THE DECISIVE MOMENT in the House Judiciary Committee’s deliberations over impeachment occurred the morning of November 4. The previous day’s disappointing election returns were still dribbling in, and there was speculation the Republicans would scale back their inquiry. The quickly emerging conventional wisdom was that impeachment would never win a House majority. Henry Hyde, the committee chairman, rounded up the committee Republicans for a conference call. Calmly but firmly, he declared there was no turning back. “Yesterday, we got shellacked,” he told them. “But we always said this isn’t about polls or the election. This is about our constitutional duty. So let’s get to it.”
Had anyone but Henry Hyde been chairman of the Judiciary Committee at that moment, Bill Clinton might not have been impeached. For without the combination of Hyde’s friendly profile, his stature, and his single-minded determination to pursue impeachment, even in the face of Democratic obstructionism, personal attacks, and GOP unease, few Republicans would have held firm against censure and for impeachment. “Mr. Hyde did an outstanding job under extraordinarily difficult circumstances,” says Charles Canady, a GOP member of the committee.
From the beginning, a number of factors were working in Hyde’s favor. Most important, independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s thoroughness in questioning witnesses before the grand jury meant the Judiciary Committee had all the evidence it needed and wasn’t saddled with reinvestigating the facts. The White House couldn’t stonewall, as it had every congressional investigation of Clinton, and then claim the GOP was dragging its feet. Hyde also benefited from having a group of committee Republicans who were disinclined to view the Lewinsky matter charitably. And Newt Gingrich’s resignation as speaker eliminated the Democratic charge that he was manipulating the proceedings, and made Hyde — widely viewed as a statesman — the public face of impeachment.
Despite all this, impeachment was no slam dunk. Congressional Democrats and the White House tried to tar the entire effort as strictly partisan, while many Republicans — aware of the public opposition to impeachment — would have happily settled for censure. As recently as a month ago, the likelihood of impeachment’s winning a House majority was considered remote. On November 21, for example, Rep. John Porter, a moderate Illinois Republican, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “There are at least 50 Republicans that feel this matter has gone on for so long that it is leading nowhere. . . . If you don’t have the votes for impeachment — and I don’t think they do — we should vote for a resolution of censure.” Porter, and countless other GOP moderates, eventually voted for impeachment.
Hyde, according to many of his colleagues, was instrumental in making impeachment happen. Asa Hutchinson, a committee Republican, notes, “Henry’s presence was a great aid in giving our committee credibility.” Bob Ney, a Republican who announced his support for impeachment only last week, told me that people in his district liked Hyde for being fair and nonpartisan. The best indication of the chairman’s effectiveness came in early December, when Richard Gephardt comically announced that he wanted Newt Gingrich more involved in the impeachment proceedings — this just weeks after Gephardt and White House officials had loudly complained that Gingrich’s involvement was excessive.
By the time Gephardt issued this call, Hyde had already orchestrated the steps that would prove critical to persuading Republicans that impeachment was justified. Those steps, in descending order of importance, were as follows:
P The 81 questions: Most of the immediate post-election impeachment news centered on Hyde’s decision not to call material witnesses like Linda Tripp, Vernon Jordan, and Betty Currie before the Judiciary Committee. But two days after the election, Hyde sent the president 81 questions designed to establish which facts of the case could be stipulated. Hyde’s communications team cleverly did not release the text of the questions, prompting the White House press corps to pick up the story and press the Clinton legal team to disclose exactly what it had received from Hyde.
The questions set a trap for Clinton. Hyde’s aides figured the president would have to fudge his answers, setting off a round of press stories about the president’s inability to tell the truth. Indeed, the White House was so uncomfortable with the questions, it considered not responding. Hyde threatened a subpoena and observed that the Nixon administration’s failure to cooperate with Congress’s impeachment inquiry produced an article of impeachment. In the end, the White House released the president’s answers the day after Thanksgiving, when they were sure to get little media coverage.
With Congress out of session, the answers at first were dismissed as nothing new. But soon, Republicans were describing them as contemptuous — particularly the failure to provide a simple “yes” to the question whether the president is the country’s chief law-enforcement officer — then as outright lies. The episode swung wavering House Republicans in favor of impeachment.
P Kenneth Starr’s testimony: Hyde was initially reluctant to have Starr testify before the Judiciary Committee, for fear that Democrats would devote all their time to destroying him. But when Starr said at a late October forum in Minnesota that he would be “pleased and delighted” to testify, Hyde dropped his objections. Indeed, he became an enthusiastic advocate of Starr’s coming before the committee. Good thinking. Starr’s tarnished image left him nothing to lose and everything to gain by testifying. His performance didn’t win universal acclaim — polls showed his favorability rating didn’t budge. But he didn’t embarrass himself either, and when neither committee Democrats nor Clinton lawyer David Kendall questioned any of his conclusions, House Republicans of all stripes came away more persuaded than ever. Hyde’s staff privately credited Starr’s testimony, along with Clinton’s responses to the 81 questions, as critical to turning the tide in favor of impeachment.
P The Watergate resolution: When Starr sent his report to Congress, the Democrats insisted the Judiciary Committee should follow the rules laid down during the Watergate inquiry. A few weeks later, Hyde did exactly that: The resolution calling for an impeachment inquiry followed the Watergate model almost word for word. Democrats suddenly discovered they didn’t much care for the Watergate resolution, which contained no limits on either the length or the scope of the impeachment inquiry and didn’t try to define an impeachable offense — but this only opened them up to charges of hypocrisy. Thirty-one Democrats voted for the GOP resolution. More important, Hyde had neutralized the Democrats’ claim that the rules of the inquiry were unfair.
P Courtesy from the chair: Hyde understood the best way to prevent the committee Democrats from turning the impeachment hearings into a circus was to bend over backwards to accommodate them. Thus against the wishes of committee Republicans, he regularly allowed ranters like Barney Frank and Sheila Jackson Lee to speak for more than their allotted five minutes. Once when Maxine Waters ran out of time as she blasted him for defending lies in Iran-contra, he asked for unanimous consent so “the gentlelady be granted time to continue her attack on me.”
After the hearings ended, committee Democrats took the extraordinary step of praising Hyde’s performance as chairman. “Henry was fair in that he certainly allowed members to express their point of view,” said Martin Meehan. William Delahunt said, “In terms of running the hearings, and graciousness, I though Henry was outstanding.” And on the final day of the hearings, Howard Berman told the chairman, “You have often been unfairly attacked throughout this process and I, for one, want to commend you for the way you have handled these proceedings.” An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that by 57 percent-38 percent, people felt the hearings were fair.
Yes, there were mistakes. The last-minute foray into Clinton campaign-finance abuses was ill-advised and prompted grumbling from Republicans on and off the Judiciary Committee. And the initial decision to expand on Starr’s 11 impeachable offenses and put forward 15 — reversed a few weeks later when just 4 counts were put forward — conveyed confusion. But compared with the big things Hyde did right, these were only stumbles.
The question now is whether Hyde’s success in the House will make any difference in the Senate, where he and a few other Judiciary Committee Republicans will prosecute the case against Clinton. The environment will be dramatically different — the senators are not allowed to speak during a Senate impeachment trial, giving Hyde an opportunity to present his argument without Democrats nipping at his heels. Still, conviction is considered unlikely.
Regardless of what happens in the Senate, though, Hyde’s success in pushing impeachment through the House has already secured him the fulfillment of a cherished ambition. Reflecting on his 24-years in Congress, he recently told the Washington Post, “You want to be thought well of by the people you work with. You like to earn their respect. I would like that to be my legacy — that I was a good congressman, I accomplished some things, and that when my time comes I’ll be missed. If I can attain that, I’ll be quite happy.” Mission accomplished.
Matthew Rees is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
