Bread and circuses: report card

National Review, Sept 28, 1998 by Kate O'Beirne

BY the time you read this, Kenneth Starr will almost certainly have forwarded to the House of Representatives his report on possible impeachable offenses committed by President Clinton. The question now is what the ground rules will be for the House's review of the findings. The House must adopt, by simple majority, a resolution governing the Judiciary Committee's investigative authority and members' access to the report. Only after these matters have been settled will the public finally learn the results of Mr. Starr's investigation.

Until recently, Republicans were divided over how to handle the report, with many of them wishing the whole thing would somehow dispose of itself. But now the disarray is on the Democratic side. The House's next move -- like the fate of the Clinton Presidency itself -- depends on how the Democrats resolve it.

Republicans are inclined to support Henry Hyde's desire to limit access to the full report until his Judiciary Committee has reviewed its findings. Hyde worries that full disclosure, particularly of grand-jury testimony, could at once protect the guilty (by compromising possible criminal prosecutions) and damage innocent third parties. So the Republicans' draft resolution provides that after the House Sergeant at Arms takes custody of Starr's report, the Judiciary Committee will consider it behind closed doors, in executive session.

Under this Republican plan, other Members of Congress and the public would have immediate access to the executive summary of the report. Additional material from the full report would be released as the Committee conducted its initial review. The trouble with this plan is that the inevitable leaks would threaten the kind of orderly, judicious review that Rep. Hyde wants.

The Democrats, meanwhile, don't even have a plan. Whereas Henry Hyde has the complete confidence of his Republican colleagues, Hyde's Democratic counterpart, the erratic John Conyers of Michigan, emphatically does not have the confidence of his chief, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. So Gephardt hopes to assume a larger role for himself, which means he has to get his counterpart, Speaker Newt Gingrich, more directly involved in the process.

Democrats are also divided on the threshold question of how much of the report should be made public. Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.) favors immediate full disclosure so as to resolve the President's fate as quickly as possible -- and avoid any unpleasant revelations just before November's elections. Others would rather postpone receipt of the report until after the elections, and still others would try to minimize damage to the President by releasing information in dribs and drabs (as the White House has done to great effect so far).

No doubt plenty of Democrats hope with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (N.Y.) that ''we can have this all behind us in six weeks' time,'' but that will happen only if they can persuade Clinton to resign. Republicans don't anticipate a full impeachment inquiry until after the elections. If, after its initial review, the Judiciary Committee determines that the Starr report contains substantial and credible evidence of impeachable acts, it will request authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry. A majority of the House would have to agree to launch the inquiry and provide the Committee resources for a full investigation.

The Committee would then call witnesses, and the President would be represented by counsel. At this stage, the Committee would no longer be limited to the evidence of wrongdoing contained in the Starr report. It would be free to investigate other possible misdeeds by the Clinton Administration, such as whether the Internal Revenue Service conducted politically motivated audits.

At that point the political community will still be debating the relative merits of congressional censure, resignation, or impeachment. But one imaginative GOP aide in the Senate worries that the President might have a constitutional trick up his sleeve. If there is bipartisan support for impeachment, the President, suffering from clinical depression, might invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and step aside temporarily. Acting President Gore would then assume the duties of the office, until a deeply remorseful President Clinton emerged from some clinic and was pronounced ''healed.'' It's a far-fetched scenario, but it shows that the ''Comeback Kid'' still stalks the nightmares of conservatives.

IN fact, the President will be removed from office if, and only if, Democrats decide that he must go. Through each and every scandal Democrats aggressively defended their President and attacked his accusers. But the first defectors have now appeared. By pinning responsibility squarely on the President, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) and others have made it clear that Ken Starr cannot be blamed for Clinton's predicament. That robs the White House of its central argument. And Democrats who have asserted that the President is in the clear if the Starr report contains evidence ''only'' of lying under oath in a civil case must now contend with Sen. Moynihan's declaration that such behavior is an ''impeachable offense.''