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A Times EditorialThe Senate shuts the door
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 10, 1999 A majority of senators wanted to make public their final deliberations over the impeachment charges against President Clinton, but opponents led by Majority Leader Trent Lott apparently have doomed that effort. The Senate's secrecy does a disservice to the American people, who deserve to hear the reasoning, or lack of same, behind their senators' historic votes. Longstanding Senate rules call for closed impeachment deliberations, but those rules date to an era long before technology made it possible to transmit such sessions directly to the nation. In this case, senators have little in common with a regular jury. They are being asked to make a judgment that is at least as much political as legal, and they, in turn, will be judged by the citizens they represent. The public's judgment would be far better informed if senators -- who sat mute through weeks of presentations from the House prosecutors and President Clinton's lawyers -- were permitted to spend a few minutes formally and publicly explaining their votes. Lott and other opponents of openness say they are motivated by precedent. However, this decision, like so many others in the impeachment process, has been driven by partisan calculation. Lott and many other Republican senators don't want to give their Democratic colleagues an opportunity to qualify their votes to acquit the president. For the same reason, Republican leaders have led the opposition to any censure resolution. In the process, Lott and others are working to prevent senators from reaching a conclusion that best conveys their -- and the public's -- ambivalent views on impeachment. Many Democrats (and some Republicans) want an opportunity to express for the record their disapproval of the president's disgraceful and dishonest behavior, even if they do not believe the misbehavior warrants his removal from office. At the same time, the president's Republican opponents should be eager to explain to the public their reasons for advocating this gravest of constitutional actions. Lott's only concession was to allow senators, after the trial is concluded, to insert into the Congressional Record any statements they made during the closed deliberations. That may hearten future historians, but it is no substitute for true openness. Despite Lott's pressure, 14 Republican senators joined all 45 Democrats in voting to open the deliberations. "This is historic," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. "I cannot imagine that we would impeach or not impeach the president of the United States in a closed session." The public has even more reason to be frustrated by the Senate's machinations. After being force-fed more impeachment-related esoterica than they could possibly digest, the American people have been banished from the Senate just as the real business begins. Unless it is reversed, the decision to close these final deliberations to the public will be remembered as one final insult in a process that has degraded every institution it has touched.
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