Meanwhile Ken Starr kept digging. He wasn't just investigating Bill, he was also investigating Hillary. The odds were that he was also investigating Chelsea. Considering she was only 17 at the time, that seemed rather a pointless gesture, but I heard a whisper regardless. This was dragging on interminably. John Boehner told me that Newt was timing the whole thing so that it was going to come to a conclusion about the time of the mid-term elections.
John was still a friend and still talking to me, though he knew that Newt didn't approve of that. John made up for it by going along with Gingrich on almost everything else. We were sitting in my home office in December of 1997, having a few drinks and talking shop one night. He was giving me Newt's plans, since I was no longer in the inner circle.
I listened and nodded, and then asked him, "John, let me ask you something. Ever cheated on Debbie?"
"Carl! That's a hell of a thing to ask!", he protested.
"Ain't it though.", I responded. "You know, I don't care. It's not my business. It's yours and your wife's. Don't you think this is the same thing?"
John had the decency to look uncomfortable at the question. Was it because he knew I was right, or because he had cheated on his wife? I didn't know and really didn't care. "That's true, but it's not about the cheating, it's about the lying. That's the crime."
"That's a subtle distinction, don't you think? We aren't destroying a man because he cheated on his wife, but because he lied about it? You don't think that's more than a little hypocritical coming out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich? He cheated on his first wife with his second, and from what I hear he's doing the same with her. Gingrich keeps pushing this, it is going to come back and bite him in the ass, and probably not just him. There are going to be some heads rolling over this!"
"Carl, even if I agree with you, it doesn't matter. Newt thinks this is a winner for him and for us. You have to admit, he's been right so far.", argued my friend.
I shook my head. "No, he hasn't been. We lost ten seats in the last election. We do it again and we have a one seat margin. Newt screwed up when he decided to shut the government down. This is a mistake also. We have almost a year before the election. Newt thinks he can keep up the outrage for the next ten months. Here's what's going to really happen. For the next few months, until sometime this summer, people are going to be outraged. After that, people are going to get sick and tired of it. The Clintons are going to get sympathy, you know, 'It's a private matter, leave them alone!', that sort of thing. By the time Slick Willie turns Carville and the other attack dogs loose, people will be blaming Newt and the rest of us for this mess."
"So what would you have us do? We can't let it drop. Newt won't let it drop."
"Hey, I didn't say we shouldn't use it to pressure the man. I'm just saying that this is going to go too far. You impeach the President for ordering break-ins and rigging elections. You don't run an impeachment because he got a blowjob from an intern! That's why they invented divorce, John!"
He shrugged and gave me a helpless gesture. "You know the man. What do you expect me to do?"
"Talk to people. I went to lunch with George Will last week, and Marilyn and I went to dinner with Tim Russert and his wife two nights ago. I talked to both of them about these sorts of situations. There is a definite life cycle to these things. At the start there is a lot of outrage. It builds and builds, but then after awhile, everybody is sick and tired of it. After that, if you keep pushing, you start building sympathy for the person you are tormenting. 'Can't they leave that poor man alone?!', that sort of thing. Newt is going to keep pushing this long past the expiration date!", I told him.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Here's something else to tell people. You know and I know, Newt ain't the only fellow in Congress to have fooled around on his beloved spouse. If the press really is as liberal as you think it is, don't you think somebody is going to start investigating Republican marital infidelities? Newt wants to push this into the November elections? It's a poor sword that won't cut both ways!"
John simply grunted at that.
Not much happened through the first half of 1998. As far as the Republican powers that be were concerned, I was assigned to the Committee on Purgatory and Limbo, although I kept on talking to people. There was a backlash building slowly against Gingrich and what he was trying to do. It was like a snowball; it just needed a little bit of help for it to start to roll down the hill and grow.
I remembered enough about politics from my first go to know that the actual impeachment proceedings of Clinton occurred during the lame duck session of Congress, following the mid-term elections, November thru December of 1998. Clinton would be charged in the House and be acquitted in the Senate. This time around, Gingrich rushed things. Sensing that the public was tiring of his endless carping, he decided to go for broke, and impeach Clinton before the election. I heard from several people that Newt had commissioned several very private polls that were telling him what he wanted to hear – we would pick up two dozen or more seats in the House, and half that many in the Senate, more than making up the losses we suffered in 1996. The drama of televised impeachment hearings would make up for the disgust with the political process the general electorate was feeling.
The response from my fellow Congressmen, on both sides of the aisle, was muted at best. The overall consensus was that nobody needed the grief during an election year. The Democrats were worried that if Clinton could be impeached, it would hurt them November 3rd, and if he wasn't impeached, it still wouldn't help. Curiously, more than a few Republicans considered the whole thing one of the tawdriest spectacles they had ever seen, and wanted no part of it. Only the most rabid or tactically minded of my party welcomed this. Most of us thought this was the most incredible distraction to our real job of getting elected again.
As for re-election, I was running against the mayor of Westminster, a fellow named Jerry Herzinski. I had known Jerry for a number of years, and he decided to throw his hat in the ring. While I wasn't taking the election for granted, I had to admit that Jerry was nowhere near as tough an opponent as Steve Rymark had been two years ago. Jerry had the Democratic machine going for him, and a decent enough record as a small town mayor. Unfortunately, when God was handing out charisma, Jerry was standing behind the door and got passed by. Watching and listening to paint dry was more exciting than listening to Jerry give a speech. He had a decent enough war chest for ads, but the man was simply boring! I couldn't ignore him, but every independent poll had me beating him by double digits.
Newt went for broke, calling Congress back into session over the summer recess, and ordering his top lieutenants to prepare the paperwork to start the official impeachment process. The House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Clinton on an even half-dozen charges, with perjury and obstruction of justice being the two most important, and a mix of obstruction and contempt of Congress charges rounding out the others. From there it would go to the full House for a vote. If we voted for impeachment, it would then go to the full Senate for a trial, with Bill Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court hearing the trial. It would be the biggest spectacle since Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had their day in court a few years before.
It was too much for me to stomach. Shortly after the formal charges were made, the Capitol Hill reporters began swarming, searching for soundbites. As one of the better known Congressmen, and one of the more moderate, they began to beat down my door looking for my thoughts. I called Marty, Mindy, and my other senior people together to formulate my response. Cheryl drove down from Westminster. We met over at the house in Massachusetts Avenue Heights. Marilyn and I made dinner for everybody, and then after dinner we all retreated to my office. "I want everybody here to give me your unvarnished opinions. Most of you know my thoughts already, but I want yours. Do you think this is going to be a winner for us? Not if you think it's right, but if you think Clinton can be impeached. Junior person goes first." I pointed at Mindy. As my Executive Assistant – my secretary – she was technically the most junior among us. "Mindy, what do you think?"