Senate's pivotal point

At a fateful point in the Senate's impeachment trial preparations, Sen.

They used to call it MAD -- "mutually assured destruction."

And it used to refer to the combined nuclear might of the Soviet Union and the United States. Today, mutually assured destruction is a term that could very well be applied to the Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Like the Cold War military buildup and the dangerous eye-to-eye confrontations of the two superpowers, there seems to be no stopping the spiral downward in Washington these days. But at least the superpowers tried at times to slow down the descent into madness -- and, occasionally, did so with a breakthrough treaty aimed at reducing each other's arsenal. Today, Washington needs a treaty with itself. There's a kind of part-Cold War, part-Civil War in our capital over the future of President Clinton. The U.S. Senate appears to have reached such a treaty, at least with itself. Its remarkable 100-0 adoption of an outline for the impeachment trial has, for now, preserved the honor of that honorable institution -- and given hope that we can yet get through this most difficult juncture in American history in a civil fashion that historians will look kindly on. The key: Senators must think of themselves at this critical moment as senators -- not as Republicans or Democrats, or even as men and women needing re-election someday. Just U.S. senators, doing a difficult job in a professional, statesmanlike way. This spirit is at the heart of the very statesmanlike words uttered by Sen. Robert Byrd at an apparently pivotal moment last week in the Senate's closed-door discussion on the form the trial would take. "The White House has sullied itself. The House has fallen into the black pit of partisan self-indulgence. The Senate is teetering on the brink of that same black pit." In an age of dime-a-dozen sound bites, Sen. Byrd's wise and profound words may go down in history as one of the great bits of oratory of our time. For now, senators have listened. That unity could crack at any moment, however, especially if witnesses are called and the trial drags on for weeks, even months. If the Senate indeed goes on to avoid that pit, it will have done this country a great service. And the senators will have upheld the integrity and esteem of their hallowed halls. The gentleman from West Virginia has done what he can to light the way.

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