Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [439]
In terms of the lessons learned from the Clinton impeachment drive, Senator Daschle concluded soberly, “My personal view is that it’s not as much a lesson learned as a suspicion confirmed, and that is, that there are those who in the name of acquiring greater power in this republic are prepared to use whatever means available to them.” Daschle, who had been targeted by the Republican Party and defeated in his own bid for reelection in 2004, thereafter moving to a prominent Washington law firm, felt that the greatest injustice of the failed impeachment of President Clinton was that “the punishment exceeded the crime.” He explained, “I mean, just think of the public humiliation and the extraordinary loss of stature and credibility in the image that will be forever a part of [Bill Clinton’s] legacy… all of that [due to] this one silly experience. If that isn’t punishment for a man who would otherwise know real greatness in history, I don’t know what is.”
Congressman Henry Hyde, leader of the failed impeachment drive, had watched several of his own men, including Jim Rogan (R-Calif.) and George Gekas (R-Pa.), suffer defeat at the polls, likely because of their roles in this controversial proceeding. Hyde said later, his voice becoming choked with emotion, “Every one of the managers in some measure was a hero.” He added, “They saw their job, and embraced it.”
The avuncular Hyde regained his composure and stated with a flicker of humor: “Bill Clinton is making the most of his retirement. I’m glad he has no more pardons to sell. The country is safe to that extent. Bill Clinton could have been one of our great presidents. I think he had the brains and the energy and the ambition, but he lacked the vision. And the character. And that’s the sad part. What might have been.”
Hyde’s chief investigator David Schippers interjected, “It was damning evidence.… We had one hell of a case.”
Ken Starr, the erstwhile independent counsel who had set the impeachment juggernaut into motion with his risky investigation of the Monica Lewinsky affair, would later say that he felt the House and Senate “probably got it just about right.” After all, the House had adopted articles of impeachment and had determined that President Clinton had violated his oath of office. The president had escaped conviction in the Senate largely because the American public did not want their elected leader removed from office, whether or not he was a miscreant or lawbreaker. As many of Starr’s prosecutors told themselves, after the Senate voted to acquit their elusive target: “Probably, all things considered, it was a reasonable outcome.”
Former President Bill Clinton, on the other hand, found nothing reasonable about the impeachment ordeal. “The only thing I remember is that I was grateful they couldn’t get a majority on either count,” Clinton said with a forced smile.
“The hardest part of the whole process, besides, you know, kind of working through my anger and guilt and remorse and all that personal stuff,” Clinton continued in a level voice, “was seeing the way all those guys in the House just melted away … basically [succumbing to] any excuse to cave in to Tom DeLay. But the more they caved, the more resolved I got. That [part] was difficult. The rest of it was just more or less predictable political theater.”
President Clinton believed that the American people deserved much of the credit for bringing the God-awful impeachment trial to an end. He had been heartened when he learned that a principal of a small Catholic grade school in Pennsylvania had blurted out with frustration during the