If he’s indicted, and despite everything, Clinton’s successor should let him off.

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Upon taking office January 20, 2001, our forty-third president, Democrat or Republican, may face an unpleasant but important unresolved matter from the tenure of the forty-second: the issue of a pardon for Bill Clinton.

Although President Clinton’s impeachment and acquittal a year ago created a sense of climax to the scandals that have plagued his administration and to the independent counsel investigation that has dogged him since 1994, it is beginning to sink in that Clinton’s troubles may not be behind him. His legal jeopardy is real and ongoing.

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For some conservatives, confidence in America’s superiority is flagging.

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FORMER PRO FOOTBALL wide receiver Steve Largent of Oklahoma is now one of the more prominent social conservatives in the House of Representatives. The Hall of Famer, father of four, and born-again Christian bears watching as a bell-wether of opinion and sentiment in the rightward reaches of the Republican party and conservative America. So when Largent took to the op-ed page of the New York Times April 5 to argue for the immediate return of Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba, it was hardly a typical case of a conservative politician finding a ready audience for a dissenting embrace of a position favored by liberals.

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The budget battle of 1999, hard to believe but true, has featured GOP cunning.

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REPUBLICANS BOTH INSIDE and outside Congress have been pleasantly surprised by how well they are doing politically in this year’s budget fight with President Clinton. Ever since Clinton squashed the Republican Congress over the government shutdown in 1995-96, the autumnal rites of appropriation have been a time of dread for the GOP, an exercise in wondering who among them will be a human sacrifice come the next election as a result of drawing the wrath of the Democratic administration.

This time, simply put, they are not getting killed. In fact, thanks to their tireless reiteration of their unifying theme — namely, that they are going to protect every last dime of Social Security from marauding Democrats — and thanks to the money the GOP is spending on advertising in select congressional districts repeating the point, poll numbers show the Republican message taking hold. It looks like Republicans have at last found an incantation with the same black magic power as the Democrats’ “Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment.”

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How Vice President Gore Will Run Against Governor Bush.

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Fast forward to January 20, 2001. The steps of the U.S. Capitol. The president-elect raises his hand to take the oath of office. Forming the backdrop to the scene: a who’s who of the best and brightest of the Republican party, now preparing to sit as the most illustrious cabinet in a generation; the vice president-elect, whose choice unified and galvanized the party; and, of course, the 41st president of the United States, looking on with paternal pride as the fateful words mark the start of the administration of the 43rd: “I, George W. Bush, do solemnly swear . . .”

Pause button, please. Agreeable as it no doubt is for Republicans to fantasize about how sweet will be their victory in 2000, history is bereft of a fast-forward button. Politics unfolds day by day, often slowly and painfully, always full of surprises. George W. has not even won the GOP nomination yet, much less the general election. Those currently focused on the fruits of his triumph are way ahead of themselves.

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CONSERVATIVE OPINION OVER THE KOSOVO campaign seems about equally divided between those who consider it a debacle turning into a morass and those who consider it a fiasco turning into a quagmire. These views prevail across the spectrum of where-we-go-from-here opinion–that is, among the bug-out crowd, the march-to-Belgrade crowd, and everyone in between.

There are two reasons for this. One is, quite simply, that the war (not that anyone at NATO headquarters or in the Clinton administration likes that term) began badly, continues haltingly, and doesn’t look to be ending any time soon, at least not short of retreat and humiliation. The other reason can be summarized as follows: Bill Clinton.

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In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: “President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?”

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Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Presiding

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It will begin like this: The presiding officer of the U.S. Senate will ask the man before him in the Senate chamber, William H. Rehnquist, the chief justice of the United States, to raise his right hand and take this oath: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws: so help me God.” Rehnquist, in turn, will administer the same oath to all the members of the Senate, sitting as a jury. This will likely occur on or about January 7. And the trial to determine whether Bill Clinton will be removed from office will get underway.

If such a trial comes to pass, inevitably, it’s going to have a certain majesty — in fact, a majesty out of all proportion to the tawdry conduct about which Clinton lied and obstructed justice, according to the articles of impeachment passed by the House. The Senate is well-practiced in trying to fake solemnity, albeit with mixed success. With the chief justice presiding over the Senate trial of an impeached president for only the second time in history, however, the solemnity is going to be genuine.

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The Weekly Standard

NO ACCOUNT OF A RULING by a federal judge these days is complete without a note on whether the judge was a Democratic or Republican appointee. Why is that? In theory, we should have judicial decisions that apply the law, not rulings based on the personal political preferences of judges. In practice, however, no one is terribly surprised when a ruling favorable to the GOP cause comes from a Republican-appointed judge or when a Democratic appointee comes up with a conclusion favorable to Democrats.

How cynical a view is this? Are the black robes really just camouflage for the indelible stamp of party affiliation guiding each judge’s decisions? That seems overwrought. From time to time you do run across a left-leaning outcome from a Republican appointee or a right-leaning outcome from a Democratic appointee. And even in cases where results conform to cynical expectations, one must not lose sight of the fact that Republican appointees tend to differ from Democratic appointees in their theories of jurisprudence.

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WHAT A MAGICAL SHAPE-CHANGING BEAST this independent-counsel law is! In its marauding two-decade-long journey through the American political landscape, it has revealed aspects of itself we poor peasants could never have imagined. Republicans and now Democrats have felt the fury of the creature, its quasi-immortality, its voraciousness, its single-mindedness in pursuit of its prey. But now, for the first time, it has given birth — to impeachment proceedings against the president in the House of Representatives. And only now are we learning of the peculiar sway it has on the minds of men. Republicans, perhaps mesmerized, came to believe that they could tame it, or at least let it do their work for them. But whether it serves them or they are its captives is an open question.

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As WASHINGTON GEARS UP for the arrival in the House of Representatives of Kenneth Starr’s report on President Clinton’s impeachable offenses, a particularly virulent strain of wannabe conventional wisdom has been making the rounds. It is that Republicans would prefer (if they put party ahead of country) to keep a weakened Clinton in office for two more years — because an incumbent President Gore running in the 2000 presidential race gives them the heebie-jeebies.

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