No, both sides are not equally corrupt
by digby
There are 71 current members of congress who were there for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It was party line vote (although there were some who didn’t vote yes on all the articles.) Today the tables are turned and Republicans are on record defending Trump and the Democrats are prepared to impeach him.
It’s tempting to say that this shows it’s all partisanship so a pox on both their houses. But it’s not. This president is corrupt in every way and his corruption is affecting the national security of the United States and endangering the separation of powers that gives the country its only defense against authoritarian autocracy.
Here was the argument for Clinton’s impeachment, courtesy of Lindsey Graham. Obviously, the issues are much worse than today’s — bribing a foreign leader to rig the upcoming election in your favor or using the power of your office to cover up your previous collusion with a different foreign country to rig your first election:
LINDSEY: I’m having to judge Bill Clinton based on evidence, and I would like to speak a few minutes to what I believe is the unshakeable, undeniable truth. And much of it is about sex. This idea that the president of the United States when he testified in Paula Jones’ deposition, a lady who brought a case against him for sexual harassment, that he gave testimony that was legally accurate is a total falsehood. The idea that the definition of sex did not include oral sex and they did not ask the right questions, and if they did, he would have told the truth offends me.
This idea of what sex meant came up after this blue dress, in my opinion. The reason I say that on January 17 when he was asked to testify about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he knew she had provided an affidavit denying any improper relationship of any kind whatsoever. He believed himself to be covered. He did not know of the tapes.
Whether you like the tapes or not, he did not know of them, and without them he would have lied with Monica Lewinsky to the prejudice of a citizen who was suing him for conduct, if true, should be enough to impeach him. We shall never know what happened in that room in Arkansas or that hotel room. Two people know and God knows.
Why I believe the definition of sex as being propounded by the president to this very day is a lie is based on the conduct he exhibited after the deposition. On January 17, he would have us to believe they did not ask the right question and the definition excluded oral sex. I would suggest to you that’s a fabricated tale.
LINDSEY: That on January 24, we have a talking point paper from the White House telling people how to respond about the allegations against the president. And one of those questions was: Does sexual relations include oral sex? The answer was yes.
HYDE: The gentleman’s time has expired.
UNIDENTIFIED CONGRESSMAN: I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman be given two additional minutes.
HYDE: Without objection, so ordered.
LINDSEY: Thank you. I’m talking in 30-second soundbites so long, I’ve never had this much time. Thank you very much.
(LAUGHTER)
I can’t believe 10 minutes went by so quick.
What I believe is that his press accounts to Mr. Lehrer and to Roll Call indicate that improper relationships — there was no artificial definition. This is — oral sex is not included. I believe that’s a falsehood. That’s a fraud.
I believe that he knew Ms. Lewinsky’s affidavit was false and that when the discussion with Mr. Bennett came up in the deposition, he was following intently what happened, and that he was not surprised, and that he did in fact lie to the grand jury on numerous occasions.
Should he be impeached? Very quickly. The hardest decision I think I will ever make, knowing that the president lied to a grand jury about sex, I still believe that every president of the United States regardless of the matter they are called to testify about before a grand jury should testify truthfully, and if they don’t, they should be subject to losing their job.
I believe that about Bill Clinton. I’ll believe that about the next president. If it had been a Republican, I would have still believed that. I would hope that if a Republican president had done all this, that some of us had went over and told him: You need to leave office.
I understand the dilemma that all of us are in about that. His fate is in his own hands. Right quickly, Mr. Chairman, 30 years from now, they’re going to judge what we’ve done and how partisan it’s been and whether or not we — this made any sense.
I just want you to know, as you look back and look at these tapes and find out what we’re doing, there’s one member of Congress — there’s a lot of us here who believe the president has lied to us to this very day; that we can’t reconcile ourself with that; that it was in a lawsuit with an average every day citizen; legal rights at stake.
And the most chilling of all things to me was the episode after he left the deposition. He told Mr. Blumenthal that the Monica Lewinsky was basically coming on to him; he had to fight her off. He told Betty Currie “she wanted to have sex with me and I couldn’t do that.” The most chilling was for a period of time, the president was setting stories in motion that were lies. Those stories found themselves in the press, to attack a young lady who could potentially be a witness against him. To me, that is very much like Watergate. That shows character inconsistent with being president, and every member of Congress should look at that episode and decide: Is this truly about sex? Is Bill Clinton doing the right thing by continuing to make us have to pursue this — have to prove to a legal certainty he lied?
The president’s fate is in his own hands. Mr. President, you have one more chance. Don’t bite your lip. Reconcile yourself with the law.
Yes, he’s always been a sanctimonious blowhard.
That colloquy was also rife with lies. For one thing, there was never any evidence that Clinton personally sicced the media on Lewinsky even if one of his defenders (Blumenthal) stupidly freelanced to the drunken Christopher Hitchens. Indeed Clinton went out of his way not to insult her because, unlike Trump, he was smart enough to know that angering the witnesses against you is a bad idea. Her testimony was actually key to his survival.
Looking back, the whole thing was awful. Clinton exploited an employee and should have known better even if she did not. It’s classic #MeToo behavior. If that had been all there was to this, he should have resigned and let Al Gore coast to a victory in 2000. But it’s also the case that the predicate for the impeachment, that Clinton lied under oath and obstructed justice, was a set-up by a bunch of right wing political assassins pretending to be lawyers (including the newly esteemed George Conway) working with dirty trickster Lucianne Goldberg and the odious Linda Tripp. After years of non-stop investigations into Clinton’s past and trumping up ridiculous charges (like “passport-gate”) this was what they ended up with and it was an exercise in prurient tabloid smearing of both Lewinsky and Clinton.
The American people didn’t like what Clinton did at all and if the Republicans had agreed to censure, the Democrats would have voted for it and the people would have applauded. Democrat after Democrat took to the floor and the airwaves condemning Clinton’s behavior. He gave speeches apologizing for what he did.
But Americans also saw through what the phony, hypocritical, partisan Republican hit men were doing with impeachment and rejected it. They knew it was not what the constitution called for in this circumstance.
Graham is now defending a man credibly accused of rape and there are dozens of examples of sexual assault and harassment even paying off his accusers from the White House. And that is considered such a minor offense compared to all the others that it isn’t being considered as part of the impeachment. Trump is corrupt from top to bottom, personally profiting from the office, empowering his children like a banana republic dictator, colluding with foreign governments to smear his domestic political rivals and obstructing justice at every turn, including publicly threatening and intimidating witnesses and dangling pardons to anyone who might harm him.
Yet Republicans are willing to not only go on record against impeachment, they are going on the record defending that conduct as a perfectly normal use of presidential power. They will not even say a word against him.
That is the essential difference. Democrats are no angels, as Trump would say. They are as compromised, weak and unfocused as most politicians. But they have not yet descended into total political nihilism as the Republicans have done.
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