Unthinkable finds its place in history

By David M. Shribman, Globe Columnist, 12/12/2000

ASHINGTON - For more than a century the two dustiest corners of the Constitution involved impeaching a president and selecting a president in the event of an election deadlock. The American people have now witnessed both spring to life in the course of just two years.

The impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 have always been historical curiosities, colorful little episodes only dimly remembered, preserved in daguerreotype, regarded as too dangerous to contemplate in the modern era, when American presidential leadership means mass-media examination and superpower responsibilities.

The unthinkable became commonplace when President Clinton was impeached in December 1998 - and when the battle for the decisive 25 electoral votes of Florida became entangled in a knot of court challenges and appeals.

Partisanship reigns

The transformation of these two wrinkles of history into real-life, real-time television dramas says much about the foresight of the founders, who may be remembered by history as idealists, but who are remembered by lawyers as realists, or at least human enough to have contemplated the mischief that politicians can perform.

But the notion that not only one but both of these two events would dominate the stage within the short space of 24 months is a signal that American political culture has reached a critical stage, perhaps unmatched in our history:

The public beyond Washington is so little divided on the vital questions of economics and diplomacy that it managed to split itself evenly between two remarkably similar presidential candidates. This is occurring, meanwhile, at a time of the rawest sense of partisanship in more than a generation in the capital.

These seemingly contradictory elements - a public that is in general agreement, a political establishment that is wallowing in bitter disagreement - help explain the overarching theme of American political culture at the start of a new millennium. Ordinary Americans find politicians to occupy a mysterious class, one composed of characters who are different from the rest of the country even as they try to mirror the country, men and women who have different views of the world, people who are more like one another than like those whose interests they represent.

That accounts for the near contempt with which Americans view the political establishment - and for the unusual challenges the political system has faced in the short space of two years.

Partisan tensions, along with the poor judgment of President Clinton, pushed the nation and Congress into impeachment, a remedy that generations of highschool civics teachers told their classes was so distasteful, so disruptive, that it would never be repeated. For decades historians regarded the impeachment of Johnson as a historical error that enlightened lawmakers would avoid at all costs. In 1998, the nation tumbled into impeachment the way the European powers tumbled into war in 1914: not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't stop themselves.

These same partisan tensions, along with the indecisiveness of the American people, fuel the nightmare scenarios Americans have confronted as lawsuits and legislators have sought to unscramble the 2000 election mess. In the beginning of the deadlock, the options seemed broad, not particularly threatening, and the shoals easy to negotiate. But with each day the peril grew, and soon people were spinning scare stories about interim presidents, one of whom, the redoubtable Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, just turned 98.

A victory for lawyers

The most important event of the post-election period may have been the one that didn't occur: the meeting between two distinguished secretaries of state, Warren M. Christopher and James A. Baker III, who have represented America's best interests abroad, but who couldn't bring themselves to represent them at home by negotiating a rubric for settling this election in a manner fair to all.

But in this episode, Christopher and Baker are lawyers, not negotiators, and the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 election also represent the triumph of lawyers in American culture.

The United States has become as much a litigious culture as it is a political culture. Without the Paula Jones lawsuit, there would have been no Clinton impeachment. Without the various recount lawsuits, there would have been no prospect that the election of 2000 might be turned over to Congress in 2001. The soberest lesson of the past two years may be that while we think of ourselves as a nation of laws, our politics suggests that we are a nation of lawyers. Indeed, the title of the legal case taken up by the US Supreme Court yesterday was the same as the election. It read, simply: Bush v. Gore.