The Great Disconnect

(4 of 5)

When they retired to the cloakrooms on Saturday night, the Senators had to admit the House managers had done better than expected. On Day One, Henry Hyde was brief, James Sensenbrenner was solid, Jim Rogan was compelling if strident, and Asa Hutchinson stole the show. Ed Bryant was incoherent, "shockingly bad," as one Senator said later. Most of the other presentations were forgettable or repetitive, even annoying. But on Saturday, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham struck an empathic chord. Instead of insisting, as others had, that the case was clear-cut, he acknowledged that the Senate faced a difficult decision. Then Hyde closed with a stirring summation. Said a Republican Senator who had been skeptical about the House managers: "We were impressed with how well prepared they were and the passion they conveyed."

Hutchinson and Rogan marched the Senate briskly through the two articles of impeachment: the President, they claimed, had obstructed justice in the Jones case, caused other witnesses to provide false testimony to Kenneth Starr's grand jury and then knowingly lied under oath in order to maintain the deception. Hutchinson fashioned a compelling narrative from this too familiar tale. The obstruction, he alleged, began when Clinton learned that Lewinsky was to be subpoenaed in the Jones case; he drafted Vernon Jordan to help find her a job and get her back on Clinton's side; once that was under way, he approached Lewinsky with his plan to have her sign a false affidavit in the Jones case. As Hutchinson explained it, Jordan was recruited once more to find her a lawyer, hold her hand, get her out of town. But when it turned out that the Jones lawyers knew far more about Clinton's relationship with Monica than the President expected, Clinton hid behind his secretary, Betty Currie, who he claimed had been the object of Lewinsky's visits. The next day he met with Currie to go over his testimony, encouraged her to recall events as he had sworn to them and, the House contends, asked her to reclaim the gifts he had given Lewinsky. In places the testimony is contradictory; that, the House managers insist, is why the Senate needs to hear from Jordan, Currie and Lewinsky.

Many legal scholars believe the President is more vulnerable to charges that he lied about an affair than that he confected a conspiracy to conceal it. But the perjury charges do not throw open the doors to witnesses, and witnesses are what the House prosecutors want above all: witnesses are their last chance to sway opinion. The obstruction case, the Republicans realized, was the fastest way to convince Senators that the major players had to be called. "Let me ask you two questions," Hutchinson said. "First: Can you convict the President of the United States without hearing testimony of one of the key witnesses? Second: Can you dismiss the charges under this strong set of facts and circumstances without hearing and evaluating the credibility of the key witnesses?" How, he inquired, could the Senate figure out the punishment without truly knowing the crime?

Later Brownback sounds as if he is wrestling with issues of justice and mercy. "You sit in those hearings, and it's a sad role, but you realize none of us is perfect. There are consequences to actions, but none of us is perfect. If you're in a civil society, you have to dispense justice but also forgiveness."

The headlines last week in the Emporia Gazette were not about a President's disgrace; they were about the revered principal of a local grade school who had just resigned after being arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession. A public figure who everyone thought was doing a wonderful job was accused of doing something petty and dumb--and in so doing gave the town a chance to wonder about its standards and its sense of mercy.

No one approves of educators who use drugs, the Gazette editorialized last week. But in the fog of charges, it warned, don't lose sight of the principal's record. The paper recalled the August day when a house burned down; the principal helped the firemen lug hoses and waited there until the children, his students, came home. He wanted to help them cope with their loss. Or the time he was quick to arrive at the scene of a school-bus crash, comforting victims and helping the rescuers. But most important, the paper said, was his morality and courage under fire: the moment he was accused of wrongdoing, the principal resigned rather than cling to his job. "What was probably his last act as an educator--his resignation--may carry the strongest lesson," city editor Joel Mathis wrote. "Actions have consequences."