IMPEACHMENT EVE
FERGUSON, ANDREW
IMPEACHMENT EVE by Andrew Ferguson THE CAPITOL, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 8:45 a.m. Here we are in the Speaker's Lobby, directly off the House floor, 15 minutes before debate begins on the most...
...A consensus is forming among my colleagues: This could be an exciting day...
...Reporters are comparing accounts of the mythic battle and phoning in bulletins to their newspapers...
...Congressman, was there actual personal interaction between the two of you...
...The Chair asks and expects the cooperation of all members in maintaining a level of decorum that properly dignifies the proceedings of the House...
...But it will be a long one...
...Poor Nadler is suddenly forgotten in all the commotion...
...Out in the Speaker's Lobby, I'm talking to Jerry Nadler, the rotund congressman from New York City, when Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia, appears...
...She praised his quick wit and eloquence, so when he walks to the podium— without a prepared text!—we're prepared for . . . well, a quick-witted and eloquent attack on the Republicans...
...Both are wearing black pants suits, and they seem oblivious to the semicircle of gaping male reporters who stand a few feet away...
...It is a long, lingering hug...
...How did you feel when you woke up the next morning, after the vote...
...This is not what you'd expect history-in-the-making to sound like, and as the debate drags on, 4 a.m...
...at a minimum, and everyone already looks tired...
...Oh," Nadler shrugs...
...Spirits are suddenly buoyed when word filters through the House that the leadership has agreed to end the session at 10 p.m...
...asks one reporter...
...6:15 p.m...
...he bellows...
...His plea for civility is greeted as you'd expect: with an eruption of hooting and catcalls...
...He is second only to Mary Bono as a favorite Republican among the press corps, most of whom see in them the twin poles of today's Republican party—airheads on one end, nutcases on the other...
...In the Speaker's Lobby, Mary Bono has finished her tete-a-tete with Maria Shriver, and now she's swarmed by reporters, who pepper her with Mary Bono-like questions...
...The appointed hour for Larry Flynt's press conference has come and gone without a word from Larry...
...In the work area off the gallery, no one pays attention to the TVs tuned to C-SPAN...
...You're disgraceful...
...In response, the Wisconsin Republican James Sensen-brenner points out that today the Nasdaq reached a new high...
...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of The Weekly Standard...
...A representative from the Virgin Islands is on the floor declaring that the Republicans are pursuing impeachment because what they really want to do is impeach "a very, very popular first lady...
...I'm not sure this is an improvement...
...Barr recently admitted he once spoke to a white-supremacist group, and this morning, in his speech on the floor, he quoted John F. Kennedy with effusive praise, perhaps trying to reposition himself as a moderate...
...Pat called Bob a racist...
...Anyway, as Barr chats to reporters, Patrick Kennedy, the boyish congressman from Rhode Island, suddenly appears...
...The session opens with an admonition from the presiding speaker, Ray LaHood of Illinois...
...How do you feel now...
...Is it true you called him 'young man...
...Mrs...
...Plus 43 million people don't have health insurance...
...The rumor has two main benefits...
...The smart money says it won't work...
...Q.E.D...
...3:00 p.m...
...And second, it gives the people in the press gallery an excuse to change the TV channel from C-SPAN to some other station that might carry Flynt's press conference live...
...Barr is immediately besieged by reporters...
...Hyde's in particular, with its references to Bunker Hill, Concord and Lexington, and the graves at Arlington, sounds like a Decoration Day speech from several generations ago...
...A rumor circulates that Larry Flynt, the publisher of the one-hand magazine Hustler, is holding a press conference in Los Angeles to reveal the names of 10 more Republican congressmen who've had extramarital affairs...
...is looking farther and farther away...
...But it is fast becoming apparent, as the speakers line up for their allotted three-minute turns, that nobody has anything new to say...
...Paying attention would extend the session to 4 a.m...
...He's sitting at a table, surrounded by reporters...
...2) The House must do itself proud...
...A few minutes later, I head back to the press gallery to get my coat before I leave...
...I'm outraged...
...He gets an ovation when he's through, but even among his colleagues the faces betray what they're thinking, which is: Huh...
...On the floor, Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont, is pointing out that there's a gap between the rich and poor in this country and it's getting wider...
...His face is crimson...
...Now the press-gallery TV is tuned to Redskins Report, the reporters having abandoned all pretense of an interest in public-affairs television...
...Barney Frank was the subject of an excruciating profile by Sally Quinn in the Style section of this morning's Washington Post...
...Can it get any drearier than this...
...It is remarkable how quickly even the loveliest phrases, like "rule of law," become cliches in the wind tunnel of political debate...
...And then the Mary Bono question: "How do you feel...
...Bono is new to the House...
...The press gallery, which just an hour ago was standing-room-only, is now half-empty...
...But it's also remarkable how, for all their difference in emphasis, the speeches of both Democrats and Republicans share certain premises...
...Who says the impeachment process can't be illuminating...
...4) O the poor children...
...4:30 p.m...
...On the floor, fewer than 20 members are milling about...
...2:15 p.m...
...Racist...
...When word breaks that Barr is in the Speaker's Lobby, we all rush down...
...She fields the questions gracefully—she is "absolutely sad," in case you were wondering—and makes only one curious comment...
...These must be the doldrums...
...And ergo: (5) The sleazebag should (should not) be impeached...
...Everyone hangs his rhetoric on the same logical frame...
...10:45 a.m...
...asks another...
...Where'd you go to dinner that night...
...And what's a Bunker Hill...
...With that, Kennedy turns on his heel and zips out of the room as fast as his little legs will carry him, looking as incensed as he might have been when Dad refused to buy him Bermuda for his thirteenth birthday...
...Anybody who went to a racist organization has no business invoking my uncle's memory...
...And I'm duly impressed," Barr says...
...She mentions how drained she was after the Judiciary Committee voted out the impeachment articles...
...The impeachment vote won't take place until tomorrow, but the House has agreed to convene for 16 hours of debate today—"debate" being the term of art the House applies to a series of speeches given by speakers who pay no attention to one another...
...The TV is tuned to figure skating...
...First, everyone gets to speculate about who these adulterous malefactors might be...
...This consists of five points, articulated in one way or another by each member, regardless of party: (1) I think the president is a lying sleazebag...
...Young man...
...Gee, if I call Bob Barr a racist can I get all that attention too...
...It's an interesting speech, in that it raises a question that's gone unaddressed for too long: Whose bright idea was it to let the Virgin Islands have a representative...
...I make one last pass through the Speaker's Lobby, which is empty except for the cops and a couple of reporters...
...Nobody talks about Concord and Lexington anymore...
...What happened...
...I'm a duly elected member of my state...
...Was that an attempt to intimidate him—to denigrate him, in some way, by referring to him as a 'young man...
...Veins are popping from his neck...
...Right before our eyes, Maria Shriver and Mary Bono are hugging...
...Up in the press gallery, the Kennedy-Barr imbroglio has taken on the dimensions of a clash of the titans...
...A false alarm, apparently...
...Young man...
...This is how dreary it can get...
...9:00 a.m...
...Even the debaters have realized their debate stinks...
...The first two speeches of the debate— by Richard Gephardt and Henry Hyde—are excellent...
...12:20 p.m...
...They plan," he says, in his rapid-fire style, "having degraded impeachment and claimed it is no definitive judgment, once they get a partisan vote for an impeachment where the bar has been lowered, then to say that's the basis for resignation...
...3) I'm voting my conscience and you aren't...
...IT IS REMARKABLE HOW QUICKLY EVEN THE LOVELIEST PHRASES, LIKE "RULE OF LAW," BECOME CLICHES IN THE WIND TUNNEL OF POLITICAL DEBATE...
...Here we are in the Speaker's Lobby, directly off the House floor, 15 minutes before debate begins on the most historic vote any of us is ever likely to witness, and a large group of reporters stands riveted, entranced, dumbfounded, every ounce of attention concentrated on the spectacle taking place in front of us...
...If history is being made today, it's being made without witnesses...
...Are you feeling sad this morning...
...Finally there's something to replace the electrifying Barr-Kennedy exchange as a subject of conversation...
...Then they push apart and giggle, like Marcia Brady and her sister Jan sharing some innocent intimacy...
...He slips up behind me...
...I think when this is all over," she says, "we'll look back and both sides will really see that this has really brought us closer together...
...That means we get to watch Susan Molinari on MSNBC while we wait...
...Kennedy screams...
...Young man," says Barr, "you can say whatever you'd like...
...He moves as close to Barr as he can through the scrum of reporters and begins shouting...
Vol. 4 • December 1998 • No. 15
