Congress Versus Clinton: Liars' Club By Richard Craig December 19, 1998

Now that everyone's done opening their Impeachment Day presents, lets's sit back and reflect on what's happened here.

For only the second time ever, an American president has been impeached by the House. This sets the stage for a Senate vote on whether to remove President Clinton from office.

Except that's not why this historic event occurred. Rather than impeaching Clinton because he's committed crimes that threatened our system of government, they did it to prove a point.

So while adulterer and liar Henry Hyde and adulterer and liar Bob Livingston led the charge, adulterer and liar Bill Clinton was taught a lesson.

Aren't we all proud? Weren't we all stirred to a patriotic fervor by the eloquent debate in the House, featuring cries of "He did it first," "Nyah Nyah-Nyah Nyah Nyah," "So's your old man," "I'm rubber, you're glue." Which was worse, the Democrats' semantic hair splitting or the Republicans' hypocritical pontification?

From where I sit, there are two entirely separate issues here -- Clinton's actual misdeeds and the right wing's control of the Republican party. On the first, what we have is a president with a libido so out of control that he's willing to risk everything that he, his administration and his party have accomplished for a fling with a flirtatious toddler. Clearly, this is someone who needs some sense slapped into him, and if Hillary hasn't already done it, someone needs to. The fact that he tap-danced around it while testifying under oath makes it worse.

But for most Americans, this is an issue completely removed from the job he's done as president. Now more than ever, with the supply of competent public servants seemingly at an all-time low, we're pretty forgiving of personal foibles as long as someone makes the trains run on time and on budget. That's what Clinton has done. Yes, people are angry at him for the Lewinsky affair, but impeachment is not at all what they'd prefer. There is one solution that makes sense to me, which will be discussed below.

The second issue is the Republican right wing. As angry as people are Clinton, they may be even more steamed at the crowd that's been out to get him ever since he was first elected. For whatever reason, the far right has been so violently anti-Clinton that it's spent thousands of hours and millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail him over the past six years. Perhaps they're driven because they'd come to see the presidency as the Republicans' birthright. Perhaps it was envy at Clinton's political skills and his ability to capture the public's fancy.

Whatever the cause, the right wing of the GOP has largely taken over the party and made "getting" Clinton its one and only goal. The party used to have popular and productive goals -- reducing taxes, cutting government spending and keeping the military strong. But when was the last time you heard anything about that? The Republican message has been reduced to shrill anti-Clinton braying by a group of leaders ill-equipped to moralize. The depths to which this has sunk was underlined by the machinations behind the impeachment vote, when the Republican National Committee threatened to withhold campaign funds from any GOP congress member who voted against impeachment. When it takes blackmail to force something as momentous as impeachment, you know something's wrong.

Regardless of the House's impeachment vote, there's no way in the world the Senate will muster a two-thirds majority to remove Clinton from office, which means this whole process has been for naught. But the question remains, what punishment would be appropriate for a president who has inspired a unique combination of loyalty and anger? And is there no punishment for the House ideologues who put us through this whole mess?

Perhaps Henry Hyde and/or Bob Livingston never lied under oath about cheating on their wives, but it's only because they were never asked under oath. Did they both immediately go home after their illicit trysts and tell their wives about them? Of course not, and that's the same type of guilt by omission they're impeaching Clinton for. The lack of credibility for these leaders and others on the Republican side turned what should have been a serious process into a joke, at the expense of the future use of the power of impeachment. Sooner or later, the Democrats will want to get back at them and impeach a Republican president for some dubious reason.

So what are we going to do with all these filthy people? After careful consideration, I've decided to offer punishments for both sides. Neither one of these will ever come to fruition (due to little things like due process and cruel and unusual punishment laws), but they should.

As far as Clinton's penance goes, the solution that would make most people happy is pretty sophomoric, but would make us feel a lot better. A series of nationally televised town meetings, held around the country, would be scheduled for the specific purpose of allowing the people of America to give their president a piece of their mind. The rules would be the same as the average parent punishing a child. Each participant would be allowed five minutes to express his or her disappointment, with no limits on content.

The prez, in turn, would not be allowed to say anything beyond "Yes sir," "No sir," Yes ma'am," or "No ma'am," unless specifically told to answer a question. When answering a question, Clinton would be forced to check his legalspeak at the door. Failure to answer in plain English would have him removed from office, imprisoned for life and castrated. That oughta keep him focused. At the end of this period, if Clinton lives up to his end of the bargain, all charges are dropped and he goes back to balancing the budget and reducing unemployment. But he'll never forget the experience of meeting, one by one, thousands of Americans who feel betrayed by him.

In terms of some fitting GOP punishment, I'd start by forcing the party to remember what it stands for. I would force the GOP to actually act in favor of something. Anything. Whether it's tax cuts or campaign finance reform, I don't care. It's been so long since the Republicans have taken a position other than dumping Clinton, they may have forgotten how to act in favor of something instead of against it. If the GOP steps out of line and acts against anything, all Republicans in both houses of Congress would be recalled and replaced with Democrats and Reform Party members. Furthermore, as the ultimate punishment, our nation's capital would be renamed Clinton, D.C. This prospect alone should scare every living Republican.

Sure, these ideas have their problems. But they'd make us all feel better, and that's more than we can say about anything that's come from Washington in a long, long time.

©1998 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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