Past and Present: The Starr Report and Clinton Impeachment
The report was overly aggressive and proved a disaster for the GOP, but its effects linger
Release of the Starr report produced an unexpected public reaction. The humiliation of Clinton for what was widely considered private conduct clearly made many Americans uncomfortable. A late-September Gallup Poll found that 65 percent of the public (including 39 percent of Republicans) thought the president was being unfairly attacked over a purely private matter.
Nevertheless, spurred on by the content of the Starr report, House Republican leaders, conscious of the impending midterm election, decided to press forward with an impeachment inquiry. On October 9, exactly a month after receiving Starr's report, every member of the 227-member House Republican majority, along with 31 Democrats, voted to authorize such proceedings, while 176 Democrats registered opposition.
The November 1998 election proved to be a referendum of sorts on the Starr report and the Republican call for impeachment. For the first time since 1866, a party gained congressional seats in its sixth year of holding the White House. Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan had all seen their party lose seats, but the 1998 Democrats held their own in the Senate and gained six seats in the House. American voters clearly signaled their disapproval of the move for impeachment.
But fueled by the Starr report, the impeachment of Bill Clinton nevertheless moved forward. While the effort to remove the president from office ultimately failed, the lingering memory of the Lewinsky scandal, made so vivid by Starr, caused Al Gore to shy away from Clinton while seeking to succeed him in 2000. Many observers concluded that Gore's tactic cost him the election. Memories of the effort to remove Clinton helped make impeachment of his successor the first suggestion from George W. Bush's most outspoken opponents when he began to encounter serious criticism.
Most important, however, the failed effort to remove Clinton appears to have encouraged the belief of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that impeachment is an ineffective constitutional restraint and that a president seeking to accumulate authority in the White House could do so without effective challenge. Ironically, Kenneth Starr's effort to topple one president has helped empower another. Ten years later, the consequences of the Starr report are still unfolding.
David E. Kyvig, distinguished research professor at Northern Illinois University, is the author of The Age of Impeachment: American Constitutional Culture Since 1960 (University of Kansas Press, 2008).
Reader Comments
Shame on the continued coverup. KUDOS to Judge Starr.
Alot of innocent(?) people like Mr McDougal, Vincent Foster et al got killed. I never did see how to take thousands of dollarsloss with IRS on an $1K investment. I had hoped that Hillary would bare those records in her 2008 race but so far they remain hidden. Judge Starr deserves the highest honor that this country has give to a man that put Clinton cronnies behind bars. People like Mrs. McDougal spent time in jail rather that confess the truth. Mrs. Bill Ayres can tell you its no fun to be in jail to avoid testifying against a friend. Judge Starr did locate a great jurist, Susan Weber Wright, who deserves to be elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court as she never ducked the truth. It is shame that Judge Starr could not get enough evidence to send other Arkansas crooks away. The greater shame is Clinton never took responsibility for his sexual activity during working hours when he should have be having BinLaden extradicted for trial. The same Asst. U.S. AG was picked by the Democrats to sit on the 911 Commission to judge the failed Clinton failure to execute the warrant. Eight years of White House sex, pressure on banks to make bad loans, creation of socialized giveaways, appointing marginal Justices and Judges and allowing 911 to occur may reflect bad on Starr; but in reality every senator who voted No to impeachment aided and abetted the Clinton abuse of power.
[I was so caught up in responding to someone here that I forgot to address the article as much as I wanted to.]
This article is fine, and a good reminder (not a welcome reminder, but a good reminder). I have a couple of further points:
Why could Starr, who was asked to work on the Whitewater Land deal (which exonerated the Clintons in the end, after millions of dollars had been wasted), allowed to stay on when a completely unrelated 'tip' came up about Lewinsky? The ONLY connection between the two would have been: 'How to Get the Clintons'. How was this allowed? I remember that Reno had something to do with allowing it, and that maybe she didn't want to 'seem' partisan or something. Maybe she was a Puritan. Who knows? This is mostly rhetorical.
Why was Starr allowed to publish the proceedings, including secret testimony, of the Grand Jury? As I remember the Grand Jury proceedings were deemed (by what authority I don't know) to be secret. And Clinton, before he testified, as I remember, was told by Starr's minions that his testimony would remain secret. Yet Starr published all this in a thick paperback book, for all to read. Aside from his complete lack of integrity, his being run by a kind of vendetta here`, what about the law here?
To answer someone on this list, as much as I abhor Starr and his tactics, as a feminist I do, actually, feel glad that Lewinsky had the 'dress' as evidence, since Clinton was denying everything she said. Otherwise this might have resulted in a he said/she said and Lewinsky would be the one, as the women usually are, to be thrown to the wolves. Clinton was ready to deny her and to have her -- I don't know what -- somehow he could hurt her if she hadn't saved that dress. So, as much as she got herself into this whole-hog, she shouldn't have been blamed by herself, as if it were only one person involved. (And interns should never be used like this, even if they throw themselves at someone's feet, by someone in power.)
(I also abhor the tactics of the FBI who lied, lied, lied to a 23 year-old and intimidated her and her mother -- without a lawyer present -- into giving up everything she knew. They even incarcerated her, in her hotel room, as I remember, and wouldn't let her out, telling her that they already knew everything. -- She could have denied it and it would have stopped with she said/she said (her friend and snitch, Linda Tripp), if she had had a lawyer. Wouldn't it have? So Starr's power tactics had a considerable influence (as you say, even today) that it needn't have had if he had had any integrity.
Finally, more influence: the world now has in its collective mind, since that incident (the publishing of the embarassing testimony) the concept and image of 'oral sex', which it didn't before this. I suppose this might be a good thing for some who didn't know such an activity existed and have stepped into it since then with alacrity -- if the woman is interested and loves the man, that is.
To: Thrown of CA
To Thrown of CA:
Your email is the one which seems most racist to me. Pastor Wright didn't 'spew racism from the pulpit', he angrily chastised those who did practice racism and he angrily chastised people who went into Iraq with no reason but getting protecting their oil for themselves. He chastised racism and war. Now we have a man who is running for office who was influenced by his cronies, the same neocons, to pick a fundamentalist religious nut who was once a member of a party which wants to secede from the Union -- and her husband still is a member. We all know all the egregious and unethical things Palin is and has done and I won't enumerate them.
We all know that if the shoe were on the other foot, if Obama had been or was now a member of a secessionary party -- or his wife was -- he would have everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him and maybe would not be a candidate today. I don't agree with double standards depending upon what race you are. Not by you or by Congressman whatzisname in Georgia who, twice, called Obama 'uppity', a name which soundly states that someone has NO RIGHT to things and positions that people like him have. This is insanity. This is against the Constitution. This is against the Bible. This is against Common Sense. This completely shreds integrity.
McCain (your candidate, presumably) chose a partner who may well take over his job. She attends a church which insists that Jews will not get into heaven or be part of their 'rapture' or whatever they call it in that particular church. This is insane. If Obama had attended such a racist church we would have even more weeks of nonsense from MSNBC and CNN than we had over the relatively sane things ('get out of Iraq!') that we heard from Wright. That is racist. Palin's church is openly racist, not Wright's. Get over it.
From You: "The Presidents Office is so badly damaged that we are considering electing a President who had his first fund raiser for his Congressional seat at the home of an admitted Terrorist,William Ayers.Saying that William Ayers was "just a guy from his neighborhood".Next we learn that for 20 years Obama sat in a Church and listened to race hatred from the pulpit."
I don't know anything about Ayers. But it seems McCain is about to come out with ads which mention him and saying what you say. He is a mild-mannered professor in some local college. He has dealt with what he did decades ago. He is not a terrorist. Obama is not now his friend. The above is you being racist. Get over it, friend.
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