Why did congressional Republicans obsessively pursue the
impeachment of President Bill Clinton when the 1998 midterm
elections and public opinion polls suggested that the majority of
Americans opposed it? Some claimed indignation over perjury, others
outrage over immorality. But as Nicol Rae and Colton Campbell show,
the driving force behind the impeachment was nothing less than the
intensifying partisanship of American politics.
Impeaching Clinton offers a fascinating case study of how the
American political system operated during the 1990s and of the
critical factors underpinning the political process. It
particularly examines the congressional aspect of the drama to show
that the Lewinsky affair was simply a trigger--that the context for
impeachment had been set over the course of two decades of partisan
warfare.
Drawing on new interviews with six of the Republican members of
the Judiciary Committee in 1998, Rae and Campbell reexamine why the
House Republicans acted in defiance of electoral rationality on the
impeachment issue, demonstrating that they took their cues from the
voting party faithful rather than from the nation's centrist
citizenry. The authors unravel the web of partisan politics to
reveal how the pattern of events was determined, from the decision
to open an impeachment inquiry to the eventual acquittal of the
president.
Rae and Campbell also look at the Judiciary Committee
proceedings from the perspective of the Democratic minority, who
helped shape media coverage and public opinion and the eventual
Senate outcome. They show how the Senate was able to bring closure
to this highly polarizing proceeding.
Overdramatized by the media, the Clinton impeachment process was
nevertheless the most extreme manifestation of partisan warfare in
our time. The authors' special contribution here is to greatly
expand our understanding not only of a particular constitutional
crisis but also of a dynamic that still prevails in congressional
politics today.
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