February 12, 1999
Potomac Watch
Hyde On His Mistakes -- And Ours
By PAUL A. GIGOT
No matter the Senate vote, the Beltway verdict is in: The political-style judges say the two big impeachment losers are Bill Clinton and Henry Hyde.
The president for obvious reasons, and the House Judiciary chairman because he pressed impeachment without Barney Frank's approval.
This is what passes for moral equivalence in Washington, where the press corps derides the polls but follows them even more slavishly than politicians do. Only here could a man who lies under oath be equated with someone who tries to defend the value of that oath. The point is never, "What's right?" but rather, "Who won?"
The good news is that Mr. Hyde can finally step back and laugh about such nonsense, which he did in an interview Thursday. With impeachment ending, the 74-year-old chairman reflected on the duty he never wanted, his errors along the way and the meaning of Senate acquittal.
He's more cheerful than he has a right to be.
"I had a naive, utopian hope that as we documented the record, people who paid only passing attention would come to the conclusion that this was serious," he says. "That just never happened."
Like many others, he isn't sure why. "I'm a little bewildered by the American people," says the World War II Navy man. "I just don't know if our standards have got so low that this behavior is tolerated." He acknowledges that "this was a culture war," and maybe the 1960s' generation "revels in this guy's success. I don't know."
One culprit Mr. Hyde is certain of is modern polling, which he now believes can be politically self-fulfilling. Snapshot polls are taken and then echoed by politicians and the media until their biases harden into concrete, if not wisdom. "Nobody wants to be the oddball," he says.
Mr. Hyde won't say so, but he also wasn't helped by Ken Starr or his fellow GOP leaders. Mr. Starr waited too long to cut a deal with Monica Lewinsky, declined to indict anyone in the case, then dumped a referral on Congress that was only about Monica's case and two months before an election at that.
"You're right, we got sex, and that was the least viable topic for us to run on," he concedes, after praising Mr. Starr for his perseverence.
Newt Gingrich also didn't help by appearing to seek political gain from the scandal without making morally serious arguments about it. And the election rebuke to Republicans convinced Democrats they'd pay no political price for standing by their manchild.
This last is what seems to gall Mr. Hyde the most. He says he got not a whit of cooperation from any House Democrats ever, even as those same Democrats decried "partisanship." It's as if Pamela Anderson Lee denounced cosmetic surgery.
"I did everything but contortions to accommodate the Democrats. My own guys were mad at me for bending over backward. But no matter what we did we were criticized as partisan," says the one-time Democrat.
Why weren't there any Democratic Howard Bakers or Bill Cohens? "The attraction of power," he says of the Democratic calculation. "Do you doubt that if Clinton were a Republican, he would have been gone two years ago?"
None of which is to say that the chairman didn't make his own mistakes. "I probably should not have made the commitment to finish by the end of the year," he concedes, though even that was an attempt to appease Democrats who, recall, wanted to "get it all behind us." David Schippers, his chief impeachment counsel, wanted to widen the probe, but the deadline made that impossible.
Mr. Hyde also concedes he might have had fewer than 13 managers argue the Senate case. "I don't know how to say no, and it's a terrible character flaw," he says. "The first one to ask me was (Georgia firebrand Bob) Barr, and it wasn't a p.r. victory, but I wouldn't break his heart." Some of Mr. Hyde's rhetoric also could be too florid and, on occasion, too defensive. On the other hand, his speech to the Senate about things worth "losing my seat over" will go down as one of democracy's best.
As for the Senate, Mr. Hyde shows admirable -- if not completely candid -- restraint. "It fell short of an adequate trial. And that was because the senators wanted to get it over with as soon as possible," he says. "The senators were very mindful of the polls, and weren't willing to step up to that."
He was blunter in private, once telling a handful of GOP grandees that they treated the House managers like "reformed drunks -- proud of what we did but eager to get us off the premises."
Which makes it all the more remarkable that House Republicans were willing to buck the polls, the Democrats, the press corps and even Pat Robertson. "The alternative was unthinkable, and that was walking away, and saying not on my watch," he explains.
"It would have been worse if we hadn't done it. We would have disillusioned a lot of people who thought the Republican party should stand for something," he adds. And maybe the House's show of backbone will "count for something, maybe as early as 2000."
Mr. Hyde also takes pride in convincing the public that the president committed crimes. "I think a future president will think twice about perjury and obstruction of justice, knowing the price that Mr. Clinton paid," he says. "We did impeach him. That is unerasable."
Underlying all of this is the conviction of the House managers that Mr. Clinton is a dangerous man. As one of them puts it, not vindictively but all the worse for being matter-of-fact, the evidence convinced him that Mr. Clinton is "evil, amoral," capable of anything.
Mr. Hyde will only say on the record that, "I don't see him doing the right thing on anything" from here to January 20, 2001. The only other modern president who has inspired such deep distrust among serious people is Richard Nixon.
This is one of the reasons Mr. Hyde plans to press ahead with vigorous oversight of the Clinton Justice Department. "We feel it's a very neglected area," he says, and while Mr. Schippers is likely to return to Chicago, some of his investigators may stay.
This matters, because Mr. Clinton isn't about to let his impeachers alone. A president paranoid about his legacy even before the perjury scandal will now begin a campaign to make impeachment seem illegitimate. And he may succeed if Republicans allow him to spin the story by himself.
History will vindicate the House, after 2000 if not before, but not if Republicans are naive enough to believe that the Senate trial is the end of Mr. Clinton's scandal history. As James Carville says, "It's never over."
As for Henry Hyde, he likes to joke that when he first came to Washington he wanted to change the world; now he just wants to leave the room with dignity. By impeaching a law-breaking president, he did both.
wsj.com |
