BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The U.S. House of Representatives postponed debate and vote
on impeachment proceedings against William Clinton after the
president ordered sustained bombing raids against Iraq December
16. "We're not going to put off this impeachment matter
indefinitely," declared Rep. Steve Chabot, Republican from
Ohio.
Congress voted to authorize the impeachment inquiry October 8. Two months later on December 12-13, the House Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment against Clinton. They include charges that he committed perjury in his appearance before a grand jury on August 17, when he provided "false and misleading testimony" on his sexual encounters with former White House employee Monica Lewinsky. The president is also being accused of "misuse and abuse" of the Oval Office.
A majority of 218 votes in the 435-member House of Representatives is needed to approve any article of impeachment, which would move the case to the Senate for a trial. A two-thirds majority in the Senate is required to remove Clinton from office.
During the week leading up to the bombing of Iraq, debate spread among capitalist politicians over whether to impeach or censure Clinton. Announcements by an increasing number of Republican politicians, who hold a majority in the House, indicated that Clinton would have likely been impeached if the vote had been held as scheduled on December 17. The scandalmongering and repeated disclosures of his sexual transgressions, however, has led to a situation where any option to resolve the crisis weakens the U.S. presidency.
That will be the case whether Clinton resigns, is removed from office, impeached by the House but not found guilty by two- thirds of the Senate, or admits he is a liar as a number of Democrats and Republican politicians who are calling for the option of censure demand.
Many in U.S. ruling circles are increasingly nervous that the impeachment process will heighten political instability. Removing Clinton "under the present circumstances of a polarized party-line vote," wrote the editors of the New York Times December 16, "could become a bigger threat to civic stability." Impeachment would undermine "public confidence" in the government's chief executive office they opined.
The Times editors and other bourgeois pundits and politicians have advised Clinton to admit lying as the only hope to save his hide and stay in office. The president needs to declare that "in fact he lied and say he's willing to face the court like any other American citizen and be held accountable for his actions," said Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut who had earlier declared he would vote against impeachment.
If the House votes for impeachment, the Times editors called for considering a "joint Senate-House resolution of condemnation" offered by former Senator Robert Dole that would bar criminal prosecution of Clinton while censuring the president and forcing him to acknowledge "what everyone knows about his repeated and purposeful lies." Clinton would have to sign such a document to stay in office.
The scandal has fueled cries by right-wing forces about lack of morals and spreading of corruption among the "elite" in Washington. Bonapartist politician Ross Perot called for "cleaning up the government" and demanded Clinton's resignation.
"Censure is a coward's option, another one of those insider deals that explain why so many Americans hate politics," declared ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan. "It is an extra-constitutional act, a corrupt bargain."
The majority of working people in the United States continue to reject what can best be described as the pornographication of politics - that is, "exposing" the dissoluteness and corruption of bourgeois politicians to exacerbate and profit from middle-class panic and to drag workers along with the declining capitalist class down into the pit of resentment and carnal envy. This is the stock-in-trade of a range of bourgeois politicians, especially ultrarightists.
The November 3 U.S. elections indicated that the majority of working people could care less about Clinton's libido and sexual exploits. That sentiment appears to continue to be prevalent as the Republican party leadership has pushed the impeachment process forward. "I'm really getting bored with it," said Steve Hancock , a school bus driver in Pasadena, California. "It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to pay attention."
What's behind the unfolding presidential crisis is the greater vulnerability to scandals today of virtually all top politicians of the most rapacious ruling class in the world. This is a reflection of the instability of the world imperialist order and the growing lack of confidence in this system and its leading personnel expressed both by its beneficiaries and millions of others.
Washington's military superiority in Europe, for example, is being challenged by a growing number of its imperialist allies on the other side of the Atlantic and beyond as the debate over NATO military policy shows (see article on page 3).
The strains between the main capitalist powers are exacerbated by fiercer economic competition among them as a war of words continues to erupt between the U.S. government and officials of the European Union over agricultural trade and market share of their competing aircraft and war industries. The crisis is becoming more apparent to millions as world deflationary pressures have resulted in commodity prices dropping to their lowest level in two decades, bringing the specter of the "Asian flu" much closer to the United States and other imperialist centers.