Last night I attended a prayer vigil for the President. Over 200 folks showed up in downtown Houston to hold candles and pray for our country and our President. The event planned by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee was attended by a cross section of the community. While a majority of the people attending were African-Americans that was due in part to the last minute planning of the event and the publicity on the most popular Black radio station. Led by Sheila and Mayor Pro-term Jew Don Boney and the Rev. Bill Lawson there was sadness and bitterness. Sadness that a promising President who is so much in tone to the inner city of Houston could be on his way out because of his own foolishness. Bitterness in that this is a very partisan action with the GOP moving towards removing a popular President from the other party over the protest of a majority of the American people.

And it didn’t have to be this way. Bill Clinton did not have to have an affair with that young woman. Nor did he have to varnish the truth in his sworn testimony. He could have admitted in January of this year that he had sinned and the American public would have forgiven him. Instead he denied and talked like the smooth lawyer that he is. The slick Willie of his past.

It didn’t have to be this way if only Washington was not the partisan town that it now is. No one trusts anyones word anymore and you are judged by the political party you belong to. In many cases you are not your own man to vote as you and your conscience (or constituents) demand.

It is also a White House who reads the polls and studied the focus groups and believes that is the way to govern. If the polls show that 68% of the public opposes impeachment then even the most radical Clinton haters can not impeach him. Right? Wrong. There are elected officials in both parties who sincerely believe that lying in sworn testimony is wrong and should not be allowed. They may differ on the punishment but they are not all members of a right wing conspiracy.

Impeach, Trial, Remove, or Resign. These are terrible choices for the County. And as they said last night at the vigil, those who have not sinned should cast the first stone.

**No To Impeachment**

“Next week the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on one or more articles of impeachment of President Bill Clinton. This is not a symbolic gesture, an expression of moral sentiments, or a “free vote” with no consequences. It is a recommendation to overrule a democratic election and remove the President from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. The House should vote “no,” and then bring the sorry spectacle of the Lewinsky scandal to a speedy close with a censure resolution reprimanding the President for his misconduct. Maybe then the American people can get what they manifestly want and deserve: a Congress focused on governing the country, working with the President to address the pressing challenges of our time.

Impeachment of a duly elected (and in this case, re-elected) President is a remedy reserved for emergency conditions, when continuation of a presidency is intolerable. That is not the case today, and Republican lawmakers know it. Back in August many Republicans claimed impeachment was a sad necessity because the President’s misconduct had “crippled” his Administration and destroyed the public respect and personal credibility essential to a chief executive dealing with domestic and international challenges. Since then the President has imposed his will on the Republican Congress in budget negotiations; brokered an important, if fragile, Mideast peace agreement; and led his party to stunning success in the midterm elections. Now some of the same Republicans who claim he must be driven from office are simultaneously calling him the indispensable man in leading the country to a compromise solution to preserve Social Security–the most important and divisive domestic issue of all. By any rational yardstick, the country does not need, and certainly does not want, this President to be impeached.

The country does need and want an end to the Lewinsky scandal, and we agree that Congress should register formal disapproval of the President’s conduct before moving on. The vehicle for this statement of disapproval is a resolution of censure, an option that Republican leaders currently say they will deny the full House.

GOP leaders offer three arguments for this refusal to consider censure:

*Argument 1: Censure is not a constitutionally sanctioned method for congressional condemnation of presidential misconduct. But neither is impeachment, which is a procedure for removing a president from office. If the only option available to Congress to register its opinion on every occasion of presidential misconduct is impeachment, then the threshold for impeachment will drop to the floor.

*Argument 2: The President has not made a full enough admission of his misconduct to make mere censure a satisfactory conclusion to the whole mess. But what most Republicans are demanding is not that the President admit to misconduct–he’s done that repeatedly, using the full lexicon of the Judeo-Christian penitential tradition–but to criminal liability. They want him to plead guilty in advance to a possible future prosecution for perjury and perhaps obstruction of justice. This demand is not only unreasonable, but a direct affront to the strong bias in our legal tradition against coerced self-incrimination.

*Argument 3: It is insufficiently punitive to create disincentives to future presidential misconduct–a “slap on the wrist.” Put aside for a moment the absurd premise that future presidents would welcome the kind of humiliating scrutiny and chattering class obsession that Bill Clinton has endured since last January, so long as they could avoid impeachment. More pertinent is the fact that GOP leaders are openly admitting–indeed, even insisting–that impeachment is likely to stall in the Senate, making an impeachment vote in the House primarily symbolic. The cynicism implied by this posture of offering Members a “free vote” on removal of the President from office is breathtaking, especially when coupled with all the “highfalutin” rhetoric emerging from House Judiciary Committee Republicans on the solemn dignity of the constitutional issues involved.

The bottom line is that if the House wants to register a condemnation of the President’s behavior–and we agree that is appropriate–it should do so through the immediate means of a censure resolution, not through an impeachment charade that sets a terrible precedent and would almost certainly destroy the opportunity for Congress and the President to work together on solving such pressing real-life needs as reforming Social Security.

We recommend that every Member of Congress voting on impeachment read the actual text of the resolution and ponder its meaning. It is not a resolution to “move the process along” or “ensure the rule of law” or “hold the President accountable for his behavior,” as many impeachment proponents are arguing. Each of the four articles in the draft resolution released by the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday ends with this sentence: “William Jefferson Clinton, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.” Make no mistake, all Members who vote for this resolution are voting to overturn the 1996 presidential election, to thumb their noses at the steady and manifest will of the people, and to plunge our political system even further into a toxic cycle of bitter partisanship at a time when bipartisan action is so urgently needed on so many issues.

The only time in U.S. history that the House has impeached a president, the cause was a direct and irreconcilable constitutional confrontation between the executive and legislative branches about the nature of the Union, the fruits of a bloody civil war, and the responsibility to achieve full citizenship for newly liberated slaves. Those who treat Bill Clinton’s misconduct related to Monica Lewinsky as equal in gravity to such issues should not be credited with lofty moral standards. In fact, they lack the sense of proportion essential to genuine moral reasoning. Impeaching Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal would be an act of historic folly, and a greater threat to public confidence in government and the rule of law than all his misdeeds”.