Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [414]
Former President Jimmy Carter heard of Ford’s plan and asked “whether we could do something jointly.” Relaxing at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, President Ford would later reveal how this unprecedented joint proposal between two former presidents of opposing parties came to be—and how President Clinton himself rejected it.
In a joint op-ed article in the New York Times on December 21 titled “A Time to Heal Our Nation,” worked out through negotiations “on the phone and by fax,” Ford and Carter argued that a Senate trial would “exacerbate the jagged divisions that are tearing at our national fabric.” They instead proposed “a bipartisan resolution of censure,” by which President Clinton would be forced to accept a “rebuke” and make “a public acknowledgment that he did not tell the truth under oath.” In return, the House would guarantee that this admission could not “be used in any future criminal trial to which he [Clinton] may be subject.” Ideally, Independent Counsel Starr would promise to “publicly forgo the option of bringing [further] charges against the President when Mr. Clinton leaves office,” to put the matter to rest.
The idea of a censure resolution had been floated for months, particularly by House Democrats. Chairman Hyde and other leading Republicans had rejected it based on an argument that Congress lacked constitutional power to take such action. As Hyde himself later explained, “It’s a terrible precedent to have Congress condemning presidents.” In his view, this was no different from a “bill of attainder,” which the Constitution flatly prohibited. More importantly, Hyde was acutely aware that as a political matter, if a censure resolution of any sort passed, “the steam would have gone out of the [impeachment] action.”
Former President Ford later disclosed that White House Counsel Chuck Ruff contacted him by phone, initially, to explore his censure proposal. Soon thereafter, President Clinton himself called. Ford and Clinton had talked periodically about the North American Free Trade Agreement and other matters of state in which they shared an interest. The two men had a good working relationship (in contrast to Clinton and Jimmy Carter, who had a prickly relationship despite both being Democrats).
In a remarkable revelation, Ford additionally disclosed that Bill Clinton was eager to have him (Ford) carry the ball on the censure proposal and to contact members of Congress personally to sell the plan. That plan died, Ford said, only because Clinton himself flatly refused to accept any proposal that required him to acknowledge that he had lied under oath. In 2000, several years before his death, former President Ford revealed the impasse: “The bottom line came down to—I said I could not help individually unless he was willing to concede that he had committed perjury. And he wouldn’t. He would not do that.”
Ford held strong views on this point. He had pardoned Richard M. Nixon only after insisting that Ford’s own White House lawyers fly to San Clemente and explain to the disgraced former president that accepting a pardon, as a legal matter, amounted to an admission of guilt. For Ford, it was all about accepting responsibility—the American people deserved that much, he told President Clinton. Speaking by phone three thousand miles apart, the two men butted heads. Recalled Ford, “He [Clinton] was very rational in his discussion. He had strong feelings