Should President Clinton Be Impeached?

• What is the responsibility of the House of Representatives?
• What is the responsibility of the Senate?

An understanding of the above is necessary for the discussion which follows.

[The House brings the charges (impeaches); The Senate tries the impeached.]

On the ABC radio network news 9/29/98 the announcer intoned, “Trent Lott has lowered the standard for impeachment. The senate Republican leader says ‘bad conduct’ is enough — conduct that brings the presidency into disrepute.” Indeed. 

There followed a sound-bite from Mike McCurry taking Senator Lott to task for his remarks: “Should impeachment ever be brought against the president, the United States Senate would sit in judgement of those charges so why one who would sit in judgement would render, preemptively, uh, thoughts on what rises to impeachable offense is a bit mystifying.”

The Clinton spin machine had already worked it’s magic on the news writers at ABC who considered Lott’s statement to represent a lowering of standards. Clearly, the folks at ABC have no historical perspective regarding grounds for impeachment.

The fact is, if the good senator does not know what is an impeachable offense, he would have no business sitting in judgement — just the opposite of what Mike McCurry said. I have to believe that McCurry mistakenly believes that “impeachment” means finding the president guilty and removing him from office. In fact, impeachment is simply a trial.

Article II, section 4 of the Constitution for the United States of America states: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Before deciding whether the president should be impeached (charged with “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”), it would help to know what exactly these offenses are.

So the question arises, is “bad conduct — conduct that brings the presidency into disrepute” a high crime or high misdemeanor? Since neither “high crime” nor “high misdemeanor” is defined in the criminal code, we have to look into the past to see what has previously constituted “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The legal system places great value on precedent and so should we.

The authors of the Constitution seem to have gotten the term from British law where it was used exclusively to denote actions for which one should be removed from office. The offenses coming under the umbrella term “high crimes and misdemeanors” have not necessarily been criminal offenses, rather, personal conduct that brought disrepute to their offices.

Viscount John Mordaunt, for making uncivil advances on a woman, was impeached in 1666. In 1680, the lord chief justice of the King’s bench, Sir William Scroggs, was impeached because of his “excesses and debaucheries“. The founding fathers probably had such high crimes and misdemeanors in mind when they used the term in our own constitution.

James Madison wrote that impeachment should be used to remove officials for, among other things, “perfidity“. Federalist Paper # 70 says that impeachment is to be used for an official who acts “in such manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted.”

If you don’t care to take the Founding Fathers’ word for it as to what offenses they meant to be impeachable, here’s a more modern opinion: As published in the Arkansas Gazette on August 8, 1974, William Jefferson Clinton is quoted as saying: “No question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI … is an impeachable offense.”

Historically, it is clear that the term applies to actions that are not necessarily illegal, but simply immoral — not virtuous. “Bad behavior” if you will. So Senator Lott has done his homework; ABC news hasn’t.

As for Mr. McCurry’s mystification that Senator Lott, a juror in any impeachment trial, would publicly express knowledge of what constitutes an impeachable offense, this is actually amusing. McCurry is attempting to equate knowing what constitutes an impeachable offense with pre-judging Mr. Clinton. Such is not the case to anyone but Clinton apologists.

Indeed, in our legal system, judges and prosecutors routinely weed out of jury pools anyone who does not agree with the prosecution about what constitutes an offense for which someone should be tried. If you were, for example, a potential juror in a drug case, and if under questioning during voir dire, you stated that you did not believe that possession of marijuana should be prosecuted, you would be “excused” from sitting on that jury. You must both know and agree with the prosecutor as to what constitutes a prosecutable offense or you are not fit to be a juror in our legal system.

Now comes Senator Lott opining that he knows what constitutes an impeachable offense and the president’s spin doctors wag their fingers at him saying , “Tsk, tsk, shame on you.” I’m sure that Mr. McCurry would much prefer that Senator Lott just take the administration’s word for it that the president’s actions are not impeachable offenses.

McCurry was at it again the next day with the ridiculous assertion that under Lott’s definition, “bad table manners” would be grounds for impeachment. Does McCurry see no difference between bad table manners and the president’s shameful conduct? Perhaps the Clinton administration puts boinking the White House staff in the same category as slurping your soup. Both are merely “inappropriate” conduct, but not impeachable in their view.

If Senator Lott erred at all it was in not providing examples of the “bad conduct” — the kind of conduct that brings the presidency into disrepute — that he finds to be impeachable offenses. Had he done so, I doubt that using the wrong fork would have been on the list.

McCurry went on to say that there are no similarities between what Clinton has done and what Nixon did in connection with Watergate. That’s an assertion worth examining. Just what were Nixon’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which he was impeached?

Nixon’s high crime and misdemeanor was lying to the American people about his part in the Watergate burglary cover-up. He did not lie under oath. He did not commit any criminal offenses.

Clinton has lied to the American people (even his “confession” on national Television was riddled with lies) and he has lied under oath. That’s called perjury and is a criminal offense.

One wonders what Mike McCurry thinks Nixon was impeached for. You might be wondering the same thing. Over the years we’ve been told that Watergate wasn’t about the break-in but about the cover-up — the lying. Here’s a sampling of the charges from the first article of impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States… in violation of his constitutional oath, … and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice… The means used … have included one or more of the following:

Section 1: Making or causing to be made false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers… 

Section 2: Withholding relevant material evidence… 

Section 3: Approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements… 

Section 8: Making false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States…

Even ignoring Clinton’s sexual antics which are obviously in violation of “civil rights” sexual harassment law — laws which this administration has pursued vigorously — his lying and deception are certainly impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors, if the fate of Richard Nixon is any indication.

I’m sure that Mike McCurry and other Clinton advisors and mouthpieces know this; they just prefer to remain loyal to Clinton by lying yet again to the American people and falsely claiming that holding their boss to the same standard as used for Richard Nixon and previous presidents would constitute a lowering of standards for impeachment.

Will We the People be fooled again?