SHADES OF THE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT
In April 1994, then-president Bill Clinton spoke at Richard Nixon’s funeral. He conceded Nixon may have made mistakes but praised the former president’s intelligence, energy, and devotion to duty. “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close,” said Bill Clinton.
It was a speech redolent with irony: a president who had once protested against Nixon’s Vietnam policies, and whose wife, Hillary Clinton, had cut her political teeth on the impeachment case against Nixon during the Watergate scandal, now asking Americans not to judge him too harshly. Prefacing his own future, Clinton was already appealing for an impeachment scandal not to overshadow a presidency.
Are there parallels between the two impeachment stories? Both centred on the coverups, rather than the initial misdemeanours. In both cases, star investigative reporters helped expose key evidence. In each case, secret recordings acted as bombshells – the Nixon White House tapes and those kept by Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky’s perfidious confidante. And to divert a ention, both presidents claimed political opponents were exploiting the situation.
But Nixon’s alleged crime – abuse of presidential power – was far more serious. He may have dodged impeachment by resigning, but he could not escape the disgrace of it. Clinton was impeached – for perjury and obstruction of justice over an extra marital a air. Opinion was split on whether this reached the constitutional bar of a “high crime and misdemeanour”. So Clinton survived, serving out his time as president with an astonishing 65 per cent approval rating.