Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [411]
Friends remembered Bill Clinton looking much thinner than usual, appearing as if he had been unable to sleep for a decade, like an Arkansas version of Rip Van Winkle. Hillary had a bad cold and looked equally washed-out. Congressman Barney Frank would recall stepping forward in the receiving line at this Christmas event, accompanied by a male companion, and President Clinton becoming emotional, giving him a litany of thank-yous for his support. Frank reconstructed the scene: “In June of ninety-eight, the man I’d been living with for ten years and I split. And then I started dating another guy in October, and he was my date for the White House [party]. And I must say, you want to impress a date, have the president of the United States begin the conversation in the reception line by telling you how grateful he is to you, and what you’ve been doing [for him] and so forth. That was very nice.”
Frank assured the president and First Lady that he “didn’t think impeachment was going to pass.” Two moderate Republicans had told Frank that very evening, he said, that they would vote against the impeachment as a way to restore sanity to the divided Congress.
Years later, President Clinton squeezed his eyes shut and said that he knew Frank’s optimistic nose-count was wrong. In the “play yard” that Hyde, Starr, Schippers, and their cohorts had erected for themselves, Clinton said, the outcome was foreordained. “For the first time I think maybe in my life almost, I was dealing with a group of people for whom I had basically no regard,” Clinton said, sharing his private thoughts. “I mean, I knew that they didn’t care about the Constitution, the law, the personal hypocrisy. It wasn’t about telling the truth … it was just about power.”
Congressman Amory “Amo” Houghton from upstate New York, one of the few moderate Republicans who would stick with President Clinton until the very end, spoke with Clinton several times during this dark period before the impeachment vote. “He wanted to know how I thought it would go,” recalled Houghton. “He never asked me for anything. Obviously, he felt that it was good to have as many friends as possible.” Houghton’s own unwavering view, which he had communicated to leaders within his own party, seemed to be falling on deaf ears, because a certain “mob psychology” had taken hold. He expressed frustration to Clinton—his Republican colleagues just weren’t listening. “I thought [going forward with impeachment] was absolutely crazy. It wasn’t going anywhere,” said Houghton. “Some thought it would send a message—but I thought it would send a failed message.”
Bill Clinton now understood that there were few moderate Republicans who still shared Houghton’s view.
As strings of festive Christmas lights twinkled over the White House, those closest to the president felt engulfed by a sense of dark inevitability. David Kendall would later acknowledge that the legal team was braced for the worst. “We’d better just batten down the hatches and prepare for the Senate,” Kendall told his colleagues bluntly. “Because we’re going to lose.”
AT 4:15 P.M. on Saturday, December 19, Vice President Al Gore stepped onto the South Lawn of the White House. His job was unlike any other he had ever faced: He needed to say something reassuring to several hundred million people, because President William Jefferson Clinton had just been impeached by the House of Representatives.
Several blocks away, with a chilly drizzle enveloping the Capitol, a group of congressional Democrats had boarded a caravan of buses and arrived en masse at the White House entrance. The final vote in the House had been 228 to 206 in favor of Article One (involving perjury to a grand jury) and 221 to 212 in support of Article Three (involving obstruction of justice), with two articles failing. The vote