Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (25307)	12/31/1998 10:57:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

All we can ask is that they do the right thing. And they're getting closer by the minute: December 31, 1998 The Trial of 1999 This century has thrown its share of burdens at the United States, and on the eve of 1999 the nation is being asked to bear one more--the trial before the Senate of its President. It is an event that somehow sits in the political mind as unthinkable and inevitable. The inevitability is of course the product of the President's lifelong reckless nature. Even Mr. Clinton's defenders now argue that the American people knew they were getting no angel back in 1992. So it can hardly be a surprise to anyone six years later that the wild child drove the family convertible hard and fast once too often, and went over the side of the mountain. As the town geezer might have said about the town rowdy in all those young-and-restless movies years back, "Looks like he finally got himself impeached." A report in the Los Angeles Times of his remarks at a White House Christmas party confirms that Mr. Clinton emerged from the crack-up with his cockiness intact. In this respect, the President is alone. For the rest of official Washington, in particular on Capitol Hill, the clear sense is that our system of government has arrived at a point many felt unthinkable. Impeachment, and now trial. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, sounding lately like a man who knows his charge is serious, recently told the White House to prepare for a trial. The debate this week has been over trial rules--whether witnesses are called, or time saved without them. Sen. Lott, favoring speed, needs to guard that his haste doesn't allow reasonable suspicions to arise of a bowdlerized, cooked result. Meanwhile, many others in the political establishment have spent the recent period agitating for censure, quick closure and a return to normalcy. We find the Peter Pan wishfulness of this scenario hard to explain, other perhaps than a measure of how much anxiety attends the prospect of the President's trial. Mere "censure" is not an option. "There are a lot of different wordings," says Sen. Daschle. In any event if the President's spokesmen are to be believed, he will never admit to lying under oath because he does not believe he did so; but even the most famously moderate of censure advocates say this precise admission is their sine qua non. More difficult for the plea bargainers, we suspect, is the addictive combativeness of the Clinton crowd. The most realistic view of the near-term future would be that once started the trial will take on a momentum of its own. This event is not going to play according to anyone's script, whether advocates of censure or removal. We should have learned that much from the past year's history, whose paint seems unable to set. Two weeks before the House impeachment vote, everyone said the moderates would vote against; within a week that trend turned and by the voting hour was a torrent for impeaching. One would-be Speaker's head rolled. The fact that the GOP voted against the grain of the opinion polls must rank as the most shocking phenomenon of them all. After that alone, anything is possible, and anything, like so much else that was unthinkable in 1998, may include the Senate slowly finding its way to 67 votes. interactive.wsj.com