TRENT LOTT'S TRIAL STRATEGY
By DICK MORRIS
SENATE Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is determined to
let the full case against President Clinton be aired in full public
view, witnesses and all, but he knows that he has to go about it
carefully, step by step.
What distinguishes Lott from his House colleagues is not that
he lacks their partisanship, but that they lack his finesse. While
the House Republicans use a bludgeon, Lott uses a scalpel to
get what he wants.
When the House Republicans went crazy and indulged their
deepest, darkest fantasies by impeaching President Clinton,
the Senate Republicans received the resulting articles of
impeachment with distinctly limited enthusiasm. They felt a bit
like parents having to pay for the accident their teen-ager got
into with the family car over the weekend.
Clearly the public did not and does not approve of impeaching
Bill Clinton. The Republicans face a choice - either spend the
time needed to try to persuade America that the House was
right, or cut their losses and drop impeachment quickly.
A trial with witnesses is like doubling a bet in the hope of
recouping past losses. But a quick end to a Senate trial leaves
the House GOP slowly twisting in the wind. Having voted for
impeachment, the House Republicans need the Senate to
show their case to America. What days of marathon partisan
speeches failed to achieve, the House leaders have to hope a
Senate trial will accomplish.
So, what's a majority leader to do? Typically, Trent Lott put first
things first. His first duty is to his marginal members -
Republican senators who come from largely Democratic or
liberal states who might face the same fate as Al D'Amato if
they hang tough for impeachment. Lott can't be a majority
leader if he doesn't have a majority, so he needs to protect his
moderates first. To shelter these marginal senators from
criticism, he is taking the lead in demanding that the Senate
trial be rapid and move to a prompt conclusion.
By breaking the momentum for partisan blood that came from
the House, Lott was acting as a majority leader should,
throwing his body in the way of the train so that his members
wouldn't have to.
But Lott, who clearly believes America would be a better place
with a new president, wants to get his witnesses as well as to
protect his marginal members. So he is using two weapons to
get his way - one overt and the other subtle.
Overtly, he is telling the House Republican prosecutors, in
effect, to "take their best shot" by giving them 24 hours spread
over three days to make their case to America. By announcing
that the trial would begin at 1 p.m. every day and run for eight
hours, he is cannily making sure that it will run until 9 p.m.,
giving it two hours of prime-time TV exposure.
Lott clearly hopes, and expects, that the first stage of the trial
will swell public interest in hearing the actual witnesses
themselves. He likely is right. Each stage of this process has,
in the past, generated the momentum for the next phase.
Lott's more subtle strategy is his ostentatious display of Senate
dignity, distinguishing his chamber from the lynch mob in the
other House. By building up credit with the American people
and raising their level of trust in the fairness and rectitude of the
Senate, Lott is buying their willingness to trust the upper house
to consider witnesses fairly and honestly. The more bipartisan
Lott appears now, the more partisan he can afford to get later,
when it counts.
Of course, Lott knows that Clinton isn't going to be removed.
But he is determined to show the right wing of his own party
that he did the best he could.
For Clinton's part, his impeachment defense strategy is well
removed from the Senate floor. Knowing that he cannot win on
the playing field of impeachment, he tours the country
promoting social values issues like child-abuse prevention,
child-support enforcement, education standards and
anti-drunk-driving legislation.
Public values defeat private scandal. That was the playbook
during the election and it still rules White House strategic
decision making: It's not the economy, stupid; it's values,
stupid. By addressing the problems of Generation X parents
trying to raise their children, the president overcomes their
concern at his immorality by showing how he is helping them in
their effort to raise their own children well.
This "look at what I say, not at what I do" strategy is designed to
assure young parents that they will raise children who will grow
up to become better adults than the president is. It's not very
pretty to put it that way, but it works.
The move Lott needs to make now is to double-track the
Senate to match the White House's double-tracking. Just as
Clinton defends himself against impeachment with one hand
while he promotes his values agenda with the other, so Lott
must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. While the
impeachment trial drags on, the Republican Senate majority
must, with great fanfare, make a show of working to resolve
America's problems.
This is precisely the period to show movement on issues like
Social Security, drugs, education reform and tax cuts. If the
GOP is only about impeachment, it will suffer badly as the
perception hardens that the White House is tending to
America's problems while the Senate is focused exclusively on
a partisan agenda. |
