POLITICAL WRAP

November 20, 1998
	Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot discuss Kenneth Starr's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and the resignation of Starr's ethics adviser, Sam Dash.

Nov. 19, 1998: Full impeachment coverage Nov. 13, 1998: The latest on the showdown with Iraq. Nov. 9, 1998: Newt Gingrich's departure and the GOP leadership shakedown. Nov. 5, 1998: The Judiciary Committee announces that Kenneth Starr will testify.. April 1, 1998: A judge dismisses the Paula Jones case. Jan. 22, 1998: The presidential scandal in historical context. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Shields & Gigot, the White House, the Starr Investigation, and Coversations on Clinton.     Yahoo coverage of the investigation. Articles of Impeachment White House	JIM LEHRER: Shields and Gigot now on the impeachment inquiry, other related matters, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. JIM LEHRER: Paul, first, on the resignation of Sam Dash today as Kenneth Starr's ethics adviser, what do you make of that? PAUL GIGOT: Well, there was clearly a debate in the Starr office over whether or not he should go up and testify. And Sam Dash lost, and he felt strongly enough about it, that he felt he could no longer stay on, and remain his ethics adviser. It's a blow to Judge Starr, particularly because I think he had some momentum. I mean, I think he did very well yesterday, and showed a side of himself, didn't have fangs when he smiled, but pedantics, scholarly, the Starr that a lot of people know. I'm not the runaway prosecutor, and I think he was - and so this may break into that momentum.
	Sam Dash resigns.
	JIM LEHRER: Do you agree it may break into the momentum, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think Sam Dash is a setback, Jim. He has been in many respects sort of the antidote to the charge that Ken Starr had become increasingly and compulsively partisan. He had been sort of the fig leaf, the Democrat on the independent counsel's staff, and many people remembered him and the prominent role he had played in Watergate as the principal Democratic counsel in the Senate Committee chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, so I think it is a setback, there's no question about it. But I think, Jim, I was reminded in listening to Kwame's piece about Ray Donovan, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of labor, and he was acquitted, found innocent after corruption charges, and he asked the question where do I go to get my good reputation back, and yesterday, I think those hearings were about Ken Starr going to get his good reputation back. He went to the House Judiciary Committee and I think he did a credible job. JIM LEHRER: And there were more about Kenneth Starr than they were President Clinton, were they not? MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think so. I mean, I think that in a - just a tactical sense if you're interested in pushing the impeachment matter and pressing it and you believe that Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached and you're a Republican, then Ken Starr had to be rehabilitated. The caricature of him had become so unflattering and in many respects just ludicrous, that he had to be rehabilitated, and there was no way in the world that he was going to live up to those caricatures of him, but I thought he did a good job; I thought he came across as serious and earnest and unflappable. Paul's right, pedantic does come to mind. But even on the defensive - where he was put frequently - he didn't seem defensive. JIM LEHRER: Rehabilitated, the final thing, Paul? PAUL GIGOT: I don't know if he can rehabilitate himself completely in the public mind because he's taken such a beating, but, remember, I mean, it was - the hearing yesterday was about Ken Starr in part because the Democrats largely wanted to make it about Ken Starr. The last thing in the world they wanted to talk about were the facts - the charges against President Clinton and the details of those charges. I watched all 10 hours of that. JIM LEHRER: So did I, my friend. PAUL GIGOT: And I don't remember one question that really dealt with the merits.
	A kabuki dance?
	JIM LEHRER: Well, a lot of people said - I remember - for instance, in the Washington Post this morning in a story by Ruth Marcus she said it was like a kabuki dance, that there really was nothing - everything had already been resolved in the minds of everybody who was participating and everybody who was watching. Did you have that feeling too? PAUL GIGOT: Since we know the ending, which is that Bill Clinton is going to survive, because the Democrats have decided that they don't have a political risk here at the end, so they're not going to remove him from office, so what - JIM LEHRER: And they can't be - he cannot be removed without the Democrats. PAUL GIGOT: That's absolutely right. So what we're playing out here is a drama that gets to some other ending, so a lot of the real risk has been taken out of it. We know the ending, so the drama is, well, what happens in the meantime, and that's what's playing out here. JIM LEHRER: Do you see it that way too, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: No, I don't, Jim. Once again, Paul is willing to ascribe the most venal of motives to the Democrats and the most noble to the Republicans. The Democrats see no political harm. Chris Shays, the leading Republican, one of Newt Gingrich's most loyal lieutenants, said this week there's probably 20 Republicans in the House as of that point who would not vote to impeach. I don't think they're necessarily doing it for any sort of ignoble reasons or anything of the sort. I think there's no question that legally when the argument is - the legal matter - the Democrats are very much on the defensive. I mean, it's hard to make the case that Bill Clinton did not lie under oath, regardless of how fervent and passionate a member of the party of Jefferson and Jackson you might be, politically it - I think Paul is right - it's over, that it does not rise to the level in either politicians' mind - I was talking to Tom Ridge, the governor of Pennsylvania down here at New Orleans, the Republican governors conference, and he said the political will is not there either in the Congress or in the country to do it, they're not ready for the capital punishment of removal from office, although I think that's still open, and it's a serious question what is going to be the formal rebuke, if any. If there's no formal rebuke, then I think that we will live to regret it. JIM LEHRER: Yes. PAUL GIGOT: That's precisely my point. I mean, I wasn't talking about motives here. The thing is that if a lot of the country I think thinks that impeachment is removal because that's the way a lot of people grew up. JIM LEHRER: We always need to explain that - that impeachment means the House of Representatives voting articles of impeachment and then it goes to the Senate. That's kind of like a grand jury, and then it would go to the Senate that operates as the trial and then there's removal, but that's not impeachment. Impeachment is the House vote. PAUL GIGOT: Exactly right. And I think the debate you're going to see, if the articles of impeachment ever come out of the House Judiciary Committee and make it to the floor is that impeachment could be a kind of its own censure. It's a constitutional censure because obviously it's up to the Senate to remove the President. It's frankly up to the Senate to decide what the punishment is, or to have a trial, if you want to describe it that way, whether there is guilt or not. But the House in sending it to the Senate is saying there's enough evidence here, it's serious enough, and it's a kind of its own sanction, and it can qualify as a censure, and without that, the question is what is the sanction? JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, Mark, let's go through what the possibilities are here. I'm not going to hold anybody to anything. We're just talking about possibilities. Do you believe that this House Judiciary Committee - 21 Republicans and 16 Democrats - will, in fact, vote at least one article of impeachment out? MARK SHIELDS: Yes. JIM LEHRER: All right. Do you agree? PAUL GIGOT: I think they will, yes. JIM LEHRER: All right. So then it goes to the floor. What do you think is going to happen on the floor, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: I think that between the time it comes out of committee and the time the floor action occurs that there will be a serious and sustained effort to reach some sort of resolution where the House can formally go on record in a serious fashion and not a frivolous fashion, not one that encourages future actions just any time you disagree with the President's policy on China or capital gains, but I think that will happen. I do not think the House of Representatives will vote to impeach President Bill Clinton. PAUL GIGOT: But I don't think they're going to be able to get away with not voting on the question of impeachment. I think the idea of censure is of - censure without getting to the vote of impeachment is a too easy out for a lot of the members. It's basically saying I did something, but we didn't have to make that tough vote. After that kind of a vote, then maybe you see something -
	New GOP leadership.
	JIM LEHRER: You make a deal. All right. Now, there's a new piece to the equation and that, of course, is the new leadership in the House, the Republican leadership, a new speaker is going to take over in January, Bob Livingston. Fit him in to this kind of decision-making process. PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think he wants to start in January with a clean slate and particularly with six fewer members, remember, that the House resolution on impeachment runs out with this Congress, so they'd have to get a new vote to carry this forward with the new Congress, with six fewer members, I don't know that that's the first vote he wants to start with. In fact, I know it's not the first vote he wants to start with. So I think that his preference in what he's telling Henry Hyde is, you do what you need to do, but please let's see if we can finish it this year. JIM LEHRER: How do you read the new part of the equation, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think there's a profound difference between Bob Livingston and Newt Gingrich in a very important respect. For both personal and historic reasons Newt Gingrich was the Republican Speaker of the House. And whenever Newt Gingrich tried to put together a majority, he tried to do it almost exclusively, with the exception of the pro-life, pro-choice issue in the House, from within his own caucus. Now, Bob Livingston is the - will be the Speaker of the House, who's a fierce partisan Republican, make no mistake about it, but I think if there's an irreconcilable difference within his own caucus and they just can't come to a single unified position, I think Bob Livingston is far more apt to say to his own people I'm going to reach across the aisle and pick up some like-minded Democrats, and I'm sorry, that's how I'm going to do business. And I think the first test of that and probably an example of it will be in trying to resolve this whole impeachment rebuke, reprimand matter. JIM LEHRER: But before January, before the new Congress comes in, before he's technically even the Speaker of the House. MARK SHIELDS: I think he does. I think Paul is absolutely right. He wants to come in with a clean slate. He doesn't want to begin his speakership with an extended, protracted, and really divisive impeachment debate. JIM LEHRER: Well, in general terms, Paul, do you read Livingston the same way Mark does, he would be willing to make a coalition with Democrats in order to get something done, more so than Newt Gingrich? PAUL GIGOT: I don't think he has a choice. I think Newt Gingrich would have had to make the same choice. JIM LEHRER: You mean, with the lessening of - lessening of the majority. PAUL GIGOT: The difference is that Livingston has - doesn't have the history Gingrich had. History - remember, Gingrich is the one who took over essentially and in so doing that broke a lot of china and made a lot of enemies, so he had a very hard time reaching over - and to the extent that he was even inclined to, whereas, Livingston is much more of an institutional creature. He's a committee man. He's a member - in committees you deal more with people from the opposite party. JIM LEHRER: Mark, you're in New Orleans, at the Republican governors meeting down there. Do they see Bob Livingston and the congressional leadership, do these Republican governors see them as the leadership of their party?
	The governors' conference.
	MARK SHIELDS: Well, certainly those who served in the House with him, Sunquist and Ridge of Pennsylvania, Sunquist of Tennessee, certainly do, but they don't want the national party to be a trouble to them, Jim. The Republican governors are quite a frisky group at this point. Seven out of ten Americans live in - live under state houses controlled by Republican governors. They alone - of the party - in the last election - the House took a big hit, as you know, House Republicans - the Senate got a wash at best, which was really a setback. But Republican governors across the country, especially in Democratic states - I mean, New York and Rhode Island and Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and Michigan, they won and won in big, resounding fashion, so they feel that they've got a form of governance, a definition of governance that the rest of the party could learn from, namely building consensus and building coalitions. JIM LEHRER: We need to talk about that again some time, but we're out of time tonight. Thank you both very much.