By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 1999 (IPS)

The Senate Friday acquitted President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and allowed the 42nd U.S. president to finish his term in office – a major defeat for right-wing Republicans who had sought his ouster.

Capping a four-week, senators voted 55-45 to reject the charge of perjury in connection with his sexual affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Moments later, the Senate voted 50- 50 to acquit him on charges of obstructing justice in connection with the same case.

Under the constitution, conviction on impeachment, which would have forced Clinton’s immediate removal from office, requires a “guilty” vote by two-thirds of the Senate.

The fact that the House Republican “managers,” who prosecuted the case in the Senate, failed to obtain a majority of votes on either count marked a crushing rebuff to Clinton’s most die-hard foes, particularly because 55 of the upper body’s 100 seats are occupied by Republicans.

Indeed, 10 Republican senators voted with all 45 Democrats to acquit Clinton of the perjury charge, and five Republicans deserted their party on the obstruction-of-justice count.

Quoting lawmakers from both parties told the New York Times Friday that “if House prosecutors failed to win 51 votes on either charge against Mr. Clinton, it would signal that they had been too zealous in pursuing a case that had not won bipartisan backing or public support.”

For months, opinion polls showed a solid two-thirds of the American public were against Clinton’s impeachment or removal from office – despite his admission that, contrary to earlier denials, he did have an “inappropriate” relationship with Lewinsky.

Despite saturation media coverage, only about 20 percent of the public has said they had paid close attention to the proceedings.

Friday’s verdict announced by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who presided over the trial, means that Clinton faces no further danger of being removed from office over the Lewinsky scandal before his term ends in January, 2001.

It remained a possibility that independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, would try to bring a criminal case against Clinton while he was in office, but few political analysts believed this would happen.

Starr’s investigation formed the basis of the House impeachment. His report which depicted Clinton’s sexual encounters with Lewinsky in quasi-pornographic detail, charged Clinton with a variety of offenses which could constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment.

But the House voted along party lines to impeach Clinton on just two charges: that he had lied under oath in another sexual harassment case about his relationship with Lewinsky that he had obstructed justice in trying to cover up the affair.

Those were the two counts on which the trial – the first impeachment trial of a sitting president in more than 130 years – proceeded. The Senate Republicans, conscious of the opinion polls in a way that their House counterparts apparently were not, failed to exhibit much enthusiasm for the trial and eventually limited testimony to videotapes of only three witnesses – Lewinsky, Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan, and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal.

These same witnesses had already given depositions to Starr and other investigators and, as expected, they failed to offer new information in their Senate testimony. As a result, Friday’s vote was an anti-climax – so much so, that much of this week’s reporting in the nation’s newspapers has centred on who are the winners and losers of what has been, to many people, a national ordeal.

Clinton himself has no doubt been personally tarnished, and, as Republicans stressed when they emerged from Friday’s vote. Every Democratic senator who participated in the last two days’ debate also stressed that they considered his conduct and his later lying about it to be reprehensible.

On the other hand, the fact that the president has survived what had been considered a mortal threat to his presidency, coupled with his sustained popularity throughout the process, may, in the view of some analysts, make him a formidable political force, despite his lame-duck status, as the 2000 elections approach.

Democrats believe they have emerged from the impeachment with high morale and the very real possibility of taking back the House of Representatives, where Republicans now have only a five-vote majority, in 2000. One indication of that confidence was last week’s announcement by House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt that he would not, as expected, challenge Vice President Al Gore for the party’s 2000 presidential nomination, in major part because he would prefer to become the Speaker of the House.

By contrast, Republicans emerge from the battle deeply divided between the right, whose moral fervor propelled the impeachment drive, and more moderate elements. Among the latter were many prominent state governors, such as Texas Gov. George Bush, Jr., who is widely considered the front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination in 2000 and who had opposed impeachment from the outset.

Top Republican funders met late last month with the Congressional leadership to express their fears about the damage the impeachment trial was doing to the party’s prospects and popularity, which, according to the most recent polls, has dipped to the lowest levels in memory.

Political observers expected a flurry of Republican policy proposals to be aired in the coming weeks in hopes of persuading the public that the party stands for more than just a failed impeachment.

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