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

To: Borzou Daragahi who wrote (26728)	1/8/1999 5:40:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

A PUNISHMENT TO FIT CLINTON'S CRIMES By DICK MORRIS WHAT will happen once the Senate trial of Bill Clinton opens and the prosecution and defense present their cases? It is most likely that the Senate will vote to dismiss the articles of impeachment, assuming there are no new charges and no new evidence. Then, as the Senate moves to consider censure and punishment, the real battle will begin. The dilemma senators will face is clear. Once the impeachment process has been halted, what leverage will the Senate have over President Clinton to get him to admit perjury or to accept a fine and censure? Without removal from office hovering over Clinton, the White House will be in the clear and it isn't likely that the Clintons, either one, will be in the mood to make concessions. Clinton knows full well that there are not enough votes to convict him and suspects he can muster a majority to drop the case without agreeing to anything in advance, so he will prove inflexible in any negotiations - even before the charges are brought to vote. So how is the Senate to mete out punishment to an unwilling chief executive? The Senate can, of course, vote for censure and the House can concur. But when it comes to punishment, the Congress lacks the jurisdiction to impose any fine on the president. In terms of disciplining the chief executive, Congress may only look to impeachment for a remedy. Yet, though the bulk of the voters don't want him removed from office, a large majority want him to be punished. More censure will fall short of the demands of the average voter, to say nothing of the Republican base. So Congress must find some way of fining Clinton that does not require his assent. The best option is to pass a bill stripping Clinton of his pension and of his expense allowance after he leaves office. Leaving him to fend for himself, with only Secret Service protection provided by the taxpayers, would be a fitting punishment for the first president since Gerald Ford not to rate millionaire status. While Congress cannot fine Clinton, it can certainly pass any law it wishes relative to his pension and expense allocation. Would the Senate Democrats be nutty enough to filibuster the bill? I doubt it. Would Clinton dare to veto it? Probably not. Would his veto be overridden in a heartbeat? Most likely. A punishment of this magnitude would meet the demands of the public and would even appease those members of the right-wing base who still retain their sanity. It would give the moderate Republicans and Democrats all the cover they need to vote against removing Clinton from office when the Senate takes up the impeachment articles. A fine would be just punishment for the $4.5 million the special prosecutor had to spend tracking down Clinton's lies. A financial penalty which recouped this sum would be both fitting and proper. And it would meet the test of ''proportionality'' which the president proposed in his triumphal White House appearance with congressional Democrats where he celebrated becoming the second president in history to be impeached. Clinton complains regularly that he has had to pay exorbitant legal fees to defend himself. Presumably he would argue that these fees, combined with the $850,000 he must pay to Paula Jones, already constitutes an excessive punishment. The president's intensity and his veracity in making this complaint both match those which characterized his denials of sex with Monica Lewinsky. The fact is, the First Family has yet to spend the first dime either on the Jones fine or on legal fees. The only compensation Clinton's attorneys have received has come from his Legal Defense Fund. The client has paid nothing. Will he ever pay? Or will the free publicity in which Bob Bennett and David Kendall have luxuriated be adequate compensation for their horrible advice that their client refuse to settle the Jones lawsuit and voluntarily go before a grand jury? The key political need for moderate Democrats and Republicans - and also for Clinton himself - is to get the discussion away from a requirement that Clinton admit his perjury. He likely won't do it and public outrage at his obdurate insistence that oral sex isn't sex may well escalate out of control - and even result in a conviction that would be as ill-considered as was the impeachment itself. A fine would be their perfect way to let off the steam without requiring a plea bargain with Clinton. Nor should the Republican Senate leaders discuss the penalty with Clinton at all. They should simply pass a bill, get the concurrence of the House, and send it on its merry way to Clinton's desk. The president would know that a veto would be instantly overridden; he would have no alternative but to sign the bill with teeth gritted in a forced smile. There is a real political argument for such an accommodation. Vice President Al Gore is sustaining a great deal of damage as a result of the continued necessity for his defense of the president. Before Monica, Gore held a lead over Texas Gov. George W. Bush, his likely opponent in the general presidential election in 2000. Now he trails by 13 points. The only way to keep the White House Democratic is to have done with this sordid affair, and only a punishment can bring closure. Why should the Republicans oblige? Because they have sustained major political damage from their impeachment vote - the GOP's favorability is now about 20 points behind that for the Democratic Party - and can only recoup their losses if they bring this charade to a prompt and just close.