Rashida Talib was right, as it turned out. The Democrats have come together to impeach the president who she refers to as “this motherf—er,” just as she promised back when the party took control of the House of Representatives 18 months ago.
This effort comes some 20 years after the last attempt by a House majority to remove a president of the opposite party. Congressional Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for crimes they claimed he committed to hide his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It is hard not to recall that history now, as we prepare for another round. What lessons can we glean from 1998-2000 that we might apply to 2019?
Perhaps the most relevant similarity between then and now is the divide within the country. Clinton’s impeachment highlighted a split between political elites and the public, and this split has also come to define the populist uprising of the past decade. Political elites in the late 1990s obsessed over impeachment, and it informed much of their posturing during the 2000 campaign. The public at large, by contrast, seemed unmoved by the whole thing.
At the top of the national political hierarchy, it began a feeding frenzy among Beltway journalists, pundits, politicians, and onlookers. The drip-drip-drip of details held the hyperconnected spellbound, and they tuned in religiously to cable news to keep tabs on the latest developments. It was like the O.J. Simpson trial, which was then of recent memory and which had drawn in a relatively small number of news fanatics every day and night to Court TV. A few years later, political junkies watched Geraldo Rivera and Chris Matthews for endless bickering over the impeachment spectacle.
The Clinton impeachment also shaped campaign decisions in the 2000 presidential race. George W. Bush and Al Gore won relatively easy nomination battles among party constituencies that, at least on the issue of impeachment, were internally homogeneous. Neither campaign had to deal with the matter in much detail. But when the general election came, impeachment set the tone of both campaigns, even if they avoided much direct discussion of it.
Bush’s nomination acceptance address, delivered in Philadelphia on Aug. 3, 2000, did not mention impeachment even once. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t implicitly a major theme of the address. The future president’s gist, a line repeated several times, was “this administration had its chance. They have not led. We will.”
The closest Bush came to mentioning impeachment was in this backhanded compliment to Clinton: “For eight years, the Clinton-Gore administration has coasted through prosperity. The path of least resistance is always downhill. But America’s way is the rising road. This nation is daring and decent and ready for change. Our current president embodied the potential of a generation — so many talents, so much charm, such great skill. But in the end, to what end? So much promise to no great purpose.”
The clear implication is that, while Bush did not intend to relitigate impeachment, he blamed it on Clinton’s (and by extension, Gore’s) personal squalor.
The Democratic convention, held in Los Angeles a few weeks after the Republican gathering, was similarly infused with implied references to impeachment. Viewers watching Gore’s nomination stage entrance were startled as he set the tone with a huge embrace of, and smooch of, his wife Tipper. Some said it was too much, but Gore was making a clear point — he loved his wife and was an entirely different man than his adulterous boss.
Gore’s most significant gesture on impeachment came in his selection of a vice-presidential running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Nobody thought Connecticut was a swing state in 2000. It had gone for Clinton over Bob Dole by 18 points in 1996, and Bush was looking to build a winning coalition by poaching states in the South and Midwest, not in New England. Gore’s choice of Lieberman was not about keeping the Nutmeg State secure. It was about sending a message on impeachment. Lieberman famously denounced the behavior of President Clinton, while calling for censure rather than impeachment. This carved out a position most Democrats could accept, rejecting the indecency of Clinton’s behavior while maintaining that it did not merit removal from office. Gore’s selection of Lieberman signaled to voters that the vice president agreed, his presence in the administration notwithstanding.
It is hard not to look at anything the elite did between the winter of 1998 and the fall of 2000 and not see impeachment at least somewhere in the background. But did it move voters? The evidence suggests, not much.
Democrats picked up House and Senate seats in the 1998 midterm elections, a success that many pundits said reflected public disapproval of impeachment. But given the strength of the economy and Clinton’s high job approval numbers, Democratic gains should not have been unexpected. Moreover, Republicans retained control of both congressional chambers, so it is hard to say 1998 was much of a referendum.
For all the posturing in 2000, the story that year was mostly the same. Incumbent parties usually struggle to win three consecutive elections, which greatly disadvantaged Gore. But on the other hand, the economy was robust, the incumbent president was popular, and the nation was at peace, all of which disadvantaged Bush. The final result, which was pretty much a tie, was more or less within the margins of what we would otherwise expect. Maybe there was a pro-Bush impeachment effect, but his win might also have been due to the Republican campaign, which perceived emerging trends in the Border South and Midwest that would form the foundation of GOP triumphs for the next two decades.
It would be easy to conclude that impeachment was just another example of political elites riling themselves up to no purpose. But that would be wrong. After all, the representative nature of our system guarantees a role for “elites,” at least broadly defined as those who commit themselves full time to politics and policy. So, it matters that they were obsessed with impeachment even if the public shrugged. And there is strong evidence to suggest that it had a policy effect.
In The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation, Steven M. Gillon, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, reported that before the Lewinsky imbroglio, Clinton and congressional Republicans were close to passing a sweeping overhaul of Social Security. But partisan warfare over Lewinsky undid their fragile and tentative compromise. Both sides shared blame in this: Clinton for his gross personal irresponsibility, Republicans for wrongly thinking they could simultaneously try to remove the president and cut a deal with him.
Nobody can predict what the legacy of impeaching Trump will be in 20 to 30 years. But it would not be surprising if it was similar to the fallout from the Clinton impeachment: shutting down compromise on trade, infrastructure, or gun control, for example. Perhaps the chief consolation is that the two sides are already so polarized, and so spiteful, that hope of compromise is already dead anyway.
Nevertheless, as the elites focus relentlessly on impeachment, other issues will be squeezed out of the discourse, preventing Americans from engaging with one another on them, which is a necessary precondition for the compromise and consensus the broad middle of the country is so intent on finding.
Henry Adams once remarked of the Gilded Age that it was an era “poor in purpose and barren in results.” Looking back on Clinton’s second term, we might say likewise and credit impeachment. Perhaps one day, we will say the same about Trump’s tenure for the same reason.
Jay Cost is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
