POLITICAL WRAP

January 29, 1999
		Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot discuss the partisanship that has marked the Senate impeachment trial.

Full coverage of the impeachment trial: analysis and trial documents. Jan. 28, 1999: Analysis of the decision on how to proceed in the trial Jan. 27, 1999: Four senators on the outcome of the Senate votes and the negotiations to conclude the trial. Jan. 26, 1999: Will witnesses be called to testify in the impeachment trial of President Clinton? Jan. 26, 1999: Extended excerpts on the debate over witnesses and other developments today in the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Jan. 25, 1999: Terence Smith talks with regional commentators about how the impeachment trial is being viewed from outside the beltway. Jan. 25, 1999: Extended excerpts and a report on the day’s events in the impeachment trial. Jan. 22, 1999: After listening to six days of testimony, senators submitted their questions to the House managers and White House lawyers. Jan. 22, 1999: Extended excerpts from the constitutional debates from today's trial debate. Jan. 22, 1999: Congressional reaction to the day's proceedings. Jan. 22, 1999: Mark Shields and Paul Gigot offer end-of-week political analysis. Jan. 21, 1999: Three Republicans and three Democrats Senators react to the President's defense. Jan. 21, 1999: Extended excerpts from the final day of the president's defense. Jan. 20, 1999: The NewsHour's historians discuss the State of The Union address.. Jan. 19, 1999: Full coverage of President Clinton's State of the Union address. Jan. 19, 1999: White House Counsel Charles Ruff presents President Clinton's defense Jan. 18, 1999: Five college newspaper editors reflect on the impeachment trial. Shields and Gigot political wrap index. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the White House, Starr Investigation, and Conversations on Clinton.   White House Jurist Guide to Impeachment U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives	JIM LEHRER: And to Shields and Gigot: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, how would you describe the level of partisanship in the impeachment trial process right now, as we speak?
	Partisanship on the rise.
	MARK SHIELDS: High. I think the votes reflect what has happened to Bill Clinton since he became president of the United States, Jim. It's fascinating. The percentage of Americans who approve of Bill Clinton has not gone up dramatically. It's gone up since he's been president in 1993. But the percentage of those who strongly approve him has gone up 74 percent. In other words, they've gone from lukewarm and tentative to very strongly. The percent disproving him have gone up almost by a full quarter. And so what you've seen is Bill Clinton is polarized - the reflection of polarization in the country. JIM LEHRER: But there was an expectation and a pronouncement at the very beginning, and we just saw it in Kwame's piece, Paul, that this was special, this was different than everything else that people in Congress do. This was the highest calling they ever get and they would do this on a non-partisan basis. And yet we sit here, and it didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? PAUL GIGOT: Triumph of experience over our hope, I guess. I mean Mark is right, there's a real division in the country. I thought the Senate would do a little better because they have broader constituencies, being in states, than the House members, many of whom have safe seats. There are an awful lot fewer safe seats in the Senate. I think it reflects the national division of the parties, and I think it reflects the polls. The Democrats have believed that they're not going to pay a price if they vote to convict Bill Clinton. And some of them sincerely believe that the House managers haven't made their case. It's been something -- I've been struck by all along throughout every single element of this scandal. The Democrats just haven't broken very much. JIM LEHRER: But you have said - PAUL GIGOT: Contrast to the Republicans haven't broken very much. JIM LEHRER: Nobody's broken. PAUL GIGOT: There's nothing like Watergate, for example. That experience, you had Republicans. Richard Nixon was pushed out of office because Republicans ultimately gave him the shove. And in this case, I said about six, nine months ago, Bill Clinton's fate was in the hands of the Democrats. JIM LEHRER: All right, now. But gentlemen, the reality here is where you want to start the counting. MARK SHIELDS: Sure. That's right. PAUL GIGOT: Sure.
	The role of the jurors.
	JIM LEHRER: If there had been 51 percent Democrats in the House of Representatives, instead of Republicans, he would never have been impeached. If there were 67 Republicans in the United States Senate, he would be out of there by now, right? PAUL GIGOT: I'm not at all sure of that, frankly. JIM LEHRER: But at least it would be inevitable, fairly inevitable. So it's all about party. Are you sure that the polls show that the American people are that partisan about party? PAUL GIGOT: About Bill Clinton. And this really in that sense it isn't truly a party, it isn't a question of whether you're a Democrat or Republican. How you come down on it is, but Bill Clinton has polarized and he has become -- it's interesting. People started off sort of lukewarm, tentative, you know, one way or the other about him. Now they're a lot more so. They've just gone to the polls on him. I mean to the polls -- JIM LEHRER: But forget what the polls say. I mean what about the members of congress? You know, ordinary citizens -- I was just recently on jury duty and the deal is you take an oath and these same senators took the similar oath that, they were going to listen and all of that sort of thing and they weren't going to do anything for political reasons and yet now that's why they are doing it. PAUL GIGOT: Well, this is a political process, in the sense it's a little more than just a one murder suspect. This is a political process. The framers designed it to be that. And these senators are looking across the whole spectrum of their electorate. A lot of Republicans are saying, "you know, my base support really does want him convicted." JIM LEHRER: Now, is that legitimate for -- should a Republican member of the Congress or a Democratic member of Congress say, "this is what my core base wants?" PAUL GIGOT: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think they ought to just do what they think is right in a case like this. I think they ought to do what they think is right on the evidence and right for the country and that means setting an example for the -- for what kind of behavior you want in the presidency. Some of the members will do that. I think alas, too few will. MARK SHIELDS: There's a vote for conviction. I mean in other words, one Republican. JIM LEHRER: You could cut it either way. PAUL GIGOT: One Republican in the Senate said to me today, he said, "this is a partisan witch-hunt," or, "it's a partisan cover-up," depending upon your perspective. JIM LEHRER: Oh, absolutely.
	The Republicans at their finest hour?
	PAUL GIGOT: It's one or the other. And you know, I think it's -- Jim, it's a political process, Paul's absolutely right. The House, you have to understand, the House, we're talking about a re-election rate of 98 percent in the House. These people come from safe districts. The only concern you have as a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee or I have as a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee is a primary challenge. I'm worried about someone coming after me in a primary. I'm not worried about a general election because I have a safe district. You have a safe district. You're worried about if you start to stray from the party position, you're going to get a challenge on your right as a Republican. If you stray from the party position as a Democrat, you're going to get a challenge on your left. JIM LEHRER: Is this any way to run an impeachment? PAUL GIGOT: I don't think it's the way to run an impeachment, but it is one of the realities of our politics. One of the reasons that I've admired Henry Hyde -- and I've admired the way the Republicans -- I've been critical of Republicans in a lot of things in the last years. But I think impeachment in may ways in the House of Representatives -- Republicans in the House since they've taken over is their finest hour because they have looked in the polls -- at the polls and they've said, "they're killing us and you know what? We're going to do it anyway." And the reason we're going to do it is because Henry Hyde looked after the election and he said, "I don't think we want presidents who obstruct justice to be president and that's a bad legacy." JIM LEHRER: Now, how do Democrats justify their party-line votes? MARK SHIELDS: That -- I mean each of them has a different reason, Jim. I mean it comes down to they do not believe that what the president did meets the standards for removal from office; that it did not damage the public wheel in the same way that Watergate did or anything of the sort. I mean the argument on polls -- I just cite that -- I mean that Paul just used -- the Republicans very nobly stand up and say, "the polls are against us so we're going to carry on so we're people of principle." On school prayer the Republicans say, the American people want school prayer, therefore, we ought to have it. I mean, if the polls are against you, you stand up there and show your coverage courage by taking them on. JIM LEHRER: Okay, I'll run a little test here. Let's say I'm representing the average voter out there and you're a Democrat and you're a Republican and we're holding up a piece of evidence involving the president of the United States in this case. You look at it and you say, "no, no, no, n, no high crime and misdemeanor. You look at it, it is a high crime and misdemeanor." And the only thing that's different between the two of you is you're a Democrat and you're a Republican. How does that look to the American people? PAUL GIGOT: Like politics was usual. JIM LEHRER: And that's what it is. PAUL GIGOT: Well, here's one of the, I think, ironic secrets of why Bill Clinton is going to remain as president. Partisanship has paid for him. There's a large part of the public out there that says, when they see partisans in Washington fighting, they say, "you know, I don't like that. That's just something they do there, and it doesn't mean anything. They're just doing it out of self-interest;" to the extent that this seemed partisan, it helped the president because it seemed to be just about self-interest and political advantage.
	Whose political advantage?
	JIM LEHRER: And is that where it is now? Does the president now have -- do the Democrats have an advantage that it is now seen again, or still as a partisan enterprise? MARK SHIELDS: Oh, I think that does -- it certainly has, Paul is right, it's hurt the Republican Party in the measurements of public opinion. But, I mean, Jim, the Republican Senate leadership has thrown in the towel. They've thrown in the sponge. They limited it to three witnesses. They didn't include Betty Currie -- the one person who could - who was the intersecting point of Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan and the job pursuit and everything else for a simple reason: They were scared stiff politically that she would become the Anita Hill of 1999. So that was a political decision. I mean, I don't want you to think that political decisions are exclusively on the vote. JIM LEHRER: And also, I think you both are saying that I shouldn't be saying, or nobody should be saying, don't be shocked by this. In other words, this was inevitable that we would be here talking about this. PAUL GIGOT: It was inevitable only in my view because the polls bailed Bill Clinton out. We had 60 percent approval, above 60 percent approval, there was enough support, and the election results gave Bill Clinton's Democrats enough to say we can stand by our president. Had they been reversed, I think he would be like Nixon, out of office. MARK SHIELDS: A friend of mine, Julian Shear, lives in rural Virginia, said this week Bill Clinton is not going to be impeached and I said, "why?" And he said, "I just bought gas at 79 cents a gallon" - 79 cents a gallon. JIM LEHRER: Okay, thank you.