Loyal Opposition
by David Corn

February 3, 1999

The End is Clear?

"The show trial must go on." That was the Republican mantra last week. Who would have thought that an impeachment trial could be so silly? Credit the Republicans for drenching such a serious matter with inanity. The Republican prosecution team cried for a kitchen-sink list of witnesses, asserting that live testimony was necessary to resolve the conflicts in grand jury accounts. But when Henry Hyde's squad had the chance to call witnesses during the House Judiciary Committee hearings, they said, "No way," insisting they could impeach the President without eyeballing any of the key players. But to keep their hopeless case alive, they fought for a parade of witnesses on the Senate floor. "It made them look like horse's asses," says an aide to an influential Senate Republican. "The attitude among many Republican Senators was, 'You need us to hear witnesses when you didn't? Get lost.' "

The Senate Republicans begrudgingly tossed crumbs to House comrades, allowing them to depose three witnesses. Hyde ridiculously complained that the lords of the Senate were treating the House Managers like blue-collar workers, and CNN's Bob Franken dubbed the tension "class warfare." It's tough to envision the Republican House caucus as lunch-box guys when they vote against the minimum wage, try to gut workplace safety rules, and design tax cuts that mostly benefit owners, not workers. In any event, the Senate Republicans looked equally foolish, declaring that witnesses were needed so they could render an informed decision, but that only three witnesses were needed for this awesome task. This was akin to proclaiming that a patient needs a blood transfusion and then providing him three tablespoons of plasma. Yet this is what passes for serious inquiry among Senate Republicans. (And some are considering voting for a separate "finding of fact" -- merely on the basis of Starr's evidence and three quickie, no-sex-please depositions.) The three depositions were a sop to the managers and to those Senate Republicans who want to convict the S.O.B. How can Senate GOPers pull the switch on Clinton without being able to assert that cross-examined testimony was gathered before they voted to fry the President? But, still, few Republican Senators were willing to see this spill on to the floor of their august chamber. "I can guarantee you," the aide says, "there will not be witnesses appearing live before the Senate." The deposition videotapes are another question. After all, what hasn't come out in this affair?

The House Managers compounded the absurdity by taking their three wishes and wasting them. Clinton's smooth-as-mercury lawyer-mercenary chum Vernon Jordan and big-thinking White House aide Sidney Blumenthal were unlikely to clarify existing conflicts or cough up new details that incriminate the President. The House Managers were desperate. Representative Lindsey Graham, one of the managers, was on television non-stop arguing that Clinton's conversation with Blumenthal -- in which the President compared Lewinsky to a stalker -- was something of a smoking gun. Why? Because it was an attempt by Clinton to fiddle with a potential witness before the grand jury. "America needs to know what the President did," Graham asserted. But America does know. This was all in the Starr report. Moreover, the Starr report notes that Lewinsky would not leave Clinton alone, pleaded with him to consummate their tryst, and not-too-subtly threatened him if he did not improve her job situation. Clinton's a liar, but the man can be forgiven for using the s-word in the heat of disclosure and denial. Graham's fixation on this minor detail speaks loudly.

The depths of the Managers' desperation was evident when at the end of the week they were angling to depose Blumenthal before Monica Lewinsky. The theory was that if Blumenthal again related Clinton's unkind remarks about Lewinsky, the ex-intern would be peeved and drop the hammer on the Creep. If this is what the Managers were hoping for, you can almost feel pity for them. And then the Senate Republicans, agreeing with Clinton's legal team, put Lewinsky in the lead-off position.

The House Republicans have thoroughly bungled the case against the President. It's no wonder the Senate Republicans do not want to turn the floor over to them. On points, the GOP House hounds beat the Republican Senate snakes. How can the Senate mount a serious impeachment trial without witnesses and without letting both the prosecution and the defense present the evidence and the witnesses they deem necessary? As Graham plaintively cried, "If you're going to remove the President, you have to show why."

The Senate Democrats had their own share of inconsistency. They voted for open debate and then argued against making videotapes of the depositions public. But they stuck to a steady message: fey on all this. By voting for dismissal before considering the retread evidence, they may have been turning their backs on their oaths to be impartial triers. But at least they were honest in their contempt for the Managers' case. The Senate Republicans, however, pretended to respect the Managers' case while undermining their ability to present it. With the final vote little in doubt, the Senate GOPers could only go through the motions. It's been an impeachment trial with no suspense. The number one question last week appeared to be whether the Senate -- either by releasing Lewinsky's videotape or by calling her to the stand -- scoop Barbara Walters. Can Monica Madness end before the public hears from the face that launched a thousand soundbite quips? How empty it would feel if there was no true climax. But, then, how appropriate.

Quick Slaps

There was almost too much sloppy thinking to keep up with last week. Let's take a tour.

-- A rare moment of honor came when Senators Tom Harkin and Paul Wellstone, liberal Democrats, tried to stop the Senators from debating dismissal and witnesses behind closed doors. Under the archaic Senate rules for an impeachment trial -- which were written in the days before Senators were elected directly by the populace -- the deliberations are conducted in total secrecy. And if a Senator dare reveals what went on, the punishment is expulsion. Harkin and Wellstone moved to bring the Senate into C-SPAN modernity. But the Republicans, with a few defectors, said no. Advocates of in camera government argued that there would be less posturing and politicking if television cameras were turned off. That is, these guys and gals can only do their jobs and act like statesmen and stateswomen if no one is watching. The Republicans were lucky the trial is of modest concern across the land.

Only more ludicrous than the Senate decision was the reaction of Sally Quinn, the Georgetown hostess and Washington Post writer, to Harkin and Wellstone's noble endeavor. Playing the Washington insider on Larry King Live, she dismissed the concern of her "New York friends" outraged over the secret deliberations. "I had to laugh today," Quinn remarked, "when Wellstone and Harkin came out... and Wellstone said, 'Can you imagine that we're keeping this away from the American people.' " Excuse me, what's funny here? After a commercial break, the cool-as-an-Eskimo Quinn tried to explain her position: "When you come here [to Washington], you sort of have to imagine that you've crashed your plane in the middle of a New Zealand forest...and you're going into an aborigines tribe, and everything [sic] in the tribe is wearing a mask....That's exactly the way the senators and the Congressmen [are]....And when they go into private session, sometimes they can at least take off one of their masks."

Thank you, Quinn the Anthropologist. The last time Quinn, who is married to Ben Bradlee, appeared in this column was in November, after she wrote a piece in the Post noting that Washington was an honorable and honest town before Bill Clinton ruined it. (Here's a joke: how do you know when Sally Quinn is defending the Washington status quo? She's moving her lips.) When King was wrapping up the hour, he asked Quinn for a prediction. The High Priestess of Washington (where's her mask?) could not resist taking one more catty stab at those who would challenge the prerogatives of Washington's powerful: "Well, I've watched Paul Wellstone and Harkin -- seems to me [they] have become the Tom DeLay and Dick Armey of the Democratic Party, and they make such a cute couple. My prediction is that Harkin is making the most out of this, will run for president with Wellstone as his running mate." What queenly disregard for open democracy. There will be no place settings at the Bradlee-Quinn table for Harkin and Wellstone.

-- New York Times columnist William Safire does push the envelope when it comes to transforming speculation into journalism. A week ago, he noted in a column that he had been invited (as he is every year) to the White House to offer his thoughts on the State of the Union. (Why would Clinton aides open the door to the White House to Safire? Perhaps working for Clinton requires a certain amount of masochism.) While inside the inner sanctum, in a reception room, Safire noticed that Betty Currie was huddling with "two grim suits offering advice, presumably not about her secretarial duties." He then asked, "So what if White House aides were reassuring her, or even going over questions she might be asked if House managers call her to testify." Well, were they rehearsing her testimony? And in a reception room where she could be spotted by Safire? Of course, Safire does not say that they were. By constructing his sentence as a question with the caution of a congenital lawyer, he insinuated without declaring. Did he hear what was being said? Doesn't seem so. Maybe the "grim suits" were warning Currie not to leave out any sensitive documents when Safire was around. What if they were concerned that Safire might spot a secret and then slip it to the Mossad? See how easy it is. You, too, can be Bill Safire in your own home. If you can imagine something, you can write it. Hmmm, that sounds like something other than journalism. Who knows what the "grim suits" (men in black?) were discussing with Currie? Just think what Safire would have made of it, had he caught sight of the President speaking with his own secretary.

-- In blasting the "nanny government" proposals in Clinton's State of the Union address," Scott Hodge, chief economist for the corporate-backed, anti- regulation Citizens for a Sound Economy, bitched, "This is the same administration that didn't believe we were smart enough to choose our own health care and our own doctors." How many Americans are free to choose their own health care? One-hundred-and sixty million are in managed care plans, where there is little true freedom of choice. Over 40 million Americans have no health insurance, which sure gets in the way of choosing care. Where is Hodge living? Canada?

-- In her debut column as the national correspondent for Salon, Debra Dickerson, a former senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, explained why she had a jolly good time during the Gulf War. (Interest declared: I occasionally write for Salon and think it usually a fine publication.) At the time, she was an Air Force intelligence officer working on the war effort out of the Pentagon. She declares she's not the "bloodthirsty" type, but she reports she was delighted to be in on the bombing. Why? "Here's the reason that will disgust you: I was professionally curious to see if all the things we'd been stimulating for so long would actually work....Here was our chance. How much could we destroy with how little?...How many could we really kill if we dropped this kind of bomb as opposed to that kind?" She's correct about the disgust -- what a good reason to be slaughtering people! -- but she defends the "disgusting" behavior. Dickerson asserts she wasn't suckered by George Bush's propaganda: "We GIs certainly knew that was a war about cheap oil -- rhetoric about the poor, invaded Kuwaitis notwithstanding." But before drawing a breath, she states another reason she was into the war: "For whatever reasons of geopolitical hegemony and petroleum reserves, Iraq was shooting at America. America is where my Mama lives. America is where all my stuff is. Iraq is going down." This is loony. It's as if Iraq invaded Kansas, not Kuwait. Whether you believe the war was right or wrong, you have to admit that the Iraqis began shooting at Americans only after the Americans interjected themselves into the conflict. Dickerson's Mama and Dickerson's precious stuff were never threatened.

"For me," Dickerson writes, "the Gulf War was about people, not politics." Only her people, it seems. Not those Iraqi soldiers wiped out at the end of the war when the U.S. military forces attacked retreating Iraqi forces. The bottom line: she was eager to bomb Iraqis to test the plans she had helped to concoct and to protect her endangered Mama. What a perverse combination of Strangelovian affection for the process of war and emotion-driven jingoism. This is the mindset that the war planners love to see among the troops. Dehumanize the enemy. Take it personally (you ain't hurting my momma or my buddies!), and don't think about the connection (or lack thereof) between the purported cause and the carnage. Dickerson tries to salvage her soul by reporting she actively ducked assignments that might have involved her in the U.S. military program in Central America in the 1980s. But had she faced no choice, she says, she would have either resigned or saluted "and given 110 percent." What a courageous stand. But there is one obvious question: if Dickerson, as she tells us, has no guilt, then why is she telling us she has no guilt?