DEMS ON THE SPOT

The chasm between the White House and Hill Democrats was on display October 2, when Judiciary Committee Democrats announced their own plan for a resolution authorizing an impeachment inquiry. The Democratic resolution, which includes limits on the length and scope of the inquiry, was a response to the open-ended Republican proposal released two days before. But it also reflected a recognition that Democrats can’t afford to be on record opposing an inquiry altogether. And John Conyers, the Judiciary Committee’s senior Democrat, makes clear that he won’t welcome White House efforts to build support for the Democratic resolution: “Members are perfectly capable of coming to their own conclusions,” he told me.

The liberal Conyers is hardly a barometer of House Democratic opinion, but his statement under-scores that the White House’s decision not to lobby was one of its smarter moves to date. Indeed, House Democrats, both friendly and unfriendly to the president, say that any White House-driven effort to build opposition to the inquiry could backfire. They also say that the vote will be a personal decision, and that with the midterm elections just around the corner, the members’ dominant concern is their own survival, not the president’s.

There’s no expectation the Democratic resolution will prevail, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the House floor. Thus the question is how much Democratic support there will be for the Republican resolution. Predictions are all over the map, and both sides are, predictably, playing games with how many votes they expect (Republicans are lowballing; Democrats are highballing). The only consensus is that the vote will be viewed as bipartisan if the GOP resolution is supported by more than 75 Democrats in the full House. Similarly, support from fewer than 50 Democrats will help the White House in its continuing campaign to tar the inquiry as a Republican witch hunt.

A perception of overreaching by Republicans has helped unify House Democrats, but some of last week’s events only increased the Democrats’ distance from the White House. First, James Carville appeared on Meet the Press to announce he was opening a new front in his total war — against Speaker Newt Gingrich. House Democrats weren’t happy with the bombast and protested to White House officials. A couple of days later, a coalition of unions and liberal activists was reported to be planning a multimillion-dollar television effort in support of Clinton and against Republicans. Once more, congressional Democrats complained to the White House, charging that such a drive would siphon away much-needed campaign funds. Top Clinton aides Erskine Bowles and John Podesta were dispatched to meet with Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, Democratic leaders on the Hill, to soothe tensions and assure them the White House wouldn’t be supporting the ads.

The Democrats’ greatest woes may result from a clever move by Henry Hyde, the Judiciary Committee chairman. Gephardt and Conyers had in recent weeks been calling on Republicans to use the rules set for the Watergate deliberations as a model when drawing up their resolution of inquiry. Hyde promptly did exactly that, using the 1974 resolution almost word for word. Democrats complained that Hyde’s resolution contained no limits on either the length of the inquiry or its scope. Neither, however, did the Watergate resolution. Conyers and White House officials were left mumbling, and Republicans jumped at the chance to spew out press releases highlighting Democratic hypocrisy.

One of the wildcards this week will be Gephardt. He signed off on the move to craft a Democratic resolution of inquiry, but he’s been silent on the Republican proposal (David Bonior, the Democratic whip, has been the White House’s chief ally). There were reports last week that Gephardt would begin working against the GOP proposal, but even if he does, his colleagues are not going to take his protests of Republican unfairness as a signal that he expects them to march in lock-step against the Republican resolution.

The other wildcard in this week’s vote will be public opinion. A late-September ABC News/Washington Post poll of likely voters found 53 percent supporting impeachment hearings, though 55 percent said those hearings should conclude by the end of the year. The same poll also found 27 percent saying a candidate’s support for impeachment would make them more likely to vote for that candidate, while 33 percent said it would make their support less likely. If those muddled numbers turn in the GOP’s favor this week, look for more and more Democrats to support the Republican resolution.

Clinton officials are, of course, still hoping for a massive Democratic vote against the Republican resolution. The one administration figure known to have lobbied against it is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who according to the Washington Post told Rep. Patrick Kennedy that “to proceed with what has already become a bogus process would itself be bogus” (he promptly came out against any impeachment proceedings). But a different, and more public, message was conveyed by Mike McCurry, the presidential spokesman. He signaled during a September 30 briefing that the White House understands House Democrats may be forced to vote for impeachment hearings. “I don’t think we would be in a good position to take much issue with that,” he said. “I mean, we’d have to acknowledge that people might have a different way of looking at the same set of facts.”

This burst of candor wasn’t entirely appreciated by McCurry’s colleagues. Not that it mattered much to him — his last day on the job was Friday.

Matthew Rees is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.