Impeachment in the Absence of Necessity

I'm finally starting to get the real argument against impeachment. Not the one that begins "Wouldn't you have lied in Clinton's situation?" or the one that goes, "Most great presidents have had affairs." Not the poll data showing that 6 in 10 Americans oppose impeachment. No, the argument that is convincing me that Clinton must stay in office is the procedural one: Congress should not, except in the rarest and clearest of circumstances, overturn the results of a fair and free election.

At first impeachment seemed a viable option. The President violated the trust of the people, lied under oath and probably abused his office to cover his tracks. That seemed like ample justification for dismissing him from the White House.

In fact, the procedural argument really bothered me. If the people elected Clinton, why couldn't we, through our representatives, choose to get rid of him? Why should we be forced by our collective mistake to two more years of aggravation, embarrassment and stagnation? Impeachment, it seemed, was simply a judgement call that Congress would have to make. But as the engines of impeachment began to get in gear, I started to experience a new and very unpleasant feeling--a feeling of political powerlessness.

American democracy is, of course, far from perfect. Money corrupts the system and there are so many of us that our federal representatives can't truthfully claim to connect personally with the voters. (After all, each House member now represents more than half a million people.)

But when we get inside a polling booth or fill out an absentee ballot, that vital democratic link is still there--the link that puts power in our hands and roots the legitimacy of the elected in the populace. My absentee vote for Bill Clinton was probably never even counted in 1996. But when I see or hear or read about him, I think of the Clinton Presidency as an institution I helped create and, in a way, own.

The budding impeachment inquiry is threatening that link and there's little I can do to stop it. It is as though an old, rusty train has ground into motion and is pulling out of the shed where it has been stored since 1974. Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde are there, one the conductor, the other the engineer. Barney Frank and Robert Wexler are inside one of the cars, waving at us through the cloudy windows. And we, the people, are standing in the weeds by the track, watching as the train chugs along across the land, toward an unknown destiny. We didn't decide to put the train in motion, and we are in no position to stop it.

Simply put, the voters are no longer in control of this process. Polls will be taken and mid-term elections will send a signal of some sort to Washington, and representatives will continue talking to constituents. But in the end, the decision about the President's fate will lie solely with the political calculations and consciences of 535 Americans. That seems wrong. Without a pressing need for a change in presidential leadership, impeachment is not worth the sense of powerlessness it will produce in the country at large.

Admittedly, if Congress did impeach Clinton, it might restore a sense of moral rectitude to the office; it might set a clear and valuable standard for the behavior we expect from elected officials at all levels of government. But it would also further detach Americans from Washington by making voters feel that their only tie to power--their votes--could be nullified in fuzzy circumstances by another, intensely partisan branch of government.

At the start of the Nixon impeachment hearings in 1974, Peter W. Rodino Jr., a New Jersey Democrat and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said: "It has been the history and the good fortune of the United States, ever since the Founding Fathers, that each generation of citizens, and their officials have been, within tolerable limits, faithful custodians of the constitution and of the rule of law."

Have President Clinton's actions violated those "tolerable limits," as good a standard for impeachment as any offered by the Founding Fathers? Clearly the answer is no. The president is not unfit to continue in office while maintaining the safety, security and integrity of the nation. Clinton may be making little progress on his domestic agenda, and global threats persist. But the nation is, without doubt, not on the brink of collapse.

"Make no mistake about it," Rodino said in 1974. "This is a turning point, whatever we decide. Our judgment is not concerned with an individual but with a system of constitutional government."

Today, too, our judgment of Clinton must deal not only with him as a man but with the link between the presidency and the people. I don't want the President to stay, as Clinton likes to say, to "do the job we elected him to do." I don't believe he is capable of doing that job any longer. I want him to stay because I helped elect him to do that job, and no other power, in the absence of necessity, should freely choose to invalidate my vote. The people's hold on power is too tenuous to risk.

Geoffrey C. Upton '99 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.