On The Fast Track To Impeach

Depending on how you view the past nine months, the vote this week that is expected to set into motion the third presidential-impeachment inquiry in the history of the Republic is either a public travesty or a national reckoning long overdue. But if the process is political, the politics are personal. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two large-living, big-talking, history-obsessed prisoners of their own appetites, have always been their own worst enemy and each other's salvation. Clinton's ideological overreaching helped put Gingrich in the Speaker's chair; Gingrich's arrogance and petulance handed Clinton his re-election. The lesson for both: it takes a deft touch to set the right trap; but if you do, the other one will stumble right into it.

So it was that last week found Gingrich preaching statesmanship as he stumped for Republican candidates in Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio. "We must not rush to judgment," said the man who has already branded Clinton a misogynist and accused the President and his party of "the most systematic, deliberate obstruction of justice, cover-up and effort to avoid the truth that we have ever seen in American history." But while Gingrich talked about going slowly, the House was picking up its pace toward this week's vote. And as a G.O.P. strategist worried: "Once you set up an inquiry, how do you stop it?"

Those close to Gingrich say that's precisely the question he is considering privately, even though last week he resisted appeals by Democrats--and quiet entreaties by some in his own party--to limit the scope and the length of the inquiry. While the Republican faithful are still eager to have Clinton's hide at any cost, the message coming through loudest in the polls is that the public at large is thoroughly sick of the scandal. "He's going to have to make a case why this has to go on ad nauseam--and ad nauseam is a good way to put it," a White House official said of the bind Gingrich faces. "I don't think anyone is going to want to have a holiday season spoiled by this subject."

And for what? Most Republicans now concede that any effort to unseat Clinton will almost certainly fail, barring a Republican landslide in the November midterm election or some unforeseen bombshell from independent counsel Ken Starr. Even if the House votes articles of impeachment against the President, and even if the Republicans pick up as many as five seats in the Senate this fall, they will still be seven short of what the Senate needs to convict Clinton and remove him from office. "Do the math," says a Republican Senate aide. "Clinton may have to go through the disgrace of articles, but he knows he'll win."

Nor would Republicans necessarily wish otherwise--particularly since the three words they fear most are President Al Gore. Clinton's ouster would bestow on the Vice President the advantage of running in 2000 as an incumbent, and as the man who helped the nation get over Monica. But in the shadow of a scandal-prone President, Gore is suffering in comparison with the most talked-about possible Republican contender. Polls show that if the 2000 election were held today, Texas Governor George W. Bush would handily beat Gore; a year ago, the same surveys had Gore ahead. "The optimum scenario for Republicans is a diminished Bill Clinton hobbling through the next two years," said a Republican strategist.