Impeachment Trial: The Prosecution Rests

WASHINGTON: "I am done," said Henry Hyde at the end of his speech Saturday, and with that, so were the House managers. But had they done it? Saturday was the prosecution's day to assert the President's guilt, and to convince Senators that those crimes demanded his conviction and removal. And after two days of snooze-inducing been-there rehash, Lindsey Graham woke Senators up with the reminder that they had removed federal judges for conduct that had no direct bearing on their offices. Charles Canady then came with what may be the heart of the House case: That if President Clinton did obstruct justice, even on a matter not related to the Presidency, he deserves to be thrown out. Hyde closed with hushed talk of covenants, betrayals and the rule of law and even pulled an out-of-the-mouths-of-babes stunt with a too-cute letter from an Illinois third-grader. The amazing part was, no one laughed.

Over three days, the managers did not always act as if they had the burden of proof, but on Saturday they may have relieved themselves of a more pressing burden: that of their recent history. If the facts and the arguments were all too familiar, their demeanor sure wasn't. By the end of Saturday, they had made impeachment dignified again, and gone some way toward restoring their own credibility as advocates of an abrupt end to Bill Clinton's time in office. Did they change any minds? Afterwards, Senators tried not to say. But this prosecution has made it harder for the White House to concede the facts and at the same time argue that they are not impeachable offenses.

"This is not about what we hate," Hyde asserted, "but what we love." Well, only partially; there's plenty of rancor to go around. Still, the House didn't make it any easier for Charles Ruff, who on Tuesday will begin the President's defense on charges that, for three days at least, were made to sound grave indeed.