Dems add calls for impeachment

September 7, 1998

BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Free Press Washington Staff

WASHINGTON -- After almost a week abroad, President Bill Clinton woke up Sunday in Washington to echoes of words like 'impeachment" and "resignation." And the words were coming from some members of his party.

On Sunday morning talk shows, Democrats spoke of impeachment proceedings. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., said he wanted impeachment proceedings to start immediately, but said that did not mean he would vote to oust the president.

Rep. James Moran, D-Va., said Clinton should consider resigning if independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report, expected in weeks, could somehow be kept secret.

In a sign that other Democrats may consider Clinton a liability, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, a Clinton ally locked in a fierce re-election battle, canceled a fund-raiser at which Clinton was going to be the featured speaker.

Democrats "are positioning themselves to maximize their survivability," said Vanderbilt University political science professor Hugh Graham.

The coming week is likely to be crucial as Clinton tries to refocus the nation's attention on his political, not personal, issues. Tuesday, he is scheduled to speak at a Maryland event on modernizing schools.

Nonetheless, Democrats' talk of impeachment is "the little storm before the big storm," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Government Studies at the University of Virginia. "The big storm is the release of the Starr report."

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., told NBC's "Meet The Press": "We have to wait and see what comes out of the Starr report. Does it go beyond the moral dimension, beyond even perjury into other issues like obstruction of justice? And I think the jury is out."

Moynihan, on ABC News' "This Week," said: "What we have before us, and we ought to get on with it, is an impeachment procedure."

Moynihan said Congress should stay in session, foregoing its traditional pre-election recess, to deal quickly with whatever is in the Starr report. Lott preached calm.

"My instinct tells me that we should not rush to judgment and that to try to do it in the middle of a campaign or even in a lame-duck session, I'd want to think very carefully about doing that," Lott said. "And calmer, cooler judgment might be better."

In Maryland, Glendening said in a written statement: "What the president did was wrong. I have an 18-year-old son, and all my life I've made sure not to send him mixed signals about what personal responsibility means. And I want my son to be clear about how I feel about this."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who started the trend of Democratic criticism Thursday with a moral denouncement of Clinton on the Senate floor, said he did not want to impeach Clinton or force him to resign.

On "Meet The Press," Lieberman said Clinton "can restore the full moral authority of his presidency and go on to finish his presidency at full term honorably."

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