Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [412]
On the Republican side, Chairman Henry Hyde watched the events on television while puffing on a cigar, spitting a sliver of tobacco out of his mouth. As Hyde saw it, this was nothing more than a “high school pep rally.”
In this thoroughly toxic environment, with nothing to win and everything to lose at a defining moment of his own political career, Vice President Al Gore stepped to the microphone and issued a rock-solid defense of the president.
Those close to the famously private and introspective vice president knew that he was inwardly seething that Bill Clinton could have been so reckless as to engage in another extramarital affair—let alone with a White House intern barely older than Chelsea. Al Gore, both publicly and privately, was straight as a shoelace. “Second Lady” Tipper Gore was built to match. When it came to personal moral issues, Al and Tipper Gore were conservative Tennesseans to the core. Those close to the Gores during this time confirmed that Bill Clinton’s escapades with Monica Lewinsky downright repulsed the couple.
As one close adviser recalled, the vice president “was just royally pissed at Clinton.” There was also the problem that Bill Clinton was screwing up Al Gore’s chances to become president. Prior to the Monica Lewinsky debacle, Gore had been the presumptive heir to the White House throne. With the economy humming along sweetly and with the Clinton administration racking up successes in both foreign and domestic affairs, Al Gore had appeared to be the man to beat in the 2000 election. Now, with another sex story marring this scandal-worn presidency, the Republicans seemed ready to pounce and retake the White House. Because Bill Clinton could not keep his pants zipped up, Gore’s advisers cursed among themselves, Gore’s status as presumptive president in waiting was being shot to hell.
Charles Burson, former attorney general of Tennessee and longtime friend of Gore’s who now served as White House legal counsel to the vice president, watched the nationally televised event with “consternation.” For Burson and others loyal to the veep, this was like watching him walk toward a buzz saw and not knowing if and when someone would flick the switch. “Here’s a guy sitting in the vice presidency,” Burson recalled, “in the middle of potentially terminal events. Al’s gearing up to run.” The question screaming out in the minds of Burson and those closest to Gore was: “What are the implications?”
Gore took a deep breath, as if understanding that the words he was about to utter would certainly come back to haunt him very soon. Clearing his throat, he tapped the microphone and declared that the highly partisan House impeachment vote “does a great disservice to a man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents.” He continued: “The verdict of history will undo the unworthy judgment rendered a short while ago in the United States Capitol.”
With First Lady Hillary Clinton standing beside her husband in an unexpected show of spousal support, Gore cut a commanding figure behind the lectern embossed with a gold presidential seal. As gray clouds crowded the sky, and as the branches of a barren magnolia tree shivered in the wind behind him, the vice president introduced William Jefferson Clinton as “my friend, America’s great president.”
Democratic legislators broke into a spontaneous chorus of applause. Those in the crowd observed Clinton brushing away tears.
Even those within Clinton’s inner circle who didn’t particularly