Here We Go Again: Impeachment redux

National Review, Dec 4, 2000 by Ramesh Ponnuru

This is beginning to feel familiar. The anchors are talking about a "constitutional crisis without precedent." You can't spit without hitting a lawyer on TV, and you frequently want to. Greg Craig is back. Dubious legal theories are being advanced. Robert Wexler is yelling and Jesse Jackson is marching. (Okay, those things are always true.) The words "illegitimacy" and "rule of law" are being tossed around. There has even been some talk about a right-wing "conspiracy," albeit this time Floridian rather than vast.

Yes, it's beginning to feel just like impeachment. The mood in Washington-amazement, barely controlled fury-is the same. Bitterness is a guaranteed outcome, just as it was then. There are, of course, important differences between the two cases. Last time around, Sean Wilentz, the Princeton history professor, was publishing pro-Clinton petitions in newspapers with the likes of C. Vann Woodward and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Now he's publishing pro-Gore petitions in newspapers with the likes of Rosie O'Donnell. And while in 1998 and 1999 the Democrats accused Republicans of trying to "overturn the election," this time both sides are making the accusation.

But it is the similarities that impress. Even some of the arguments are the same. During the debate over impeachment, George Will remarked that at last Democrats were acting like democrats and Republicans like republicans. So it is again. Democrats are talking about the need to respect "the will of the people," pointing to Gore's apparent plurality in the national vote just as they pointed to the opinion polls supporting Clinton during impeachment. Republicans are again invoking the Constitution-or rather, a part of the Constitution that rarely affects anything and is little understood.

Perhaps the Republicans were, or are, wrong about the Constitution. The Democrats' argument would still be more troubling because it is anti- constitutionalist as such. It sets up an implicit rhetorical opposition between the "will of the people" and the Constitution. This opposition is pernicious. In America, the Constitution is the will of the people; the lasting will. "The people" announce their very existence as a polity through the Constitution (and the Declaration).

But if the Republicans have the better of the argument, they're getting the worse of the politics. As during impeachment, Democrats have been more agile. In the fall of 1998, Democrats demanded that the House set a deadline for finishing its work on impeachment, and then complained that it was rushing to judgment. They said it would be unfair not to bring Kenneth Starr up for questioning, and then said it was unfair to let him testify. Now, having prepared to make the argument for the Electoral College before the election, when it looked favorable to Gore, they have pivoted without pause. They have been faster than the Republicans: Gore was sending lawyers to Florida even before he conceded to Bush, let alone before he retracted that concession. It wasn't until two days later that Republicans began to respond to the Democrats' PR offensive. The Democrats outmaneuvered the Republicans on the matter of whether to demand manual recounts in Florida, as well.

Impeachment appears to have taught the Democrats that they can get away with anything. It has also taught them their methods. During 1998, Clinton largely withdrew from public life. His henchmen-James Carville, Paul Begala, and lesser liars-were front and center. Today Gore is being "presidential": bedecked by flags, the Constitution on his lips, mindful of the effect of political confusion on our place in the world, unwilling to entertain inappropriate questions.

Bill Daley, his campaign manager, plays the role of thug, suggesting that anything other than Gore's installation as president would thwart "the will of the people." Campaign spokesman Mark Fabiani comes forward to call Florida's secretary of state Katherine Harris "a crony of the Bush brothers" and accuses her of "trying to steal this election away." This, because Harris insisted on a vote-counting deadline that is written into Florida law. (The defense of duty did not avail Kenneth Starr either.) The Gore campaign claims to have nothing to do with the various voter lawsuits filed in Florida, just as Clinton claimed to have nothing to do with lawsuits filed by his own Treasury Department.

Gore and his spokesmen have demonstrated that they want the presidency even if they lose the Electoral College, and they are contesting election results using methods-attacks on local election officials, marches-that would never have occurred to any pre-Clinton Democrats. Before Clinton, no president had so openly orchestrated a campaign, complete with propaganda and legal action, against an officer of the law. Before Gore, no presidential candidate had so openly orchestrated a campaign to steal the presidency.

Impeachment illustrated an important fact about the Democratic party: It clings to power by playing the race card. Democrats managed to racialize impeachment. Clinton was "the first black president" and the target of an attempted "lynching" by House managers. ("All they were missing was white sheets"-Eleanor Clift.) Now Jesse Jackson says that Selma has moved to Florida. Voters are being "disenfranchised." (It depends on what the meaning of "disenfranchised" is.) "It seems that in West Palm [Beach], the African-Americans and the Jewish senior citizens were targeted. Something systematic was at work here," Jackson said. "It was large and systematic." Speaking to the "sons and daughters of slavery and Holocaust survivors" in a sermon at Temple Israel of Greater Miami, the Rev. Jackson said that "we must stand together or we will perish alone."