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By Root 1901 0

was literally walking through the Space Museum moments after the final vote was taken.” The Democratic leader stood in front of John Glenn’s space capsule, the first manned ship to orbit the earth. Senator Glenn, who had retired in January just as the impeachment trial had engulfed the Senate, was a close personal friend of Daschle’s; the two men had worked together on many projects as colleagues. It struck the South Dakota senator, in this moment of reflection, how great certain accomplishments of mankind were, and how misguided others turned out to be. “In any case,” he later concluded, “that was just an odd way to end this ordeal.”

Daschle returned to his office in the Capitol in time to accept a call from President Clinton, who expressed “a sense of relief and a sense of gratitude.” Mixed with this was an unmistakable note of anger in the president’s voice, a sound that Daschle would detect in Bill Clinton’s voice for many years to come.

Henry Hyde, leader of the House managers, packed up his papers and led his dejected troops back to the south wing of the Capitol. To the managers’ surprise, as they ducked through the rotunda a group of tourists began clapping, reaching across the roped-off passageway to shake the hands of the defeated impeachment prosecutors. In this national drama that had produced fault lines down the middle of every segment of the American public, supporters of the president and defenders of Independent Counsel Ken Starr continued to occupy adjoining corridors of the same building.

The impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton was over, slightly more than one year after the Monica Lewinsky affair had first seized the nation’s attention.

It would remain unclear to many of those who participated in the drama, on both sides of the political aisle, exactly what it had accomplished.

CHAPTER

50

CLINTON’S CONTEMPT

Those who played significant roles in the failed impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton, during that winter of 1999, would later express a jumble of emotions about its unusual trajectory and outcome.

Majority Leader Trent Lott, sitting back in his Capitol office shortly before he retired from politics, would emphasize that he was proud that the Senate had successfully defused this bomb, even though he was “hurt and concerned that the House [managers] didn’t feel like we had acted aggressively enough.” The Mississippi senator also admitted that he was baffled that Bill Clinton had escaped without paying a heftier price for his misdeeds. “There are only a couple of political things in my career that I still have not been able to understand,” Lott said in a firm voice that came with years of leadership positions. “One is the fact that the American people apparently continued to support Clinton throughout this whole thing, knowing what he did, knowing what he said, knowing how he had demeaned the office.” Lott weighed his words, before adding, “That doesn’t jibe with all the other stuff I hear about women’s rights and feminism and, you know, misconduct in the office place and workplace and all that. It’s one of the real anomalies, I think, of American political history.”

He stood up and closed his leather senatorial folder. “I still think history needs to try to explain why the American people thought that all that was okay. Was it just the pure charm of [Clinton’s] personality? Was it just that they thought Republicans were being mean? I don’t know.”

Minority Leader Tom Daschle, equally proud of how the Senate had handled these dicey proceedings, disagreed with Lott’s history lesson. Daschle cut to the chase: “I think Henry Hyde is the one who will be judged poorly in history, and I think that the House bent the rule of law, and I really think it was one of the greatest disservices done in the last century to any president, and the country as a whole.” The House managers, insisted Daschle, “had a political agenda. They were motivated by a hatred that ran so deep that I think it colored their judgment about their own deportment.”

One of the chief reasons that