As the House prepares to vote on impeaching President Trump, there is no doubt that the Republican Party is behind him. Not a single House Republican voted to open an impeachment inquiry, and party officials have faithfully defended the president by denying facts and evidence that are beyond dispute and disseminating false narratives. One only has to look at their recitation of Russian-influenced talking points that blame Ukraine for hacking the election in 2016. And you can virtually count on one hand the number of congressional Republicans who’ve said the president has done anything wrong.
Many Republicans would argue that their partisan solidarity today is a repeat of 1998, when President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican House. But they are dead wrong. Democrats never gave Mr. Clinton a free pass. Yes, he was in his second term, but it was no small matter that they almost came to the brink of abandoning him. When the Monica Lewinsky story broke in January of that year, Democrats were shocked, and many spoke privately about whether Mr. Clinton’s presidency would survive. Only after Mr. Clinton dishonestly denied any sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, Democrats took some heart and took a wait-and-see attitude.
Then on Aug. 19, Mr. Clinton, in grand jury testimony via video link from the White House, admitted his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky while denying that he had lied about it under oath. Making matters much worse, the president spoke to the nation that night and, instead of speaking from contrition, lashed out at the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, for leading what Donald Trump might call a witch hunt.
That speech nearly lost Mr. Clinton the support of his own party. According to Peter Baker’s account in “The Breach,” Dick Gephardt, the House minority leader, told his caucus on a conference call that “members should feel free to disavow the president and his actions.” The next day on a campaign swing in Pennsylvania for congressional candidates, Mr. Gephardt told The Washington Post that impeaching the president and effectively overriding the 1996 election should not be undertaken lightly. Still, he cautioned, “that doesn’t mean it can’t be done or shouldn’t be done; you just better be sure you do it the right way.”
“I’m very disappointed in what he did,” Mr. Gephardt continued. “There is no way to condone his behavior — the whole totality of what happened in the White House and what he said about it afterward.”
This was before Mr. Starr released his report to Congress. Imagine any of those comments coming from the current Congress. You can’t.
Mr. Clinton started reaching out to allies in the Senate. Senator Patrick Leahy, according to Mr. Baker, told the president, “You’re a damn, damn, damn fool.” Even Harold Ickes, one of Mr. Clinton’s longtime supporters and his former deputy chief of staff, started quietly sounding out labor leaders about possibly forcing the president to resign.
Mr. Clinton’s troubles got worse when the Senate returned to Washington. At a lunch for Senate Democrats the week following the speech, Erskine Bowles, Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff, was confronted by angry senators, some of them even suggesting the president should consider resigning. Senators Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ernest Hollings, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Bob Kerrey and Joe Biden all expressed bitter displeasure with Mr. Clinton’s lack of candor with them and the nation.
In a tense cabinet meeting on Sept. 10, several cabinet members, led by Donna Shalala, Madeleine Albright and Aida Alvarez, expressed their anger and disappointment directly to the president. Ms. Albright’s spokesman was forced to acknowledge her comments from the State Department’s podium when they leaked out.
That storm strengthened with the release of the Starr report on Sept. 11. One Democrat, Representative Paul McHale, called the president morally repugnant and publicly called for his resignation. Representative Marcy Kaptur said, “If he resigned tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough in my judgment.” And Representative Jim Moran told Larry King that impeachment proceedings were “undoubtedly” necessary. According to Mr. Baker’s account, the White House had been told that Senator Byrd had already drafted a speech calling for Mr. Clinton to resign.
When the House considered whether to open an impeachment inquiry in October, 31 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting yes — a far cry from the zero Republicans who voted with Democrats almost seven weeks ago to open an inquiry into the Ukraine scheme.
Unlike President Trump, Mr. Clinton eventually acknowledged his misdeeds and went on an extended apology tour. At the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, he said: “I agree with those who have said that in my first statement after I testified I was not contrite enough. I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know the sorrow I feel is genuine — first and most important, my family. Also, my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”
In mid-September, Mr. Lieberman took to the Senate floor to accuse Mr. Clinton of being disgraceful and immoral, though he stopped short of calling on the president to step down. At the Senate trial, Charles Ruff, the White House counsel, said: “We are not here to defend William Clinton the man. He, like all of us, will find his judges elsewhere.” And former Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Mr. Clinton’s friend who had joined his legal team, told the Senate: “You pick your own adjective to describe the president’s conduct. Here are some that I would use: indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless.”
That November, Democrats picked up five seats in the House — the first time in more than a century that a second-term president’s party had gained seats in a midterm election. But even then, five Democrats voted with the Republicans to impeach Mr. Clinton.
We all know the president was acquitted in the Senate and served out his term, just as President Trump is likely to do. But the difference between the Democrats then and the Republicans now is breathtaking.
Republicans today have refused to acknowledge Mr. Trump has done anything wrong, mounting attacks instead on Democrats and their allies. I haven’t heard a single Republican in Congress publicly express a willingness to remove the president. They are acting exactly the way Mr. Trump predicted they would when he said in the campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and none of his supporters would desert him.
The Democrats in 1998 were not — and I hope never will be — like the Republicans of today: putting job security and partisan loyalty over their oath of office and obligation to Constitution and country.
Joe Lockhart (@joelockhart) was press secretary to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2000. He hosts the podcast “Words Matter.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Democrats Never Gave Bill Clinton a Free Pass
Opinion | Democrats Never Gave Bill Clinton a Free Pass
As the House prepares to vote on impeaching President Trump, there is no doubt that the Republican Party is behind him. Not a single House Republican voted to open an impeachment inquiry, and party officials have faithfully defended the president by denying facts and evidence that are beyond dispute and disseminating false narratives. One only has to look at their recitation of Russian-influenced talking points that blame Ukraine for hacking the election in 2016. And you can virtually count on one hand the number of congressional Republicans who’ve said the president has done anything wrong.
Many Republicans would argue that their partisan solidarity today is a repeat of 1998, when President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican House. But they are dead wrong. Democrats never gave Mr. Clinton a free pass. Yes, he was in his second term, but it was no small matter that they almost came to the brink of abandoning him. When the Monica Lewinsky story broke in January of that year, Democrats were shocked, and many spoke privately about whether Mr. Clinton’s presidency would survive. Only after Mr. Clinton dishonestly denied any sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, Democrats took some heart and took a wait-and-see attitude.
Then on Aug. 19, Mr. Clinton, in grand jury testimony via video link from the White House, admitted his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky while denying that he had lied about it under oath. Making matters much worse, the president spoke to the nation that night and, instead of speaking from contrition, lashed out at the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, for leading what Donald Trump might call a witch hunt.
That speech nearly lost Mr. Clinton the support of his own party. According to Peter Baker’s account in “The Breach,” Dick Gephardt, the House minority leader, told his caucus on a conference call that “members should feel free to disavow the president and his actions.” The next day on a campaign swing in Pennsylvania for congressional candidates, Mr. Gephardt told The Washington Post that impeaching the president and effectively overriding the 1996 election should not be undertaken lightly. Still, he cautioned, “that doesn’t mean it can’t be done or shouldn’t be done; you just better be sure you do it the right way.”
“I’m very disappointed in what he did,” Mr. Gephardt continued. “There is no way to condone his behavior — the whole totality of what happened in the White House and what he said about it afterward.”
This was before Mr. Starr released his report to Congress. Imagine any of those comments coming from the current Congress. You can’t.
Mr. Clinton started reaching out to allies in the Senate. Senator Patrick Leahy, according to Mr. Baker, told the president, “You’re a damn, damn, damn fool.” Even Harold Ickes, one of Mr. Clinton’s longtime supporters and his former deputy chief of staff, started quietly sounding out labor leaders about possibly forcing the president to resign.
Mr. Clinton’s troubles got worse when the Senate returned to Washington. At a lunch for Senate Democrats the week following the speech, Erskine Bowles, Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff, was confronted by angry senators, some of them even suggesting the president should consider resigning. Senators Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ernest Hollings, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Bob Kerrey and Joe Biden all expressed bitter displeasure with Mr. Clinton’s lack of candor with them and the nation.
In a tense cabinet meeting on Sept. 10, several cabinet members, led by Donna Shalala, Madeleine Albright and Aida Alvarez, expressed their anger and disappointment directly to the president. Ms. Albright’s spokesman was forced to acknowledge her comments from the State Department’s podium when they leaked out.
That storm strengthened with the release of the Starr report on Sept. 11. One Democrat, Representative Paul McHale, called the president morally repugnant and publicly called for his resignation. Representative Marcy Kaptur said, “If he resigned tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough in my judgment.” And Representative Jim Moran told Larry King that impeachment proceedings were “undoubtedly” necessary. According to Mr. Baker’s account, the White House had been told that Senator Byrd had already drafted a speech calling for Mr. Clinton to resign.
When the House considered whether to open an impeachment inquiry in October, 31 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting yes — a far cry from the zero Republicans who voted with Democrats almost seven weeks ago to open an inquiry into the Ukraine scheme.
Unlike President Trump, Mr. Clinton eventually acknowledged his misdeeds and went on an extended apology tour. At the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, he said: “I agree with those who have said that in my first statement after I testified I was not contrite enough. I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know the sorrow I feel is genuine — first and most important, my family. Also, my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”
In mid-September, Mr. Lieberman took to the Senate floor to accuse Mr. Clinton of being disgraceful and immoral, though he stopped short of calling on the president to step down. At the Senate trial, Charles Ruff, the White House counsel, said: “We are not here to defend William Clinton the man. He, like all of us, will find his judges elsewhere.” And former Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Mr. Clinton’s friend who had joined his legal team, told the Senate: “You pick your own adjective to describe the president’s conduct. Here are some that I would use: indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless.”
That November, Democrats picked up five seats in the House — the first time in more than a century that a second-term president’s party had gained seats in a midterm election. But even then, five Democrats voted with the Republicans to impeach Mr. Clinton.
We all know the president was acquitted in the Senate and served out his term, just as President Trump is likely to do. But the difference between the Democrats then and the Republicans now is breathtaking.
Republicans today have refused to acknowledge Mr. Trump has done anything wrong, mounting attacks instead on Democrats and their allies. I haven’t heard a single Republican in Congress publicly express a willingness to remove the president. They are acting exactly the way Mr. Trump predicted they would when he said in the campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and none of his supporters would desert him.
The Democrats in 1998 were not — and I hope never will be — like the Republicans of today: putting job security and partisan loyalty over their oath of office and obligation to Constitution and country.
Joe Lockhart (@joelockhart) was press secretary to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2000. He hosts the podcast “Words Matter.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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