WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress indicated yesterday that they have no choice but to begin exploring whether Kenneth W. Starr's charges are serious enough to warrant President Clinton's removal from office.

But with new polls showing strong public opposition to removing Clinton from office, Republican leaders began sending signals that they were open to an alternative way of punishing the president short of impeachment.

That does not mean the House would forego a formal inquiry into Starr's charges.

Starr's scathing report "must be looked at to see if those charges have any basis in fact," said Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters, a fierce presidential defender and member of the House Judiciary Committee, even as she vowed, "This president will not be railroaded."

House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas said yesterday that a House investigation is not likely to be confined to Clinton's sex scandal. On the NBC news program "Meet the Press," DeLay seemed to raise the bar for Clinton, mentioning questions over Democratic campaign contributions from Asia, alleged efforts by the Chinese to influence the 1996 presidential election, and allegations that the Democrats attempted to sway the recent Teamsters election.

"All of these things have to come into play," he said, "and it may take longer than we want."

House vote

With Congress scheduled to adjourn in less than a month, a House vote on whether to launch a formal impeachment inquiry is probably the most that could be accomplished before the November elections. Further action could have to wait until next year -- though Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee said the panel might stay in Washington through the fall to begin its investigation.

Even as Clinton's strongest critics tried to turn up the heat on the White House, other Republicans appeared to be searching for a way to defuse the crisis.

The extremely personal nature of the offenses alleged by Starr -- all purportedly committed to cover up an illicit affair with a young White House intern -- seem to be prompting increased consideration of some lesser penalty for Clinton than impeachment.

A growing wariness has begun creeping into Republican ranks about how far they can take their case against a president who remains resilient in public opinion.

Republican Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to plead yesterday with Clinton and his advisers to help put the Lewinsky scandal to an end.

"If they'll quit playing this legal game, and start being what he is, a basically warm, winning person who the American people have liked from the beginning, if he'll do that, and just acknowledge, 'Yeah, I've done some really bad things, I really screwed up here,' my gosh, I think the president could get through this," Hatch said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Deeply divided

The Sunday morning hand-wringing over the Monica Lewinsky scandal revealed a political world deeply divided over how to handle Starr's 445-page report outlining 11 allegations of presidential misdeeds that the independent counsel said could be worthy of impeachment. A two-thirds vote in the Senate would be needed to remove the president from office, meaning that at least a few Democrats would have to go along with a virtually united Republican membership.

But with partisan lines growing deeper, politicians are beginning to wonder how Congress will exact a punishment against Clinton without the public behind it. Former White House aide George Stephanopoulos suggested yesterday something of a plea bargain: Clinton stays in office in exchange for an admission of perjury, a congressional censure and possibly a fine.

"I think the president will continue to serve," predicted Rep. Vic Fazio of California, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "I think there are many other ways beyond impeachment that the Congress can express its dissatisfaction, its unhappiness with the president's conduct."

'The middle option'

Added Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat: "I think in the days and months ahead you will find people talking about the middle option, that of a public rebuke for his personal behavior."

A censure would not be insignificant to a president so concerned with his place in history. Andrew Jackson is remembered as the only president ever to be censured by Congress, even though the 1834 vote was later expunged by the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott hinted at a sort of plea bargain, suggesting that the president drop his legal defense and "come to the Congress and say, 'How can this be resolved?' "

The impetus for an alternative short of impeachment is being driven by the American people. Opinion polls found the president's high approval ratings virtually unchanged since Friday, when the House publicly released Starr's report. Clinton's job approval ratings ranged from 59 percent to 67 percent, depending on the poll.

The surveys released yesterday showed that most Americans would prefer that Congress censure Clinton rather than impeach him.

"What we have here is a situation in which the president's personal behavior, inappropriate, offensive as it is, is being weighed by the American people and by members of Congress with his job performance as president of the United States," Bonior said yesterday on "Meet the Press." "It's important for us, I think, to step back and look at both of those issues and try to come to some understanding of whether or not his behavior and his misrepresentation of his behavior to the American people rises to the level of an impeachable offense."

Most Republicans remained deeply concerned about Starr's allegations of perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of power and witness tampering. DeLay, who has called for Clinton's resignation, continued to take a hard line, saying it looks as if the president would be impeached, if he does not resign first.

'About right and wrong'

"This is not about polls. This is not about politics. This is not about who's the next president," DeLay told "Meet the Press." "This is about right and wrong. We're in a very dangerous situation here if you have a president that has lost the moral authority to lead the nation."

And Republicans were not buying the Democratic line that Starr's allegations were somehow diminished because they were allegedly committed to cover up an embarrassing sexual fling.

Rep. Bill McCollum of Florida, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, spoke of "multiple criminal felonies" -- not just perjury -- when he called for an impeachment inquiry. He made it clear that he believed perjury would be serious enough to merit further examination.

"If he's guilty of that alone, of lying before the grand jury, that's extraordinarily grave," McCollum said. "Truth is important. It's the glue that holds our legal system together, and if people think the president can lie and get away with it, then we're talking about something which is going to undermine that legal system."

Congressional Democrats are growing weary of the president's lawyers insisting that Clinton did not lie under oath when he denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky -- though he apologizes for having "sinned" almost daily.

"He lies by being technically accurate. I wish he would stop it," Rep. Barney Frank, a Judiciary Committee Democrat from Massachusetts, said on a local radio show. " 'I didn't inhale' is just not worthy of him, and everybody sees through it. He's not 14 anymore trying to outsmart the principal."

Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, agreed.

"If you come and say to the American people that, 'I'm legally correct, I didn't have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky,' you're going to lose," Kerrey said.

President's defenders

But the president's defenders began finding their voice. Their strategy appears to be simple: Denounce Clinton's behavior as deplorable, dismiss Starr's report as indefensible, and insist that conducting an illicit sexual affair in the White House and lying to cover it up is not worth removing a sitting president from office for the first time in the nation's history.

Starr's report "shows the president's behavior to be abhorrent and reckless," Fazio conceded. But, he asked, "is an illicit, consensual, sexual relationship that was lied about going to rise to the level where we're going to, in effect, undo the last election and remove the president from office?"

The answer will have to emerge from a formal impeachment inquiry, said Republicans and Democrats alike. Lott, among other Republicans, called impeachment hearings all but inevitable. If held, those hearings would likely take place early next year.

Democrats agreed that too many questions remain to simply ignore Starr's report.

"Ultimately, if the president and the Congress want to have the due process that they're both allowed in this instance, we may end up going to that next level," Fazio said.

Pub Date: 9/14/98