Clinton's impeachment: One year later, a defining moment fades from the national consciousness

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sunday marks the first anniversary of the House's vote to impeach President Bill Clinton. As House members cast their votes to turn over Clinton's case to the Senate for trial, political observers and citizens alike by and large decried the move as one that had the potential to turn American democracy on its ear.

One year later, one might hardly know the entire ordeal happened at all.

In this story:

Clinton's legacy
Those who didn't do so well
The supporting cast

Clinton, who endured several harrowing weeks as his case was taken up by the House Judiciary Committee, the full House of Representatives and then the United States Senate, remains comfortably settled in the White House.

His right-hand man, Vice President Al Gore, is engaged in a spirited campaign to move into the president's White House living quarters when Clinton's second term draws to a close.


After being impeached by the House of Representatives, President Clinton spoke on the White House lawn.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, once embarrassed before and pitied by the American public, is just weeks away from making an early exit from Washington so she might begin a political career of her own by running for the Senate in New York.

And former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, whose illicit affair with the president launched a thousand pundits, reporters, investigators and lawmakers into frenzied action, is the one player to emerge from the scandal with a newfound, closely tracked celebrity status.

Fading from the national spotlight: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who excused himself from the wide-ranging, yet still incomplete Whitewater probe earlier this year, and the House Republicans who pressed hardest for the case to move through the convoluted and rarely used impeachment process. Indeed, the House's dogged pursuit of impeachment saw Congress' approval ratings plummet earlier this year, and Republicans are now worried about the ability of the party to maintain its tenuous control of the House after the next election cycle.

Meanwhile, former White House operative and infamous tape recorder operator Linda Tripp awaits the decision of a Maryland judge on whether a state wiretapping case against her should go to trial.

And the American public? They've taken the route recommended by many Clinton supporters and impeachment critics during the thick of the proceedings: They've gotten over it and moved on -- with some qualifications.

Although only a third of the country supported Clinton's impeachment, nearly half today approve of the House's decision to send Clinton's case to the Senate for a trial, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday.

The prevailing public feeling, according to the poll, was that Clinton deserved to be tried, but not convicted for his actions.

Clinton's legacy

Despite months of anguish and embarrassment -- roughly from January of 1998, when the Lewinsky scandal broke wide open, to well past the Senate's acquittal vote of February 1999 -- President Clinton emerged from his impeachment ordeal humiliated, chastened and relieved to get back to the business of running his administration.

As the House debated the five articles of impeachment crafted by the Judiciary Committee late last year, and as the Senate took up the articles for trial at the beginning of this year, Clinton was already launching his strategy to get back into the good graces of the public and his Democratic supporters, many of whom felt betrayed by his efforts to cover up his Oval Office trysts with Lewinsky.


The House Judiciary Committee crafted the five articles of impeachment against the president.

The president often described himself as "profoundly sorry" for his actions, while imploring the Congress and the nation at large to resolve the matter through a censure process.

But as the year wore on, and as Clinton began to hit a renewed stride as a master negotiator through a variety of battles with the Republican-controlled Congress, the president took on an air of righteous defiance, saying that though he was to be blamed for bad judgment and bad behavior in the Lewinsky matter, those who chose to push the nation to the brink of a crisis of leadership deserved a great deal of blame.

"The mistake I made was self-inflicted and the misconduct of others was not," Clinton said just two weeks ago at his last press conference of the year.

It remains to be seen just how history will look back upon Clinton's conduct and the comportment of the House and Senate's GOP leadership through the long impeachment proceedings. But the man at the center of the investigation, prosecutor Kenneth Starr, says everything his office engaged in was quite necessary, despite prevailing perceptions.


Independent counsel Ken Starr has stepped down from that position and been replaced.

Speaking on the C-SPAN cable network earlier this month, Starr defended his oft-maligned office and investigation, saying the Lewinsky matter -- blasted by many as a simple "sex" probe -- was part and parcel of a massive effort that included dissection of the Clintons' failed "Whitewater" Arkansas land deal, the "Travelgate" firings of White House travel office officials, the "Filegate" use of FBI files by the White House security office, and Clinton's deposition during the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit -- the one item that started the real trouble.

And, Starr said, everyone should be mindful as they consider the long road of events leading to the impeachment spectacle that the investigation was not a personal endeavor, nor was it the product of some sort of anti-liberal or anti-Democrat vendetta on the part of his office.

It was a product of a recommendation of Attorney General Janet Reno, appointed to the cabinet post in 1992 by Clinton.

"Above all ... the investigations that my office was conducting were authorized by the attorney general of the United States. In each instance, we were within our proper authority and jurisdiction," Starr said. But the value of hindsight, he added, has led him to believe now that perhaps he had bitten off more than he could chew.

"I think that in retrospect it was -- and I've been saying this -- a mistake for my office -- and I made that judgment -- to accept the expansions of jurisdiction so that we took on matters such as the Travel Office, the FBI files matter, and ultimately the Lewinsky matter," he said.

The Whitewater land deal, Starr intimated, was time-consuming and controversial enough.

Those who didn't do so well

Starr has the luxury of retrospect. He successfully removed himself from the process -- to be replaced by attorney Bob Ray, who is charged with wrapping up the whole convoluted pack into a final report -- for a less frantic life in the academic and private sectors.

But House Republicans are still paying for impeachment in many ways, having seen their majority in the House slashed to just a handful of seats in the 1998 mid-term election. GOP House leaders are also staring down a menacing electoral barrel as the pivotal 2000 election approaches -- as many experts predict the Democrats could take the chamber back for the first time since 1994.

And while Clinton has managed to regain his composure and his stature in the ensuing months since his acquittal -- he again managed to secure a significant number of concessions from congressional Republicans during the recent federal budget negotiations -- some once prominent House leaders have taken it on the chin.


Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned shortly after the 1998 elections.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who once declared he wouldn't let an opportunity to speak on Clinton's misdeeds pass him by -- stepped aside late last year after taking the blame for the Republicans' poor showing in the midterm elections. Gingrich, whose own, six-year illicit affair with a House Agriculture Committee staffer recently came to light, has found himself fodder for the newspapers once again. Not for his post-congressional activities, but for the nasty divorce he faced once his peccadillos were revealed.

Gingrich and his soon to be second ex-wife Marianne, to whom he was married for 18 years, Friday announced an undisclosed divorce settlement.

Gingrich's abdication paved the way for the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Bob Livingston (R-Louisiana) to seek the third-highest position in the land. But as soon as Livingston declared his intention to seek the post, he turned and announced his intention to resign from Congress after a series of extramarital affairs of his own were revealed.

The shake-out in the House leadership saw former high school wrestling coach Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) catapulted into the speaker's chair.

Reflecting on his good fortune, Hastert said in an October news conference that the Congress decided it had to get back to work following the presidential impeachment. Nonetheless, the ordeal was the worst sort of trial for all involved.

"It's the first time in the history of the country that an elected president was before the Congress to be impeached -- first time in history that an elected president had done that," he said.

"It wasn't going to be a pleasant day for anybody," Hastert deadpanned.

The supporting cast

Monica Lewinsky's every movement continues to be tracked by a vast sector of the population, whose insatiable hunger for information on Lewinsky's employment, her relationship with the Jenny Craig weight loss organization, and on her mental state following her torturous year, seems to never be satisfied.

Lewinsky's stock with the public rose a bit this week, when she appeared in Ellicott City, Maryland, to testify at a preliminary hearing in the wiretapping case of Linda Tripp.

The 26-year-old former intern told a packed courtroom Thursday that she was "frightened" when she learned Tripp, a one-time friend, had recorded their private conversations about her relationship with Clinton.

RELATED STORIES


Read AllPolitics' special report on the impeachment.

Lewinsky testifies in Tripp wiretap hearing (12-16-99) Lewinsky to testify in Tripp wiretap case (12-15-99) Tripp indicted for wiretapping in Maryland (7-30-99)

RELATED SITES
The Linda Tripp Web site Office of the Independent Counsel The White House

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The Tripp case