Do it, but get it done

A few witnesses might help, but any more than that will hurt. We've got to do this, but do it fast.

How does Bill Clinton always manage to do this? To get caught with his hand in the cookie jar -- and to end up making someone else feel more uncomfortable about it than he seems to.

Fact is, the U.S. Senate is in a tighter pinch than the scandalized president now being considered for removal. Consider that the House prosecutors who impeached the president have put on a full-court-press for allowing witnesses -- especially Monica Lewinsky -- into the Senate trial. Yet, as necessary as witnesses are to a trial, just one witness in this case could open a political pandora's box -- and stretch the trial out for weeks, if not months. At the same time, there is mounting pressure on the Senate to conclude this case yesterday. Influential Sen. Robert Indeed, as serious as the perjury and obstruction charges are, the writing seems to be on the wall at this point: It seems increasingly implausible that the Senate -- split 55-45 along party lines, and unlikely to budge much -- would ever vote by the two-thirds margin necessary to convict the president. So even some senators who might otherwise want to seriously consider removing the president are searching frantically for an "exit strategy" as they say. All the while, the true believers in the GOP's conservative wing would pitch a fit if the Senate didn't at least go through the motions. And at this point, there's little reason not to finish what the president himself really started. The most logical "exit strategy" at this point would seem to be to call a very limited number of witnesses, perhaps just chief players Lewinsky and Clinton, and take a swift vote on the case up or down -- and then move on to the real business of government. Adherence to principle demands that the process be allowed to play out; practicality requires that it be soon. Byrd had it right: Amid the longest peacetime economic expansion in the past half-century, this has been a sad and sorry time for this country. Long after the trial, we will continue to debate the case and who was to blame for its various follies, foibles and failings. Some will pillory House Republicans and the independent counsel, some will point to the president. Some will think Lewinsky a villain, some a victim. Some will focus on privacy, others on perjury. But whatever we fixate on, let's not lose sight of what started it: the president's philandering -- after an implicit pledge to voters in the infamous "60 Minutes" interview that it was in the past. Then, what kept it alive for everyone to grow tired of was the president's bald-faced and even indignant lying. Regardless of the outcome, he has shamed himself, his family and his office.

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.