“In all those divorce cases, I would guess that in 80 percent of the
contested cases, perjury was committed,” he continued. “And you know what it was
about? Sex. Extramarital affairs. But there's a very big difference in perjury
about a marital infidelity in a divorce case and perjury about whether I bought
the murder weapon or whether I concealed the murder weapon or not.

“And to charge somebody with the first and punish them as though it were the
second stands … our sense of justice on its head. There's a total lack of
proportionality, a total lack of balance in this thing. The charge and the
punishment are totally out of sync.”

The former senator then spoke of how the Founders debated the Constitution’s
impeachment clause for four months. They dropped language from the Constitution
that focused on “maladministration” and “malpractice,” before finally settling
on “treason, bribery and corruption.”

George Mason, who ultimately didn’t sign the Constitution, suggested adding
“high crimes and misdemeanors,” which was adopted.

“Nobody has suggested that Bill Clinton committed a political crime against
the state. So, colleagues, if you honor the Constitution, you must look at the
history of the Constitution and how we got to the impeachment clause. And if you
do that and you do that honestly according to the oath you took, you cannot. You
can censure Bill Clinton. You can hand him over to the prosecutor for him to be
prosecuted, But you cannot convict him. And you cannot indulge yourselves the
luxury or the right to ignore this history,” Bumpers said.

Some thought Bumpers might run for president in 1984 and 1988. He didn’t. But
even back then, Bumpers kept an eye on Clinton. In a diary entry from the
early 1980s about the Clintons, during the years Bill was the Arkansas governor,
Bumpers described him and wife Hillary Clinton as “the most manic obsessed
people I have ever known in my life.” And he called the future president “a
truly tragic figure.”

But over the years, the relationship improved. Bumpers backed Bill Clinton
for president from the start. He campaigned for Clinton in New Hampshire in 1992
even as he ran for his final term in the Senate -- against a little-known
Baptist minister named Mike Huckabee.

“The American people are now and for some time have been asking to be allowed
a good night's sleep. They're asking for an end to this nightmare. It is a
legitimate request,” Bumpers said in his Senate speech.

It takes a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict the president. Fifty
senators voted to convict Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge. Just 45
senators voted to toss him out on the perjury charge.

The Senate ultimately rejected the House’s impeachment petitions.

Sixty-seven yeas is a high bar to clear in the U.S. Senate. It’s doubtful the
upper chamber could have marshaled that many votes on those impeachment
articles.

But many political observers credit the late Dale Bumpers and his impassioned
speech with helping to convince his Senate colleagues to acquit the president of
the United States.