...And stay out! - Impeachment should remain on the table for Clinton
National Post
9-jun-99 Brian Kalt
It is too early to predict how U.S. President Bill Clinton's Chinese debacle will end. Disclosures of shady campaign contributions and reports of lost nuclear secrets may be unrelated, but we can be certain congressional Republicans will never give the administration the benefit of the doubt, punctuated as the whole mess is by Clinton's familiar evasions.
The last time Clinton's recklessness and dissembling crossed with Republican vindictiveness, the result was impeachment. It is possible the truth about Clinton's actions on China are far more scandalous than l'affaire Lewinsky; it is hard to imagine that the excuse, "it's just about nuclear secrets," would resonate as effectively as "it's just about sex." Impeachment should remain a potential remedy. What's more, it should remain on the table after Clinton leaves office.
The U.S. Constitution itself does not address the issue of "late impeachment" directly. But the debates at the 1787 constitutional convention do -- and they make it clear that impeachment is not limited to the time an official remains in office. An often overlooked aspect of impeachment is that the typical punishment on conviction includes not just removal from office, but also "disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honour, trust or profit under the United States." That is, a successful impeachment does not say merely "Get out!" It adds an emphatic ". . . And stay out!"
Why would Congress bother? If criminal prosecution is not available -- whether because of Clinton's skill as an escape artist, a lack of applicable criminal laws, or the scrapping of the independent-counsel law -- impeachment may be the only feasible way to have both an open airing of charges against the administration, and an expression of reprimand with some bite to it. The punishment due a malfeasing president and his subordinates should not turn on how late in their term they are caught.
Disqualification is a significant punishment, not just an afterthought added to removal. Consider that removal, while no small political sanction, is just as much a personal penalty. In the Lewinsky case, for instance, the effect of removal would have been almost exclusively personal. Even despite his acquittal, Clinton's domestic policy agenda remains in limbo; and, notwithstanding Democratic rhetoric about "overturning elections," Clinton's anointed successor, Al Gore, would have taken over upon conviction. Thus, removal would have been primarily a personal disgrace. Once impeachment as a whole is understood in this personalized way, a late impeachment and disqualification do not seem a spurious sanction.
Even though no ex-president (except William Howard Taft, who later became chief justice of the Supreme Court) ever actually served in a federal "office of honour, trust or profit," it would represent a substantial public disgrace for Bill Clinton to be stripped of the option of federal employment for the rest of his likely long post-presidential life. Put another way, it would be no small blot for Clinton to carry an indelible declaration that he is, de jure, unworthy of honour, trust or profit. (For the record, this exclusion would not include a seat in Congress, which is not considered a position of "honour, trust or profit" for these purposes -- read whatever you like into that.) For lower administration officials, this sanction is less symbolic and thus even more substantial.
Furthermore, impeached and convicted officials, Clinton in particular, face the loss of substantial retirement benefits that even Richard Nixon enjoyed. In a sense, Clinton would be removed and disqualified from the lucrative and undemanding "office" of ex-president. He would forfeit an annual pension of more than $150,000 (US). And he would lose other privileges -- concerning office space, postage, and Secret Service protection -- worth millions of dollars more.
Nixon did not suffer a late impeachment in part because once he resigned, most felt he had suffered enough. Clinton, by contrast, has shown that he would likely allow time, not honour, to impel his exit. With impeachment, however, time is a weak ally at best. Obviously, it is too early to talk of any disposition in other than the most hypothetical terms. Time and truth may vindicate the administration completely. Then again, sadly, it is easy to believe the worst about Bill Clinton, and time and truth have a ruthless way of catching up with politicians.
In 1846, Representative John Quincy Adams noted to Congress that he was "amenable to impeachment" for his actions as secretary of state and president a generation earlier. The principled words of Adams should remind Americans that their options in dealing with his less scrupulous successor will remain open long after next year's election.
Brian C. Kalt is an attorney in Washington D.C., and has written on the bounds of American constitutional sanctions.
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