From Slate:
Impeachment Panic
Why reports of Clinton's death are greatly exaggerated.
By William Saletan
(posted Thursday, Sept. 10, 1998)
To hear the pundits tell it, President Clinton is toast. On Sunday's
political chat shows, they feasted on forecasts by Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., that Clinton will face
impeachment proceedings. Congressional Democrats appear to be "done with
him," says a party consultant. "Clinton faces a rapid erosion of support
that imperils his presidency," warns the New York Times. "It may be too late
for this president," predicts Sam Donaldson. He's "trapped, checkmated,
spiraling," writes Maureen Dowd.
Despite these portents, Slate's "Clintometer," which measures the
percentage chance that Clinton will be prematurely removed from office
(i.e., resign or be impeached), has not risen above 23 percent since the
first week of the scandal. How come? The short answer is that we're right
and they're wrong. The pundits' stock market in Clinton's political survival
is greatly oversold, as the result of a combination of factors.
Short selling. Facing re-election this November, congressional Democrats
are playing up the possibility of impeachment in order to distance
themselves from Clinton. They've been rushing to unload their stock in him
out of fear that Kenneth Starr's report, now in Congress' hands but still
unread, includes unforeseen bombshells. What sort of bombshells? Nobody
knows. The point of unforeseen bombshells is that they're unforeseen.
Slate's Clintometer is less easily impressed. We'll believe the bombshells
when we see them.
2. Gravitas frenzy. Ever since Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.,
condemned Clinton's behavior in a Senate floor speech last Thursday,
Democrats have been rushing to microphones to join in the collective rebuke.
The pundits think these speeches signal a growing willingness to impeach
Clinton. But this theory is too kind. The timing and wording of recent
remarks by Clinton's congressional critics indicate that most of them are
more interested in advertising their own morals than in condemning his.
Likewise, they express more interest in immersing themselves in the "solemn
duty" of weighing impeachment than in actually impeaching Clinton.
"Floodgate" flood. The press loves to construe political collapse as an
objective, inexorable process. Pundits are calling Lieberman's speech the
beginning of the end--in the words of George Will, "a consequential pebble"
that will start "an avalanche." The avalanche of avalanche metaphors, flood
of flood metaphors, and stampede of stampede metaphors are well underway.
But in the end, they're just metaphors.
4. Regurgitory reflex. Democrats who are genuinely disgusted with
Clinton want to express their revulsion and reassure the public that
Congress doesn't condone his behavior. They regard their deliberations over
Clinton's punishment as a national moral lesson. As Will put it, Lieberman's
"denunciation of the president was of a piece with the denunciation of
gangster rap music." But Congress doesn't have to impeach Clinton in order
to convey its disapproval, any more than it has to ban gangsta rap. In fact,
by venting its outrage in words today, Congress is relieving internal
pressure to vent that outrage in impeachment tomorrow.
"Impeachment" fallacies. Lately, Democrats such as Moynihan and Moran
have predicted or called for impeachment proceedings. From this, pundits
have inferred that these Democrats favor impeachment. But impeachment
proceedings are a trial, not a verdict. Likewise, based on Moynihan's
affirmation that perjury in a civil case is an "impeachable offense,"
pundits have concluded that Moynihan thinks Clinton should be impeached.
Moynihan has tried to clarify these distinctions, just as Lieberman tried to
clarify that his moral denunciation of Clinton doesn't entail throwing
Clinton out of office. But the press, which is interested only in pushing
the envelope of the impeachment story, ignores these inconvenient caveats.
Together, these fears, frenzies, and fallacies have produced a
political stock market panic wholly disproportionate to the two fundamental
questions. Those questions are: 1) Once the moral outrage has been aired and
the question before Congress has been distilled to whether the president
should be forced from office for the first time in U.S. history, will 67
U.S. senators vote aye? 2) Will Clinton resign unless Congress is certain to
impeach him? The least interesting and most salient fact about this scandal
is that the answer to both those questions is still no.
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