew there weren't 67 votes in the Senate to convict the President, yet he was also all too aware that his own political future might be riding on the manner in which the "Trial of the Century" would be stage-managed. He had little faith in Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, and naturally, even less for Democrat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle -- who always seemed to look like he jumped of a cross-country bicycle or chair number two at Aspen.

Both men had had their hair cut the day before and chose conservative suits for the day's events. Neither knew what would happen -- there were no plans made save a silly little charade of pomp where the Chief Justice would be sworn to uphold the Constitution by 96-year-old Strom Thurmond and then in turn swear the Senate to a similar pledge after which each senator would sign a "pledge book" which somehow made their oath more solid.

Tim thought of signing friend's yearbooks at high school commencement.

He sighed as he toweled off and turned toward the mirror, "What have we gotten ourselves into, what are we doing this day?"

Across town, Senator Robert Torricelli was already on his eleventh phone call of the day, this time with advisors. He had begun his day long before the Hutchinson brothers rolled over in bed for the second time. Torricelli was a pro -- and a rabid Democrat. He didn't live life, he chewed it in big bites. He didn't make many mistakes either and had known, far sooner than most, that Bill Clinton would end up enmeshed in a trial of impeachment.

Torricelli was team player, albeit a slightly unenthusiastic one on behalf of the President. The two men didn't click, mostly because they were so much alike yet so far apart in a North-South sort of way. Torricelli, the junior Senator from New Jersey, already eclipsed New Jersey's far senior Senator Frank Lautenberg, a man with a reputation more as an aristocrat than a thinker. Like Clinton, Torricelli was a meteoric personality, already a favorite on cable and late night television pundit shows. Torricelli, looking out for himself as all politicians must, saw his chance, as he had all year, to emerge nationally as one of the best and brightest in the Senate.

The vehicle just might be the perils of Bill Clinton.

He was fastidious and uncannily calm at all times. Wisdom, even if not so wise, seemed to flow from his lips without exertion, and because of this, his irritating sense of self was more than tolerated by friend and foe alike. He was in his aide's car before seven and sipping coffee and taking phone calls at his desk before Henry Hyde climbed from his own car and trudged through the bitter cold toward his office.

Congressman Henry Hyde, an old man, felt older than ever. He was uncomfortable with the traditions of the Senate. In the House, where he served as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he was -- largely because of age -- seen as one of the last of the "great old men," and he knew it. But as the top manager of a gang of young ultra-right-wing thugs from his own party, he had become nothing much more than a member of a baker's dozen ordered specially for the occasion by entrepreneurial televangelists and corporate capos who had put out a Contract on Clinton even before he was first elected president. "Just another member of the mob," he thought to himself, "just another member of the mob."

The day before, he had visited the grave of his beloved wife -- a woman who never forgave him for his own adultery. Now he was about to try and ruin another man for the same private crime. He quietly begged his wife for forgiveness for what he was about to do. He leaned over her grave as only an old man can and whispered, "You know, I really had myself convinced that Clinton was a felon -- they convinced me -- and now I have no choice but to continue lest I look the fool. Forgive me, sweetie. Forgive me."

But he knew she wouldn't. She never did.

Asa and Tim rode toward the Capitol together. It wasn't their usual practice, but this was a special day. They were good friends as brothers go. They were also unusually quiet this morning. Both were thinking the same thing -- as brothers so often do: "We really might just get him. We really might just bring down a president."

That was never their goal.

But both of them, and most Republicans on the place they call "The Hill," had been in the hip pocket of wildly fanatic conservatives who pointed to the new glory America enjoyed -- claiming that God, (and, of course, Ronald Reagan) made it so. They had listened as one religious financier after another warned them of the continuing decline of American morals and the lack of family values in the suburbs and cities of the United States.

Asa and Tim didn't take it seriously, but both pretended to, because the rewards were rich, The money, the volunteers, the "you can count of me" nickel and dime preachers who delivered GOP-designed sermons every Sunday before every election day -- all were in the offing. So they listened, and they sponsored bills they knew were going nowhere in order to placate them. They talked about God every chance they got. They invoked the Founding Fathers as if they were saints, not slaveholders. But things went pretty much as always. The world was at relative peace. America dominated the universal economy, the sea, the air and even space.

It was wonderful. If only Bill Clinton wasn't living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- threatening to spoil the fun, share the pie with too many, encourage people to care and take responsibility for each other -- you know, the hackneyed words of dead liberals. The kind of thoughts even high school girls scoffed at these days.

The Hutchinsons parked in the House garage and made their ways to separate ends of the Capitol. Asa ran into Henry Hyde in the hall. The old man seemed more distracted than usual this morning. He was reading as he shuffled down the granite corridor toward some unknown meeting.

Asa and Tim found their staffs already hard at work -- mostly answering phones. Their constituents were falling into two categories: demanding the head of the president or the heads of the Hutchinsons. Both men had lied to the press, telling them the calls for impeachment were running 3-1 against the President. The truth was the opposite.

This had better work, they thought -- at exactly the same moment.

Senator Torricelli made one last phone call before he left his office for the Senate floor. He called an old Party friend. He asked him how he felt about what was about to happen. There was no answer on the other end of the line and then the friend paused and said, "Hillary and I are counting on you, Bob. And thanks for everything you've done."

Hours later, as they stood near their desks in the hallowed Senate chamber, both Tim Hutchinson and Bob Torricelli nearly broke into laughter as The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was escorted in, followed by what looked like a Papal procession of six Senators escorting him. They made their way down the long aisle toward the waiting Strom Thurmond, a man who made his political wealth on the backs of black children long since passed away. It was Strom Thurmond who would swear in the jug-eared Justice who had robbed the Constitution of so many protections for the accused. Robed in black with four golden braids on each arm -- an invention of his own which he thought made him look more majestic -- William Rehnquist took the oath. And as he did he held his left hand on the Bible and his right hand over the head of Senator Thurmond -- almost as if in benediction.

Bob Torricelli knew Justice Rehnquist well. He once saw a film of him as a young man. The future Chief Justice was berating and harassing a group of black men and women trying to register to vote in his home town of Phoenix, Arizona.

This was the man who would preside over the President's future -- Bill Clinton, a man that African Americans called the first Black President of the United States -- and meant it.

[to be continued]

-- Mac MacArthur