Order In The Court

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Then some people tried to hit the brakes. Snowe turned to fellow Maine Senator Susan Collins. "I've got to say something," she said. "This is wrong." They had just taken a historic oath, she reminded her colleagues--some of them still fingering the souvenir pens with which they signed the impeachment book. Did they really want to start the process with such a partisan move? She appealed to a sense of personal trust that has not dissolved completely; Senators still shake hands across the aisles. The mood in the room swept behind her as Republicans rose in agreement. Said Larry Craig of Idaho, a conservative: "If there's any chance of not having this be a partisan vote, let's go for it."

The Democrats, meanwhile, were aware that if Clinton could not get a fair trial in a G.O.P.-controlled Senate, it would be in part because of what the Democrats did to Robert Bork and John Tower, and to the methods the Democratic majority had long used to undercut Republican administrations. "If we can't do this," an off-message Democratic Senator said Thursday night, "we're all to blame." And so they agreed to try one last time to pull back from the brink.

The denouement came Friday, in a venue designed to humble warriors. The Old Senate Chamber was last regularly used in 1859 to debate the issues of a growing nation: territorial expansion, slavery, economic policy in the first industrial age. The nation outgrew the room, so when they assembled there shortly after 9:30 a.m., 100 Senators made do with 68 seats. Those not lucky enough to get antique seats were placed between the rows, so that tall Senators like Oregon's Gordon Smith sat with his knees pressed up against the chair in front of him. "It was like riding with two people in a wheelbarrow," said New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici.

The senators listened to their most respected historian, Robert Byrd, warn them that they too were on trial. The President had sullied the presidency; the House had fallen "into the black pit of partisan self-indulgence." The Senate needed to lift its eyes to higher things. Byrd quoted Ben Franklin, the Federalist papers, even Chaucer. Then the deal guys saved the day.

It was Phil Gramm and Ted Kennedy who persuaded their colleagues that they could agree on the basic approach, to let the trial open with arguments and questions and then decide which, if any, witnesses to call. That the Texas conservative and the Massachusetts liberal--"the most unlikely combination you could imagine," as Collins called them--could agree on anything suggests one of two things: either the compromise was hollow and symbolic, or something rare and impressive occurred.

It may be that both are true. Any vote that turns out 100 to 0 in the Senate is by definition symbolic. But on an issue as explosive as the trial of a popular President during an age of vengeance in a Senate controlled by the opposition party, no vote is easy. There are surely votes ahead that will divide the caucus, strain party loyalties, test principle against politics and test both against the law. But this vote was much harder than the final tally suggests.

By leaving open the possibility of witnesses and giving the House managers room to make their case, the vote looked like more of a victory for the hard-liners than the Democrats. But the fine print holds the trapdoors: the resolution forces the House prosecutors to present their case first, over the course of as long as 24 hours, without calling witnesses. Then comes the White House, followed by the Senators' questions. And only then do the House managers get a chance to argue in favor of hearing testimony.

There were some Clinton victories buried in the procedures. First, the managers are limited to what is already in the record. They must request witnesses en bloc, which means they must be careful about whom they call. The Senate will vote on the complete set, so just one objectionable witness could drag the whole bloc down. "That's a huge victory for the Democrats," said a Democratic strategist on the Hill, "and I'm not sure the White House gets it." And even if a majority votes yes on the set of witnesses, the vote only authorizes depositions; it will take another majority vote to hear them live.

With increasing rancor, the White House argued through the week that it would be unfair for the Senate to proceed with a trial in which the Senators made up the rules as they went along. On Friday, when every last one of the 45 Democrats voted for a plan that does precisely that, lawyer Greg Craig said tersely that the White House "respected" the Senate's decision.