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

To: one_less who wrote (28230)	1/15/1999 4:40:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

On the Eve of the Trial, an Uneasy Quietude Slips Over the Capitol nytimes.com For amusement only, brees. The more things change. . . On the eve of the trial, the Capitol was suffused in uneasy quietude. Officials were vetting history books in the Senate library for some final ceremonial details, reading from President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment trial, an ordeal that prompted one agonized participant, Sen. Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, to write this wish for the nation: "It is to be hoped that its like may never return." But its like has returned, and many of the figures involved are turning for comfort to history in search of assurances that the right thing can be done. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., has been carrying about his dog-eared copy of The Federalist Papers, savoring just how forward-looking Alexander Hamilton could be as a founding father. "The most extraordinary things are being written about what this new office of president will be," the senator read aloud in a corridor citation of Hamilton. While Republicans insist that the Clinton trial is not about sex, Moynihan has magic-marked and gladly reads aloud Hamilton's near satirical, now prescient reference to warnings that Americans studying their presidents might some day have "to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio." Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate's associate historian, finds comfort in the pungent narrative of a Washington newspaper correspondent, Francis A. Richardson, who covered the Johnson impeachment and found it "more intense and thrilling" even than the Civil War with its many "lulls" at the battleground. "No story as to what the Executive or Legislature might or would do was too wild to receive credence," Richardson wrote in a 1902 memoir. "Washington has become so fruitful in gossip and scandal, and intrigue, political and otherwise, that in contrast the ordinary debates can but prove exceeding dry reading," he recalled for The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Personal attacks have been dominant here for as long as I've observed this august forum. In other forums, I would try to note ad hominem attacks as such and otherwise ignore them, but that's not much fun around here. Perhaps you might take up the matter with the dominant local machine gun unit, JLA. If you can think of something better than mockery to address Rev. Pilch, let me know. Personal attacks on Clinton are the core issue anyway, so it's appropriate after a fashion. Whitewater? Filegate? Travelgate? Bloodgate? Secret love child rumors? Always on topic. Evidence? Drudge rules! It's all politics, and in terms of K's dreaded "substantive debate", I'd agree it's pretty hopeless. Maybe it'll be better next year.