IN THE DEMOCRATIC U.S THEY CALLED CLINTON IMPEACHMENT A WITCH-HUNT!

Today, in some circles, the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake (now more or less a fait accompli after the Parliamentary Select Committee found her guilty on three counts) is being criticized as a witch-hunt -- or as an ill thought out, hurried and undemocratic exercise.

However, impeachment proceedings are always within constitutional confines, and can be used as a political tool for beating the government with. Perfectly constitutional impeachments such as the impeachment of Bill Clinton by one House of Congress, have been called a DISGRACEFUL TRAVESTRIES.

Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake

The two articles we reproduced here about the 1999 impeachment of US president Bill Clinton testifies to the fact that for political reasons many thought that the impeachment of Bill Clinton by one House -- and the entire trial for that purpose -- was a farce.

But did that prevent the impeachment or the trial from happening? The fact remains that the entire episode is today considered perfectly constitutional and valid - and the U.S. is often considered by Sri Lankan civil society paragons as the standard bearer for democracy and good governance! (Please also see accompanying article ‘Clinton scandal a farce….’)

Falling Out of Love with America: the Clinton Impeachment and the Madisonian Constitutions

Frank O. Bowman III

The fall of Richard Nixon was tragedy in the classic sense. A commanding personality clawed to the heights of power and was then brought low when crippling flaws in his character led him into conduct that was a serious affront to democratic government. The Clinton impeachment was vulgar farce.

A surpassingly agile politician with an adolescent sex drive and an urge for self-preservation that far outstripped any sense of personal honour was attacked by opponents who missed their quarry and destroyed or diminished themselves by trying to elevate a squalid extramarital sexual encounter into an affair of state. For me at least, the effect of watching Nixon's descent was all that the ancient Greek commentators on the drama could have wished for in the spectator of a tragedy: pity, terror, catharsis, enlightenment, an aspiration to nobler things.

In the end, the Clinton impeachment was unique because of the combination of three factors: the squalid triviality of the underlying conduct, the absence of mature leadership from the elected and appointed guardians of the constitutional system, and a new, mean, criminalized politics.

The next question is, how did we come to such a pass? Even if politics has turned ugly and public officials have become feckless beyond the historical norm, how did oral sex become the core of a successful impeachment of an American President?

HOW COULD IT HAVE HAPPENED?

Although not a constitutional officer, the Independent Counsel was particularly guilty of constitutional heedlessness. Although, as noted, the Office of Independent Counsel was misconceived from the outset precisely because its occupant was outside the scheme of constitutional restraint, there is nothing in the charter of an independent counsel that requires him to act without judgment. That Kenneth Starr so often did behave this way, that he so often charged hither and thither, sublimely unconcerned about damage to constitutional offices and institutions, is a sin chargeable not to the office he held, but to the man who inhabited it.

I have already remarked upon the intemperance of congressional Republicans throughout the Clinton scandals, and will not repeat the charges against them.

What Congress, the Independent Counsel, and the courts all lost sight of was that fidelity to our Constitution requires a dedication to protecting the institutions that form the constitutional structure, to maintaining the sometimes delicate balance between those institutions, and to giving the inevitably fallible humans who hold office in those institutions enough space, enough slack, to do the jobs that the Constitution calls upon them to do.

All nations need myths. Some commentators have been rather dismissive of the effects of the Clinton impeachment and the related culture of attack politics in dissolving the myths surrounding the presidency. Judge Posner, for example, seems to view diminution of the grandeur as a healthy sign of political maturity.

I disagree. Like all myth, the myth of presidential exceptionalism serves important functions and operates at various levels.

At the simplest level, the mythic presidency appeals to the desire in all of us to be led by a larger-than life figure. But more important than the belief that the man who is President is or should be special, is the understanding that the institution of the presidency is crucial to American government, and that belittling the man diminishes the institution. Thus, when the congressmen of Watergate worried aloud about the damage that the scandal was doing to the presidency and the precedent that would be set by impeachment, they were not political naifs bedazzled by historical myth. They, far more than the public, knew Richard Nixon's ugly side (as well as his undoubted strengths).

Many of them had far greater reasons, both political and personal, to despise Nixon the man and his policies. Amidst the undoubted calculations of partisan interests, these men and women were genuinely worried that tearing down a President, even a bad President, would weaken an entire branch of government, and thus the whole country.

Concerns of that sort seemed notably absent from the Clinton impeachment debate. The Republicans in both houses walked lockstep through votes to impeach and convict with scarcely a restraining note sounded by any of them.

The Clinton impeachment is also distinct from the Nixon case for the remarkable failure of the proponents of impeachment to recognize that bringing down a President for these reasons risked more than demythologizing the single institution of the presidency. It risked (and I think did) the far greater damage of tarnishing and belittling all three branches of government, and, indeed, the process of governance generally.

(Maryland Law Review)