|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| CLINTON'S DEFENSE | |
 December 8, 1998 
|
||
 |
|
Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant and National Journal and Newsweek columnist Stuart Taylor review the first day of the president's defense presented to the House Judiciary Committee. Committee members also provide their reactions.
|
|
JIM LEHRER: Tom, the issue that Congressman Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, raised today, that this hearing today and continuation tomorrow isn't literally going to change anything; there are 21 Republicans that are going to vote for impeachment on this committee and there are 16 Democrats who are going to vote against it. Do you agree with him? |
|
||||||||||||
| Change of mind? | ||||||||||||||
|
JIM LEHRER: And so then the next issue on this, Stuart, is that the real audience today are those 20 to 25 – how many ever there are – moderate Republicans -- not on the committee but elsewhere – who could eventually decide this by weekend, when this goes to the floor of the House. STUART TAYLOR: That's right. JIM LEHRER: Actually by next weekend.
JIM LEHRER: Tom, let's go back through some of Stuart's points. First of all, do you think – did you hear a convincing argument if you were, in fact, a moderate Republican, or somebody else trying to make a decision on this? |
 |
|||||||||||||
| Reaching the undecided. | ||||||||||||||
|
JIM LEHRER: Let's point – what you're talking about is an 182-page document that President Clinton's lawyers are releasing tonight, and it will be discussed in detail tomorrow. TOM OLIPHANT: That's correct. JIM LEHRER: But it lays out their defense in writing on the facts. TOM OLIPHANT: On the factual issues. It expands in great measure upon a much smaller, more hastily-prepared one the day Ken Starr's referral was released back on September 11th – they did a hastily done thing together. This is much different. And I think it may – for those Republicans – change the perception of this case factually. Starr and Clinton's lawyers, it's like a trip down a cafeteria line, and there's always evidence on the other side of the line, and you pick one from here and you pick one from here, and you end up with a narrative, and that's what Starr's referral is. It's a narrative. It's a story. Now, Clinton's telling the story, and he's going down the same cafeteria line with the same unexamined grand jury testimony, and he's picked a bunch of stuff, and he's got a story now. And I think the question tonight, which I would prefer not to answer, is whether it introduces serious and substantial doubt into the factual question here.
|
 |
|||||||||||||
| The heart of the argument. | ||||||||||||||
|
STUART TAYLOR: That is the heart of the anti-impeachment defense, and it's a very serious argument. Nicholas Katzenbach, the former Democratic attorney general, came across very plausibly when he said for this to impeach against public opinion would – would not be legitimate. I think that was the essence of it. One element of this equation is how traumatic would a Senate trial actually be. The Democrats repeatedly said today it would paralyze the country for six months to a year. The Republicans, I think, we just heard Mr. Hutchinson saying more plausibly, in my view, it wouldn't really take very long. Let's not underestimate that it is a very grave act. But, frankly, I don't see why a Senate trial would take more than two or three weeks, particularly if the line holds that they're not going to convict him; they're not going to remove him. I don't think anyone would have an incentive to prolong a Senate trial endlessly under those circumstances. JIM LEHRER: Another element of today, which came up increasingly, was that don't members of the House think for one minute that you're voting for something short of removal when you vote for impeachment. How do you read that?
JIM LEHRER: And it's a punishment by itself. |
||||||||||||||
| A Senate trial? | ||||||||||||||
|
TOM OLIPHANT: That's right, which seems to be contradicted by some of the scholars who testified this morning. STUART TAYLOR: Yes. And I think the DeLay argument is too facile; you shouldn't just say this is just a heavy censure. I do think there's a case to be made that impeachment might be a worthwhile act even if it's foreseeable that the Senate will not convict. And I think the heart of it is the President has not yet stopped lying, in my view, and in the view, apparently, of some of his own supporters. And a Senate trial might be able to rescue us from the irretrievable partisanship and party-line nature of the House proceedings. There are some Democrats in the Senate who have been far more serious in criticism of the Senate, of the President, than any of those in the House have been – Senators Lieberman, Moynihan, Bob Kerrey, for one – and frankly, the Republicans in the Senate, I think most of them are not the partisan – are not as partisan in their attacks in the President. I think a Senate trial might be a much more edifying spectacle than what we've seen in the House. Whether that would make it end better for the sake of the country is, obviously, somewhat speculative. TOM OLIPHANT: The assertion that that trial would be worth it in the context of what else is going on in the world, what else is going on in the country, whether or not there's some threat to the underlying stability that makes our economy so prosperous, I think those are balancing considerations that will weigh heavily on minds and not very much in favor of such a process if that's its only purpose. JIM LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you both very much. See you again tomorrow night. |
 |
|||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
TOM
OLIPHANT: Yes, as far as that goes, but it may be necessary to go further
because there are disagreements within the Republican majority that
involve how to write the articles of impeachment by the time they're
to be submitted on the weekend. You know, they don't have agreement
on what the charges are yet, and they may disagree among themselves
as to some of the perjury allegations. Some may not want to vote for
perjury charges involving the deposition in the Jones case last January.
Other members oppose perjury on the charge of abuse of power, depending
on how it's written. So while I think Marty Meehan is exactly right,
that 21 to 16 for something – it's very interesting that as of tonight
we have nothing in the way of a charge. 
STUART
TAYLOR: Those – that is the audience and of course the public because
they will be taking polls and the public's watching some of this. I
did not hear anything so far today that would have swayed me if I were
one of those 20, if I were on the fence, towards saying I'll vote against
impeachment. Now, in candor, I'm not one of those. I've been in favor
of impeachment. But I heard there were some plausible arguments against
impeachment by various witnesses that were not new, and there was one
new argument that, in my opinion, was not plausible. The new one was
Professor Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School saying that if this lame
duck Congress impeaches the President, it will be – expire and be invalid
in the new Congress next year and therefore it would be a futile act,
might as well not do it. He cited no plausible evidence for that. There's
a wealth of history to the contrary. I think this is one of those professors
who makes up the Constitution as he goes along. The older plausible
arguments were to be taken very seriously. This ain't Watergate. The
Republicans, more or less, concede whether or not these are high crimes,
they aren't as high as Nixon's were. A party line vote for impeachment
looks bad and is thin ice at least in terms of public legitimacy. Trying
to impeach a President over the objections of the voters is on thin
ice in terms of legitimacy. Those are all solid arguments. The trouble
is that everyone in Congress has heard them before, and hearing them
again today may not change anything. I do think that Democrats have
the better argument on at least one important point, which is whether
a censure would be constitutionally valid. I think it clearly would
be the Republicans who say the Constitution doesn't allow that, in my
view, are quite wrong. The question is whether it's an adequate – an
adequate way to do this, and I think not. 
TOM
OLIPHANT: That's the key question. Part of one – it's not complete yet,
it's in the process of being released tonight. I think what's new about
the President –
JIM
LEHRER: Well, that can wait until tomorrow until all of that has gone
through, because tomorrow afternoon Ruff, the White House counsel, is
going to go through all of that, et cetera, but based on just what was
heard today, the argument, for instance, Stuart, that the – that I just
asked the two members of the committee about, that whatever the President
did you can see that he did all of these things; they don't rise to
high crimes and misdemeanors and even if they did, it would – it's not
worth putting the country through it to impeach him.
TOM
OLIPHANT: Well, this is a very central point, and it will bear very
heavily, I think, on the minds of those who have yet to make a final
decision in this case, because it involves what you're going to put
the country through and if you're going to put the country through that,
on what basis should you act, and if you'll notice, the Democrats tend
to embrace a line that I think Elliot Richardson uttered when he was
up on the Hill last week – this vote is a vote to remove from office.
It is not anything other than one half of the process that kicks a president
out. By contrast, I think, there is an argument being made to these
moderates by some of the pro-impeachment members of the House – notably
Tom DeLay – that, hey, there's not going to really be a trial in the
Senate; you can't convict him. Impeachment is really censure.