The basic arguments came down as follows:
Armey: “This is very simple. This isn’t about whether or not President Clinton cheated on his wife. This is about whether he lied to Federal investigators. The president lied to the Department of Justice, and through them, to the United States Congress! This is a nation of laws, and no man is above the law, not even the President!”
Me: “Yes, the President lied. He lied to Ken Starr, he lied to the Department of Justice, and he lied to Congress. More importantly, though, he lied to his wife and his daughter. However, what he lied about had nothing whatsoever to do with the performance of his office, and everything to do with his personal life. I make no apologies for the man. I am simply saying that this is not what impeachment was designed for. This trivializes the Constitution. The man does not belong in Federal court, he belongs in divorce court!”
There were several questions about whether the Soapbox Rebellion was some form of power grab by me. I smiled and waved it away, repeating my litany that Newt Gingrich was a friend and a mentor, and I was proud to work with him. We wanted the same things, and simply differed on tactics. This made Armey noticeably squirm as he agreed that Gingrich held me in the highest possible regard, especially when he was pressed about some statements Newt had been heard to utter about destroying me. I just kept my mouth shut.
Finally, there were some questions about whether a censure would mean anything, which I sidestepped somewhat. It wouldn’t, and I knew it. On the other hand, it was a peace offering to all my fellow Republicans who wanted to do something, just not impeach the President. For several days junior staffers at the White House had been intimating that the President would be willing to go along with some form of censure, as long as he got to help write it. I was ignoring that. He would take what he got and like it!
That week I made the cover of Time. There was a split picture, with Newt on the left side, looking left, and me on the right side, looking right, and down below a bar of soap, and the title, ‘Rebellion!’ I didn’t make the cover of Newsweek, but a bar of soap did, along with the title, ‘The Soapbox Rebellion!’
Two days later, the Articles of Impeachment were voted on in the full House of Representatives. The four minor articles were all voted down by a margin of 257–178. The obstruction of justice article, related to lying to the investigators, failed by a much slimmer 220–215. The big one, perjury, the charge that Clinton was most guilty of, failed by a single vote 218–217.
There was an uproar in the House. A second uproar occurred moments later, when John Boehner stood up and moved to have the Article of Censure voted upon. It was already in the hopper and everybody had read it by now, but technically it needed to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee first. Never mind that, and never mind the Democratic leadership that half-heartedly tried to derail this rebuke. The Article of Censure passed 411-24. Afterwards, John met me and we shook hands. He had voted with me on all six counts of the impeachment, and had managed to sneak in the censure. It was a good day for both of us.
Newt tried to avoid the cameras afterwards, but wasn’t successful. He tried to make lemonade from the lemons, by praising his colleagues in their generosity and forbearance, in choosing the lesser of the punishments they had available to them. Bill Clinton didn’t say anything, however, and his Press Secretary, Joe Lockhart, simply stated that Clinton and his advisers were examining their possible responses.
This became really and unpleasantly obvious a couple of weeks later. I received a phone call from Dick Armey’s office, requesting my presence at a meeting on Wednesday, September 30. Armey was the House Majority Leader, second in importance in the Republican Party to Gingrich himself. Dick wasn’t much more of a fan of mine than Newt was, but he told me that the White House Counsel’s office had requested a meeting with the House leadership, and me, to discuss the wording of the censure. I was requested because I was the guy who had pushed for and written the Article of Censure.
I was curious what Clinton expected to do with the censure. All it really said was that he had disgraced his office and the Congress. He didn’t have to do anything. It seemed as if he didn’t even want to do that. Also to be present was the rest of the senior House leadership, Armey and DeLay on the Republican side, Dick Gephardt and Dave Bonior on the Democratic side, and Newt as Speaker of the House. The meeting was held in a conference room in the Capitol itself.
The meeting started one man short. Newt cancelled at the last minute, claiming a sudden illness. I suspect he was sickened by his inability to impeach the President, and even more sickened by having to participate in a meeting with me. None of the others wanted to deal with me either, the Republicans because Newt didn’t like me, and the Democrats because I was a Republican. When the small party from the White House came in, the dissension in our ranks was obvious, and pleasing to them. Clinton had sent over a party of three, two flunkies from the Chief of Staff’s office and Chuck Ruff, the White House Counsel.
Ruff was the only one who counted, and he opened the meeting with fifteen minutes of legal gobbledygook. Basically, the Articles of Censure had never been properly voted out of the Judiciary Committee, had never properly been sent to the floor of the House, wasn’t in the proper format, etc. etc. etc. The White House wanted to cooperate, of course, but thought it best that this be done properly. Perhaps we could do this more carefully, take our time with the process and the wording, and make sure it was done right.
There were any number of looks on the faces of the rest of the room. The two flunkies seemed very pleased with themselves. It was obvious that the tactic was to delay, delay, delay. The White House wanted this pushed back beyond the mid-term elections, and then to quietly die. They had dodged a bullet with the impeachment, thanks to a foolish junior Republican Congressman, and now they were going to do it again. Most of the Congressmen had looks of disgust and disbelief on their faces.
I decided to shut down the entire meeting. I was sitting towards the end of the table, allowing the powers that be to face each other. The murmurs of discussion ended as I stood up slowly, and heads turned to face me. I slowly made my way down to a position across from Ruff, standing between Armey and Gephardt. “Let’s make this simple. I’m the guy who started this, and I’ll be the guy to finish it.” Before anybody could argue, I continued in my best Strother Martin impersonation, “Whut we’ve got he-ah is a fail-yuh ta communicate.”
One of the flunkies, the one on Ruff’s right, bridled and protested, “Look here! You can’t…”
I turned to look at him, with no emotion on my face. “Shut up, sonny. You had your say, now it’s my turn.”
He turned red and looked like he was going to say something, but Ruff laid a hand on his forearm and shook his head. Ruff looked at me and said, “It’s your turn, Congressman.”
“Alright then. I’m not a lawyer. I used to be a businessman. I know about making deals. This was the deal. We don’t impeach your boss, and he takes a censure. Now your boss doesn’t like the deal. He got the impeachment quashed, but doesn’t want to take the censure. Do I have that right? Don’t bother answering. It was a rhetorical question.”
“Now that we’ve sorted out the important issues at hand, let’s look at the alternatives. First, you can fight the censure. You can bitch and moan about the process, but you’re going to look silly. Everybody on the planet knows what Clinton did, and what Congress thinks about it. You can try and fight it, but you’ll just drag out the process. While you are dragging it out, though, the big loser is going to be me. I’m the guy who orchestrated the failure of the impeachment, and I’ll be the guy who looks like an asshole. I don’t like looking like an asshole, so I’ll probably fight back. Sound right, so far? How will I fight back? Maybe by writing a check to the Independent Counsel’s Office, to cover the cost of reopening every investigation they ever thought about. They’ll investigate Slick Willie, they’ll investigate Hillary, they’ll investigate Chelsea, they’ll even investigate Socks the Fucking Cat! Then they’ll keep investigating everybody who ever worked for Slick Willie, like everybody on his staff who was stupid enough to recommend this.” I kept looking at Ruff, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the two flunkies glancing at each other. “I’m a pretty rich guy, so I can write a pretty big check. Trust me, this time they’ll dig deeper and get the proof they need. You know and I know that there was a lot of stuff that was left off the table for national security reasons. The gloves will come off! Six months from now your boss will lose the impeachment, and he’ll be on trial for treason and bribery and begging Al Gore for a pardon before the next election.”