THE PARTY OF CONSTITUTIONALISM
CEASER, JAMES W.
THE PARTY OF CONSTITUTIONALISM JAMES W. CEASER THE JURY IS STILL OUT on last week's verdict, and the battle over the meaning of the impeachment and acquittal of William Jefferson Clinton has just...
...Defending the legitimacy of the House impeachment vote must therefore remain a cardinal objective for Republicans...
...once the trial opened, opinion moved slightly in the direction of the House managers, only to shift back again to the president...
...James W. Ceaser is professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia...
...All the schemes and plots to deny or avoid the Constitution's authority—from censure, to aborting the trial, to dismissal, to hearing no witnesses—were foiled...
...The central issue in the debate on the Constitution was the proper grounds for impeachment...
...A house divided against itself cannot stand...
...The moral constitution is now on trial...
...So while Republicans may wish to collect the censure resolutions that Democrats have been circulating and publish them in a fine volume with gold-edged pages, they should resist the siren song of censure itself...
...According to the Clinton doctrine, a president, no matter what crimes he may have committed or what offenses he may have caused, should retain his office as long as these do not, in Charles Ruff's words, "put at risk the liberties of the people...
...There was also a remarkable adherence on both sides to the idea of constitutional originalism in the efforts to define the basis for impeachment...
...To permit the impeachment to be discredited would not only jeopardize the political prospects of the whole party...
...Either the Clinton impeachment will be seen as justified and his conviction warranted, or the acquittal will be deemed right and his impeachment a partisan witch-hunt...
...No sane person could possibly wish to listen to even one more word about these events, least of all to any of the therapeutic expressions being heard this week about our need for "healing" or "closure...
...The Constitution emerged as the only higher ground to which the parties could successfully appeal...
...THE PARTY OF CONSTITUTIONALISM JAMES W. CEASER THE JURY IS STILL OUT on last week's verdict, and the battle over the meaning of the impeachment and acquittal of William Jefferson Clinton has just begun...
...The choice offered here, it seems, is nothing less than that between a vulgar new Caesarism and the rule of law...
...But wherever opinion stands this week, it is not fully settled yet...
...In January, the public sentiment encouraged by the president's party very nearly won the day...
...Worse, it would undermine the House managers' defense of the two great pillars that support the republic: our political Constitution and our moral constitution, meaning the unwritten standards of right and wrong that are carried in the hearts and minds of the American people...
...And they now at least have a clear standard by which to defend their actions...
...For the Republican managers, the commission of a serious crime by the president and his failure to ensure the faithful execution of the laws constitute reasonable grounds for impeachment...
...And because the stakes are so high, there can be no time for despair...
...Republicans have learned that it is not as strong as they believed—that it cannot be counted on to automatically carry the day against a fervent partisanship and an unscrupulous president...
...Nevertheless, despite the short-term victory of the lawless Clinton doctrine, the Constitution has actually been strengthened by the impeachment process as a whole...
...Not since 1789 have the American people heard so much from the Founders...
...But even this disappointment pales beside the risk that clear and public standards of right and wrong may be lost to the next generation...
...But however much some people would like to "move on," the issues will not go away...
...This possibility of corruption, which Henry Hyde identified in his closing speech to the Senate as the basic issue of the whole trial, represents the greatest threat posed by the Clinton doctrine...
...Having tied themselves to the mast of the Constitution, they have discovered that they are far less a party of populism, and far more a party of constitutionalism, than they thought only a short time ago...
...With opinion swelling against even hearing the House's case for conviction, a plan was hatched and almost executed to abort the senate trial...
...it was rumored that Hamilton and Madison were booked to appear on Geraldo...
...Even the president, who served throughout as commander in chief of the expediency school, cynically embraced the Constitution when seeking at the last moment to avert a Senate procedure of "findings of fact...
...At last, Republicans, whose political fortunes have suffered greatly over the past six months, may have stumbled on a silver lining...
...Our moral constitution clearly remains the more important concern...
...Its impeachment is not an option...
...The struggle over the meaning of the Clinton trial remains so important because it affects the fate of both of these constitutions...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
