Henry Hyde's Runaway Train

by David Corn

Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, refuses to derail this train by continuing to lead the committee on a contradictory path. He says he wants to adhere to his done-by-1999 deadline, yet he allowed the committee to expand upon Kenneth Starr's only-Monica report by taking depositions on the Kathleen Willey matter. What Hyde hopes to accomplish in this regard is a mystery. L'affaire Willey is a classic he said/she said, with Willey's former best friend and Starr-witness Linda Tripp undermining Willey's claim that President Clinton groped her against her will.

What could the committee learn via a deposition or two that would be conclusive enough to warrant impeachment action? Even Starr and his vacuum squad couldn't discover evidence that would allow Starr to incorporate Willey-related charges into his referral to Congress. Hyde also allowed the committee staff to take a quick look into allegations that Clinton chum Webster Hubbell received hush money -- another theory Starr couldn't come close to proving. And Hyde put Clinton confidante Bruce Lindsey in the crosshairs by adding him to the deposition list.

(By the way, in rushing to approve these final depositions during a committee meeting after the 12-hour Starr marathon, the Republicans voted down a Democratic motion declaring that the depositions not undermine attorney-client privilege.)

In the Clinton-conspiracy communities, the prevailing view is that Lindsey knows all the secrets about the most awful Clinton skeletons. "The committee is holding out hope," says one Democratic staffer. "We know Bruce is not going to flip."

At the 11th-and-a-half hour, Hyde is steering his committee into morasses that would require months of probing to determine whether Clinton had committed any actions that warranted impeachment. Yet the committee's schedule is rush-rush.

Last week it was to hold a pointless hearing on the consequences of perjury. It's as if Hyde still believes there is time and potential for whipping up public sentiment against Clinton, so the committee demonstrates that people who committed perjury had to do time. Big deal. Perjury's wrong; there's no debate. Why gather to confirm that premise, especially when the committee declined to hold hearings on the evidence in the case against Clinton? The question remains: Are the President's offenses proven and serious enough to compel the overturning of an election? Hyde's staff, a committee aide says, opposed this silly session, yet the big man went ahead with it.

It does seem that Hyde feels impeachment should proceed -- despite the lack of support for the notion in the Senate and among the populace. On Capitol Hill, some Democrats have wondered if Hyde is seeking payback for the disclosure that he had extramaritally trysted three decades ago, for, as committee sources report, Hyde still believes the White House orchestrated that exposure. (As one who played a cameo role in that episode -- which I detailed in this column -- I can assure Hyde that Clinton and his cronies were not part of any scheme to embarrass him.) No doubt, the President's come-and-get-me replies to Hyde's 81 questions did not put the chairman in a less uncharitable mood.

The final leg of the House's impeachment melodrama has been scripted out: If all goes as planned, after the final depositions are taken, the Judiciary Committee this week will deliberate on the articles of impeachment, then vote. If the committee approves the articles, then the following week the full House will debate and vote. It would only take three bolting Republicans on the committee to end this mess, but those most likely to bail on Hyde -- such as Lindsey Graham and Asa Hutchinson -- are junior members who'd have a tough time taking the heat (they do have to think about their committee assignments).

If Hyde is truly committed to impeachment, it would take a busload of courage for these backbenchers to defy him. (Hutchinson faces a unique dilemma: A vote for impeachment would probably not play badly in his Arkansas district, but it would be heavy baggage in the event that this ambitious politician later seeks statewide office in Clinton's home state.) It is absurd that the committee will vote without having conducted any true investigation of its own. Sure, it's clear Clinton lied under oath, but none of the evidence presented to the committee by Starr was subjected to cross-examination. This has been an uninquiring impeachment inquiry.

The overarching question of whether Clinton will be removed from office appears moot. Still, there are show-steps to be taken -- and that supplies opportunities for the strategists of both parties. The final scuffles are shaping up to be a Republican-Democrat face-off over censure and an intra-party Republican squabble over whether to charge the President with perjury or to whack him with both perjury and obstruction of justice. The GOP's Clintonphobes want to drop as much on the man as they can, though several party strategists worry that a wider indictment against Clinton would stand less of a chance of passage in the House. "If Judiciary attaches obstruction to the perjury counts, that fucks it to the moon," growls a Republican Party official. "There are 20 to 30 of our guys who think the case on perjury is strong, but they don't buy obstruction."

Republican spin last week was that the vote count on impeachment in the full House was close, close enough to think they have a chance. But, the GOPsters acknowledged, the pro-impeachers can only succeed if they beat back the move for a censure of the President. (Most Democrats support reprimanding Clinton, yet members of the Congressional Black Caucus and a few diehard liberals grumble about even slapping his wrist. Now what has Clinton ever done for them? Welfare reform?)

You'd think it would make sense to give representatives a choice of censure or impeachment, but Republicans don't want that: They loftily argue that the Constitution does not permit censure. But the House can declare its outrage any time it likes. No, the GOP leadership fears that if there is a censure alternative, a large bloc of House Republicans will vote for the weaker, less-meaningful punishment.

Also, if the Republicans can use House rules to keep censure off the floor, then the Democrats are faced with either voting for impeachment or voting to let the rascally Clinton go scot-free. "What's best for us is a straight up-or-down vote on impeachment," says a Republican strategist. "I could use that. We let it go to the Senate. Our base will be satisfied, and we force the Democrats to make a hard call. If they let him off the hook, they will be seen as being on Clinton's side. No one in the public thinks the President has been punished enough. No one wants to explain to their children you can lie and get away with it. If there's a possibility for censure, then impeachment craps out, for it gives cover to the Democrats. If you take censure out, you get real close to passing impeachment."

Poor, deluded Republicans. They are still trying to game all this out. What's missing from their calculations is that the public has long grown sick and tired of Monicagate. A successful vote for impeachment would keep the matter alive -- don't you think much of the public will be looking for someone to blame for that? Do citizens across the country want to see the Senate, the Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and President Clinton mired in an impeachment trial? Perhaps the GOP is hoping for an impeachment vote that fails by a slim margin. Then the party can say to its base, "Hey, we gave it a shot." But the House GOP -- and Hyde especially -- will long be remembered for unleashing highly partisan and problematic impeachment proceedings and then failing to make the case.

The GOP remains caught in a trap of its own making, and it has learned nothing from Newt Gingrich's fall. All the available tracks lead to potential political peril. And for what? Clinton's not going anywhere. He gave the Republicans miles of rope, and they couldn't figure out how to tie any of it into a noose. They've bungled Monicagate from the start. Their gleeful attempts to exploit a situation that made most Americans squirm, their rhetorical excesses, their injudicious handling of the Starr report, the records of his investigation and the Clinton videotape, and their years-long get-Clinton mania that led much of the public to perceive them as caring more about scandal than substance -- all of this undercut their ability to manage a serious and thorough national deliberation on Clinton's wrongdoing and impeachment.

As the Year of Monica ends, Hyde is flailing and Clinton is sailing. It seems the President -- and it makes you question if there is any justice in this universe -- will soon be partying like it's 1999.