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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (19535)	8/26/1998 7:00:00 AM
From: robnhood	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50167

Hi Ike,, here comes one of those buy opportunities again.<g> S&P down 12.20.. Seem to be coming more frequently lately.. cheers, russell

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (19535)	8/26/1998 8:31:00 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Respond to of 50167

Analysis: What's behind Gingrich's impeachment scruples By Tom Curry When House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicated Sunday that impeachment of President Bill Clinton is unlikely even next year, it marked a key juncture in the crisis that has beset Clinton since January. "There's a high value to stability in our system," Gingrich said. As a former professor of history, the speaker is thinking partly of the institution of the presidency, an office for which he himself may run in 2000. No member of Congress, and especially not Gingrich, wants to set a debased standard for future impeachment inquiries. Gingrich must realize that he or any other future Republican presidents might be at risk. "At heart I'm a college professor," Gingrich once said and, as history teacher, he probably has studied the damage that Congress did to its prestige by the partisan impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. To get rid of Clinton by means of a process that the American people saw as vengeful, contrived and illegitimate would do incalculable damage to Gingrich, the Congress and the nation. At the same time, Gingrich left an opening for impeachment if Starr presents convincing evidence of a pattern of obstruction of justice by Clinton and his minions. He noted that Attorney General Janet Reno authorized a widening of Starr's probe in January because "we were told because he was able to show a pattern of five or six examples" of potential illegalities. On a tactical level it is far preferable for Republicans to wait to examine the report from independent counsel Kenneth Starr and let the odor of the Clinton scandal waft over Democrats until November of 2000. In his interview with Washington Post reporter Dan Balz Sunday, Gingrich took care to distance himself from any impeachment inquiry and to defer to Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde. "Get it away from me and get it away from Starr," the speaker said of impeachment. "Get it to Henry, who is widely accepted as -even the Democrats have sort of set him up as the perfect person to preside over this." Hyde, first elected to the House in the Watergate year of 1974, spent 20 years as a member of a frustrated GOP House minority and won't do anything that would risk tipping the GOP back into that minority role. What seems like an eon ago (but was only last March) Hyde and Gingrich issued a joint statement that said, "The fairness and credibility of any congressional investigation ... is paramount, and thus we intend to proceed in a slow and cautious manner." It would not be in Republicans' self-interest to do anything that would hasten events toward a day when a newly sworn-in President Al Gore might say-as Gerald Ford did when he was sworn in on Aug. 9, 1974- "my fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." In the Washington Post interview, Gingrich explained that "It's very hard to pick a president. It's very expensive. It takes an enormous amount of the nation's energy, and once the nation has made that choice, whoever that choice is, there should be an overwhelming presumption that they serve out their term. The mountain is all on the side of those who say there's a case. It's not just a presumption of innocence, there's a presumption of stability, a presumption of authority, a presumption of the way the nation runs." The speaker also said that only "a pattern of felonies" would be grounds for impeachment. Thus in a remarkable decision, the speaker set the bar for impeachment even higher than did the framers of the Constitution. James Madison spoke of "negligence or perfidy," while Alexander Hamilton wrote that "the abuse or violation of some public trust" would be grounds for launching impeachment. It seems clear from the writings of the framers and from the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that they did not limit impeachable offenses only to what would be considered felonies under criminal law. Gingrich is being scrupulous on impeachment partly because of his respect for the Constitution and the presidency. This respect is genuine. For proof, look back to Gingrich's supreme moment of triumph on November 11, 1996 - long before Monica Lewinsky became notorious. The GOP had just taken control of Congress after 40 years in the political wilderness. Gingrich was soon to be sworn in as Speaker of the House. Gingrich told an audience of Republican loyalists in Washington that "We cannot be in a permanent campaign. The world looks to us. ... For the future of the human race, America has to function." He cautioned that "we cannot allow ourselves to be mired down as the anti-Clinton party, subsumed in some sense of anger or rage." He said Republicans had no choice but to work with Clinton because "we are the only country capable of leading the world. There is no substitute." Gingrich seemed to be hinting in his statement Sunday that he knows he will be judged by how statesmanlike -how potentially presidential -he is in the current crisis. As a would-be president he needs to adopt a "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger" toward the president's misdeeds. In 2000, Republican presidential aspirants will likely take as one of their themes the need for a moral housecleaning in Washington - a reaction to not only the Lewinsky saga, but to all the Clinton administration trespasses, from accepting illegal foreign campaign donations to improper use of confidential FBI files to gather data on potential Clinton "enemies." In an atmosphere of heightened scrupulousness in 2000, critics may recall Gingrich's admission in 1996 that he had filed what he called "inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements" to the House ethics committee concerning his web of fund-raising committees. As one who has survived a harrowing ethics ordeal Gingrich may have a keener appreciation of what Clinton is now undergoing than other GOP critics. Gingrich won re-election as speaker with only three votes to spare in January 1997. Nine GOP members refused to vote for him. After the roll call was announced Gingrich took his oath of office and told the House "to the degree I was too brash, too self-confident or too pushy, I apologize." The somber, humbled and circumspect Gingrich of today, the survivor of his near-defeat in 1997, is the statesman-like would-be president of 2000.