Friday, December 11, 1998

Leads: Washington Week in Review
KEN BODE, host:

Impeachment: Even as the first article was being voted on, President Clinton
tried once again.

President BILL CLINTON: I never should have misled the country, the Congress,
my friends or my family. I must also be at peace with the fact that the
public consequences of my actions are in the hands of the American people and
their representatives in the Congress. Should they determine that my errors
of word and deed require their rebuke and censure, I am ready to accept that.

BODE: Was it enough to dodge the bullet? We'll look at that tonight on
WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW.

Announcer: This is WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW for Friday, December 11th,
1998.
Now here's moderator Ken Bode.

BODE: Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK. Well, it's not what the
president said today, it's what he didn't say. Still standing is the Clinton
contention that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, that he
did not lie under oath. No sex, no perjury, nothing impeachable. But on
Capitol Hill, impeachment marches on. This week, the committee voted. Next
week, the House will vote. Then any articles of impeachment approved will go
to the Senate.

Tonight, we'll look at some of the complicated questions surrounding the
impeachment of a president. Would it tie up the government and maybe affect
the economy? Can you vote articles of impeachment in one Congress--this
one--and have the trial in the next one after January? And who are these
Republican moderates who hold the votes that ultimately will decide this whole
case?

Tonight on WASHINGTON WEEK, we'll take up questions like those dealt with with
reporters like these: Gloria Borger of U.S. News and CBS News, Alan Murray of
The Wall Street Journal, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, and David
Broder of The Washington Post.

Analysis: What the president expected to accomplish with his
address to the nation today, and whether it helped him
KEN BODE, host:

David, the president came to the Rose Garden today, even as the committee was
casting their votes, which passed the first article of impeachment--they've
now passed two--and made this little talk to the American people. What did he
expect to accomplish?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Ken, you will remember that when the
Gennifer Flowers story broke in New Hampshire, the president said, `I'm going
to take my case directly to the voters of New Hampshire.' It's the same
instinct. His strength has always been out there with the voters. They know
from the polls that most of the American people do not want to see him
impeached, but the public's been pretty quiescent about this. And I think the
real purpose of this was to stir up the folks. First readings are that the
phones lit up on Capitol Hill with calls from the president's supporters.

BODE: The moderates s--were said--are said to be the target of White House
lobbying and friends of the president's. So, Gloria, you've been talking
to--to moderate Republicans. Have you discerned any movement toward the
president?

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): No, and--and
this speech, in fact, didn't help. I th--I think David's right, that
the--that the president's playing an outside game. But he's also got this
really delicate inside game to play, and that is: He's got to win over these
votes of these moderate Republicans. And I talked to two of them after the
president's speech today, and they said this just doesn't do it. They want an
admission that he lied. Maybe he doesn't have to say he perjured himself, but
they would like him to say he lied under oath, thank you very much, or just
use the L-word. And--and, of course, he didn't do that today. He gave them
another apology. One of them said, `I've had enough apologies.' I--I...

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): I--I--I had a couple of the same
conversations and...

Ms. BORGER: Probably with the same people.

Mr. MURRAY: It might be the same people. I hope we're--we're diversifying
more than that, Gloria. But the a--but the other thing that's--that's coming
through is, there is a real lobbying campaign that has been launched by the
White House. They are really working these people. And they're really--you
know, they're having people call 'em and try and talk them into it, and that
doesn't seem to be having much effect. In fact, in some cases, it's
counterprod--productive. Members seem to resent being lobbied on this issue.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Well, in fact, that may be one of the
reasons that, as David said, they are now going outside. We understand the
White House actually has a theory behind all of this. Mark Penn, their
pollster, has gone out and polled a lot on this. The public is at least 60
percent against impeachment, but the public isn't riled up about it. The
public isn't paying attention. And their view is that by putting it out--this
is a little bit like Richard Nixon's Checkers speech in Bill Clinton's words.
What the public is now supposed to do is what a few people did start doing:
send faxes to their member of Congress, make a phone call. The White House is
hoping that that tide is going to turn, that the inside game is going to be
less important than the outside game.

BODE: The issue is, in many people's minds: Does what the president did rise
to the level of an impeachable offense? And this week, the committee
considered four articles. The counsel for the majority, the Republicans, made
the case that this really is a suitable case for impeachment. Let's listen.

Mr. DAVID SCHIPPERS (GOP Counsel, Judiciary Committee): As I stated earlier,
this is not about sex or private conduct. It is about multiple obstructions
of justice, perjury, false and misleading statements, witness tampering,
abuses of power, all committed or orchestrated by the president of the United
States.

BODE: Two counts of perjury, obstruction and so forth. What do you think,
David? Is a--did--did they make the case today?

Mr. BRODER: I think the strong c--points in this impeachment are the--the
perjury points, that he misrepresented reality when he gave that deposition in
the civil suit, but before a federal judge, and that he repeated many of the
same falsehoods in the grand jury testimony. The--the other counts seem to me
to be a much shakier thing, and it'll be interesting to see whether there's
some splitting off. We had one Republican split off on count two of the bill
of impeachment. I would not be surprised if other Republicans split off on
counts three and four.

Mr. McMANUS: Ken, what's striking to me, and--and Mr. Schippers' testimony
went directly to it, is we're still having the same argument we had in August,
when the president testified, that we had in September, when--when Ken Starr
presented his report, and that is: Is this about perjury, a legal offense,
almost an offense against the Constitution, or is it about sex? And all week
long, you've seen Republicans saying, `This is about perjury. It's about
traducing the sanctity of the law.' And you've seen Democrats say, `Come on,
it's about sex.' And the country's going to have to make up its mind on that
basis.

Mr. MURRAY: But I--I think the country has made up its mind. I mean, it's
not as though people don't understand the facts of the case. I don't--I'm not
aware of any new facts that came out in a--the hours and hours...

Ms. BORGER: No.

Mr. MURRAY: ...of hearings this week. The facts are out there. People know
the facts, and they don't believe that the president should be removed by
office. In fact, we all know he's not going...

Ms. BORGER: But they do believe...

Mr. MURRAY: ...to be removed from office on this. The--the only question is
how he gets punished.

Ms. BORGER: Right. And they do--and the--the--the public believes he lied.
And that's the interesting thing this week, which was that the president's
lawyers walked right up to it, and then they kind of backed off. They
criticized the president. I mean, it was astonishing to me to hear the
president's friends, his attorneys, the people on his side, being so critical
of the president. They clearly decided to take a different tack this week.
We didn't hear about Ken Starr. We didn't hear about Ken Starr from Bill
Clinton today, either. We heard his own attorneys saying that he was
maddening, that he was evasive, that he had misled the American public. So
they were, you know, they were criticizing this president in ways that I never
thought possible.

Mr. BRODER: Even said that reasonable people could--could conclude that the
president had lied.

Ms. BORGER: They said more than Bill Clinton said today.

BODE: Yeah, that's...

Ms. BORGER: They went further.

BODE: ...that's true. It came down to this question of sexual relations.
And when he was asked--when his lawyers were asked: Why doesn't he admit that
he had sexual relations, they said, `He doesn't because he doesn't think he
did, that under a standard dictionary definition of sexual relations, he
didn't.' And we've had viewers faxing dictionary pages to us with this
underlined. The problem is that when you go to the act that actually occurred
between Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton, it's listed under the category
of sexual perversion in the dictionary.

BODE: So that's not much--that--that's not much better. But the question on
perjury, why was--why won't he admit he lied under oath? Partly because he
could face prosecution after this is over with, if that's true.

Ms. BORGER: You know, some people say, `Yes, he could face prosecution.'
Clearly, Ken Starr left that dangling out there during his testimony before
the committee. Most lawyers I talk to--thankfully, I'm not a lawyer--but most
lawyers I talk to say, `He's not going to be prosecuted,' but...

Mr. BRODER: Well, the paradox, Ken, is that the White House had five former
US attorneys up there testifying on his behalf, every one of whom said, `If
you came to me, as a prosecutor, with this record, I would throw you out of
the office if you said we would prosecute for perjury there.' If they really
believe that there's no legal threat to him, then I don't understand why they
have dug in--into this sort of ha--last-ditch legal defense of him.

Mr. McMANUS: Well, there--well, there is one theory that if he confesses, he
is, in effect, handing Ken Starr a legally valid confession, and Ken Starr
could then represent that he has no choice but to prosecute this man.

BODE: Then there's the question of the pardon. This week the president's
attorney said that he would not pardon himself, and he would not accept a
pardon. Now tell me, am I m--right or wrong about this? Does it make any
difference what President Clinton says he would accept or not if a new
president, say an Al Gore or a George W. Bush or any other one, wanted to
begin his term by ending the circus down at the federal courthouse, with Bill
Clinton being prosecuted for perjury? He pardons Mr. Clinton...

Mr. MURRAY: Well, you--you...

BODE: ...and the charges go away?

Mr. MURRAY: Well, you can take that another step, Ken. Does it--at--at--at
this point, given what we've been through this year, are we really to believe
the president's lawyer when he says that the--that the president wouldn't
accept a--a pardon? Or will this just be one more Clinton aide who has to say
two years from now, `Oh, well, I was wrong. I was misled, or I was
misinformed'?

Analysis: Whether censure is possible for President Clinton given
the Republican leadership's quest for impeachment or nothing
KEN BODE, host:

Let's move on, then. The House Democrats have drafted a resolution of
censure. The president has said he would accept that, and that the White
House counsel this week all but invited censure.

Mr. CHARLES RUFF (White House Counsel): If you believe he acted in this
fashion, you ought to censure him in whatever fashion seems most appropriate,
but you cannot overturn the will of the people.

BODE: What about a censure possibility? Is it a likely outcome at any point?
Is--is--did the president do any--himself any good on that score today?

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): Well, I--I
think the--the Republicans I was talking to, again, were sort of astonished
that the president finally--that he said, `OK, I--I'm now willing to accept a
censure,' when--and they sort of sat back and said, `Wait a minute, that's the
very least you're going to get. Well, thank you very much, Mr. President.'
And--and they sort of thought that was a bit disingenuous of him. I think
there's a--there's a sense, and I'd be curious to what everybody else thinks,
that he might get impeached in the House and then censured in the Senate.

BODE: What's the ques--the question becomes: Can he be censured without him
agreeing to the censure? Does the president have to sign off on a censure?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): No, he does not automatically have
to, but I think they would want him to, to bring what--use the
phrase--cliche--closure to--to--to this. And I think there's a pretty high
likelihood that in the end, there will be some form of--of censure of the
president. But the Republicans are pretty adamant. I--my sense is, at this
point, we're going to carry out the procedure that's specified in the
Constitution, see whether there is or is not a majority in the House of
Representatives for impeaching him, and then let the discussions about censure
as an alternative take place.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): There is an element here, and I heard
one Republican talk about this, that impeachment is their leverage to get a
censure...

BODE: Explain that, Doyle.

Mr. McMANUS: ...that, in effect, at this point, if they start negotiating
with Bill Clinton--I heard one Republican say, `If we start negotiating with
Bill Clinton at this point, this could be like budget negotiations. We could
end up arguing over how soft or how hard this censure is going to be.' At
this point, that Republican majority in the House is in control of this
process, and they sort of visibly enjoy that sense of being in control of this
process.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): But--but the question there is
then: When do you use that leverage to cut the deal? Do you do it next
Wednesday, or do you do it after we've been put through weeks...

Mr. McMANUS: Well...

Ms. BORGER: I...

Mr. MURRAY: ...of a Senate trial?

Mr. McMANUS: Many of them are saying, `There's--there's not a deal here.
"Deal" is not the word. We write the censure.'

Mr. MURRAY: And you take it.

BODE: And you take it.

Ms. BORGER: And I--and I think there's another question here, is--which is:
Once the House committee gets done, when does the new speaker of the House,
Bob Livingston, step in and speak to us about what he wants to do? Now I've
been told that he--your--that he does not--he wants a vote on impeachment, and
he does not want a vote on censure. But I don't know if that's true or not.

Mr. MURRAY: I--I--wh--what--what--what I've been told is that he doesn't
want to get involved. He wants this...

Ms. BORGER: Well, at some point...

Mr. MURRAY: He...

Ms. BORGER: ...he has to get involved, doesn't he?

Analysis: What censure will really mean for President Clinton, in
light of the censures of Newt Gingrich and Barney Frank
KEN BODE, host:

Well, let's--let's put that aside for just a second because we want to talk
about why the Republican leadership is taking a walk on some of these things.
But on the other hand, you know, Barney Frank said, `There are two members of
the House who have been censured already,' himself, Barney, for sex, and the
speaker, Speaker Gingrich. Now I'm curious what censure really means because
back at the university, where I work during the week, I got a fax from a
speaker's bureau this week that said that Speaker Gingrich would be glad to
come to my university, and he would charge me only $50,000 an hour. Is
this...

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): It would have been $60,000
(unintelligible).

BODE: Imagine if the...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (U.S. News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): He's got to
pay back his...

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Well, that's--that's exactly the
problem with the censure option because, historically, it has meant so many
different things. When the Senate censured Joe McCarthy, it was the end of
his political career. It destroyed his reputation and his effectiveness. But
as you point out, the speaker was not embarrassed by it, and, obviously,
Congressman Frank has not been embarrassed by it.

Mr. MURRAY: I mean, this is the thing that is a little odd and surreal about
this whole debate. The impeachment clause in the Constitution is there to
remove a president from office. None of those Republicans on the Judiciary
Committee today, none of the Republicans in the House, actually think we're
headed towards removing this president from office. They're just trying to
figure out what's the most effective way to punish him. Do they do it with
a--an impeachment vote in the House, which they know will not be followed up
by removal in the Senate because the Senate doesn't have the votes to remove
him, or do they do it with a censure?

BODE: Now it's interesting that the committee is admonished constantly, all
day long, by the Democratic side for attempting to overturn an election, for
attempting to do what the American people clearly don't want to do, which
we've already said around the table. You know, we criticize politicians for
following the polls, and now we're criticizing them for not following the
polls. What should they do?

Ms. BORGER: David.

Mr. BRODER: Well, the--the polls clearly ought to play a part because this
is, by constitutional design, in the arena that is in--thoroughly political,
so people have to pay attention to the polls. But the real place that they
ought to make that calculus is: Will I be punished when I come up for
election? There's nothing in the Constitution that suggests that an
impeachment ought to be decided by the current polls.

Ms. BORGER: I also--I--I also feel, in a way, that, you know, we can't have
it both ways as voters. You know, you say, `Well, we want you to vote your
conscience. And we don't want you just to follow the polls. We want you to
be statesmen and independent.' And I have a sense of, among Republicans,
talking to them--is that they're, for some strange reason, something has
shifted. I don't know what's in the air here, but they're--they're more
emboldened when we thought, after the election, Clinton was going to get off
scot-free, maybe not even a censure. Who knows? Now, suddenly, more of them
seem to be saying, `This is my constitutional responsibility. I've thought
about this, and we need to do this according to the books.' And it's a
different feeling.

Mr. MURRAY: The other thing you have to keep in mind is--is--what the polls
show is that, by margins of about 2-1, people do not want to remove the
president from office. But if--if you take one of these Republicans, and you
look at the voters in--in his or her district, and you look at the voters who
voted for him or her, you see a very different picture. There that's--that's
where they may well see a majority of the constituents who support them
saying, `Impeach.'

BODE: Not necessarily...

Mr. MURRAY: And saying it strongly.

BODE: Not necessarily the moderates, though. Those--those New York
Republicans, for example, in a state where, clearly, the president has high
poll ratings, and where there's a pretty high tolerance, apparently, for
anything that he did in the Oval Office. So why are the moderates not willing
to go along with what seems to be the voters in their district...

Ms. BORGER: Well, because...

BODE: ...and listening instead to...

Ms. BORGER: ...some of those moderates are really afraid of conservative
primary challengers. Some of them had those conservative challengers, and
barely escaped this last time. They know what it's like, and they know that
if they vote with the White House on this, it's guaranteed. Next election,
they'll have a real challenge in the primary.

BODE: They also have to live with this House leadership...

Ms. BORGER: Right.

BODE: ...and that is--that--like Tom DeLay, who was--who's backing this.

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Analysis: Whether a Senate trial over impeachment would be too
disruptive to the country and the economy
KEN BODE, host:

Alan Murray, there's also the charge that this would be so disruptive if we have to go
to a trial in the Senate: The chief justice presides, the Senate is tied up,
the House leadership is tied up over there, even that it could affect the
economy and the stock market and what have you. What's your take on that?

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): Well, it's--i--this is a very hard
question to analyze. It's certainly true that our economy runs on confidence.
That's very important. You've got to have the confidence just to go start a new
business, the confidence to build a new factory, the confidence to go do your
Christmas shopping, and feel confident that you'll have a--have a job when you
come back. And--and an event, a--a--a--a big, high-profile political event
like this, can shake confidence. And, in fact, if you look--go back to August
and--when the president first acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky,
you did see in the stock market, for instance, a--a--a drop. Now it's
complicated because Russia was falling apart at the same time, but it was
there.

And after the election in November, when it became clear--or people thought it
became clear--that the president wasn't going to be re--removed from office,
you saw a pick-up in the stock market. And so--so it does have--it does have
real effects. But if it--I--I--and I've talked to a number of people on--on
Wall Street and--and economists about this. if people really believe that at
the end of the day the president's going to remain in office, then it's not
that kind of a cataclysmic event. If all we're talking about is sort of
gumming up government for a couple of months--well, we went through that in
1995. We shut down the government for a couple of months, and it didn't have
a big effect on the economy.

BODE: How about the length of the trial? If it goes to the Senate, when does
it get to the Senate, and what--how long would the trial be? David.

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): It gets to the Senate when the House
informs the Senate leadership, `We are prepared to send managers, and to
present the case to you.' I think the assumption is that that will be
sometime after the first of the year, if any articles of impeachment are
proved. Once that process begins, then it really moves. There's a
requirement, under the Senate precedence, that the Senate sit every afternoon,
day--six days a week, to hear the evidence, as presented by the House
managers, with the president's attorneys there to offer their defense.

BODE: And no senators can speak.

Mr. BRODER: Yes.

BODE: In order to...

Mr. BRODER: Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (U.S. News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): That's good.

BODE: In order to get a question in, they have to pass the question to the
chief justice of the Supreme Court, who looks at it and decides whether or not
he wants to ask--ask that question.

Ms. BORGER: But there is--is a way to short-circuit it, and--and the way to
short-circuit it is that somebody stands up and says, `I want this to
adjourn.' You need a majority vote, and you would do that if you had a
censure deal in the works at that point.

Mr. BRODER: That's right.

BODE: In other words, it's possible--are you saying, Gloria, that this could
go to the Senate--impeachment--and we know we're going to get at least two
articles now that are--that are going to the House floor at least--go to the
Senate, and the Senate would never even vote on the impeachment?

Mr. BRODER: It is possible.

Ms. BORGER: Yes, it is possible.

Mr. BRODER: Yes.

BODE: It is possible, in other words, that the deal would be struck at that
point?

Ms. BORGER: Right. It would seem to me to be a good time.

BODE: OK. Doyle, let me ask you, you've been--you've been contemplating
whether or not the Supreme Court would get all gummed up over this.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): I can--I can put people's minds at
rest about the majesty of the Supreme Court on this. It turns out that even
though the chief justice would have to spend every afternoon--or whatever part
of the day--in--in the chair presiding, that wouldn't gum up the works. He
can be absent for oral arguments. The only appointment that he has to make,
basically, is their Friday morning conference, and it would be very easy to
schedule the impeachment trial so it didn't--it didn't conflict with that.

BODE: One...

Mr. McMANUS: In fact, Justice O'Connor said this week, `We'll get along just
fine without him.'

Analysis: Whether current House members, who will become senators
in the 106th Congress, should vote in a House impeachment decision
KEN BODE, host:

One qu--one quick question as we--as we come to a close tonight. Three
members of the House move up to the Senate. Two of them have said they will
vote on the impeachment resolutions in the House, and then go to the Senate.
One has said, `No, that would be wrong. I'm going to be a juror in the
Senate. I shouldn't vote on--in--in the House.' That's Mr. Bunning of
Kentucky. What do you think? David.

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): That's a hard question. And I--I
would leave it to the conscience of those individual members as to whether
they can vote in the House, and then still be dispassionate jurors in the
Senate.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (U.S. News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): Well, not-
you know, not only--Chuck Schumer is one of them who's now going to be a
new--well, he will not only vote in the House...

BODE: But on the committee as well.

Ms. BORGER: ...and then maybe in the Senate, but also in the committee. So
he's going to go down in the Guinness Book, maybe, as the guy who got to vote
three times.

BODE: What's your thought on that, Doyle?

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): You know, we--we keep indulging in
the notion that this is a criminal trial, and it's not. It's a different
procedure. On that whole question of what the Senate has to do, the Senate
can decide to change its rules anytime, any day of the week, by a majority
vote. They can decide to--to meet in the middle of the night. They can
decide to hold their proceedings in the French language, if they so choose.

Sign-off: Washington Week in Review
KEN BODE, host:

The one thing we can't decide to do is prolong this anymore. We're out of
here for tonight. Thanks to the panel. Thanks to you for watching.

I'm afraid this subject will not go away, but as often as we can, we'll get to
the other things that are going on: The Middle East trip is going on, Social
Security conference is going on, and we will get to it. So long.