AFTER THREE YEARS OF INVESTIGATING THE CLINTONS, INDEPENDENT Counsel Kenneth Starr was at a standstill. Republicans in the House were frustrated with the lack of evidence against the Clintons and urged Starr to keep digging. Starr had plenty of potentially damning information, but none could stand the scrutiny in a court of law. This did not stop the Office of the Independent Counsel from getting it out to the public.
Starr’s team was caught leaking raw, unsubstantiated documents to the press. Public opinion began to turn against Starr and his right-wing cohorts. In the spring of 1997, Starr decided to quit. He had accepted an offer to become dean of the new public policy school (funded by Clinton nemesis, millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife) at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles.
Clinton then proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. An allegation had surfaced that he had had an affair with a twenty-three-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The scandal became public when Linda Tripp, who worked in the Bush 41 White House and was now employed at the Pentagon, surreptitiously recorded phone conversations with her “friend” Monica Lewinsky about her affair with Clinton. The tapes also referenced attempts by Washington Democratic superlawyer Vernon Jordan to secure a private-sector job for Lewinsky away from Washington.
Washington was now in full polarization mode. Some predicted the end of the Clinton presidency. The House Judiciary Committee began organizing what would be a spectacular impeachment hearing. Many conservative columnists, conservative talk radio hosts, Republican operatives, and even a few liberals not only doomed Clinton’s presidency, but also predicted the addition of twenty to thirty Republican gains in the House in the 1998 midterm election.
Once again, the public took a different view of the scandal from the Washington crowd. It was noted that Clinton’s enemies in Congress had lower approval ratings than Clinton. Three weeks after news of the Lewinsky affair broke, the president’s approval ratings shot up from 59 to 66 percent favorable in a CNN/Time poll. A CBS poll showed an increase from 57 to 72 percent.
The House impeachment hearings were badly managed. The average TV viewer saw the proceedings as driven more by politics than by evidence. Besides, the public seemed to feel “everybody does it” (the “it” being engaging in sexual indiscretion), and as long as the wife didn’t mind, most of the public appeared not to care either. In the 1998 midterm election, Republicans lost five House seats, instead of gaining up to thirty, leading to the resignation of Newt Gingrich as Speaker and subsequently from Congress.
The House passed two of four Articles of Impeachment against Clinton on nearly straight party-line votes. The Senate trial was a bit more orderly, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding. Although almost all Republicans voted to convict Clinton, they never came close to the three-quarters vote necessary to remove him from office. Clinton’s indiscretions were unforgivable, but the party-line votes in both Houses once again underscored the polarized divide between activists in Washington and the average voter.
Clinton’s Houdini-like escape from his enemies infuriated Republican activists in Washington and across the country. Many in the press who had staked their future advancement on the demise of Bill Clinton were likewise beaten and angry. Conservative commentators were apoplectic. The polarized climate got worse, guaranteeing that consensus could not be reached on any issue during Clinton’s final two years in office.