WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will take his first tentative steps beyond the Beltway since his impeachment, traveling to Baltimore today to demonstrate his presidential stature as momentum grows for a negotiated settlement to end the threat to his presidency.
The unveiling of annual grants to combat homelessness would ordinarily attract little attention.
But today's excursion to Baltimore is an event tailor-made to show that Clinton still has the ability to lead the country, improve the lives of ordinary Americans and weather the political firestorm of impeachment.
Just 40 miles from Washington, Baltimore has often served as a handy backdrop for a president in search of a friendly nearby audience.
"The president is going to continue to pursue his agenda on behalf of the American people, and he's going to pursue it in an aggressive way," a White House official said yesterday.
"For an urban message, Baltimore is an appropriate place to go. It's close by, but it's got both the problems and the virtues of cities all over the country."
Others may view the visit through the prism of hard-nosed politics.
"Serving food to the homeless at holiday times, talking about grants in Baltimore -- these are the kinds of things that make irresistible photo ops: a president that can be presidential and human at the same time," Donald Kettl, director of the University of Wisconsin LaFollette Center of Public Affairs, who studies the Clinton White House. "It gets him back into play."
And it gets him out of Washington while members of Congress continue their informal discussions on a resolution of censure that could avert the first Senate trial since 1868 to consider removing a sitting president from office.
"He's got to let some things shake out on their own before he has any real opportunity to help make progress on something short of a full trial," said Jody Powell, former press secretary to President Jimmy Carter and an informal Clinton adviser.
White House aides and Democratic leaders in the Senate have tried to lie low while momentum builds in Republican ranks toward a negotiated settlement.
That momentum has been aided by a handful of moderate House Republicans who voted for impeachment Saturday but are now imploring the Senate to consider a strong rebuke, and possibly a fine, as a way to short-circuit what could be a long and divisive Senate trial.
Rep. Bob Franks of New Jersey, who voted to impeach, added his voice to a growing Republican chorus asking for a quick resolution that could begin healing the battered body politic.
"Our nation has suffered through a terrible ordeal for the past 12 months," Franks said, endorsing a censure measure proposed Monday by former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Carter.
"The investigation of the president has sapped our strength, tried our patience, assaulted our respect for the institutions of government and diverted attention from issues that really matter to Americans. The time has come for all of us to find a way to heal the nation's wounds."
Like Ford and Carter, Franks made one demand on Clinton that " the president has been unwilling to meet: "The only way to spare the nation the trauma of an impeachment trial," Franks said, "is for the president to finally come to terms with the fact that he broke the law."
'Range of options'
Four other House Republican moderates -- Reps. Benjamin A. Gilman and Sherwood Boehlert of New York, Michael N. Castle of Delaware and James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania -- sent Senate Republican leader Trent Lott a letter that urges the Senate to "consider a range of options" short of removing Clinton from office, including "a tough censure proposal, which would impose a fine and block any pardon."
Castle bristled yesterday at complaints from some Democrats that the Republican moderates were backpedaling from their votes for articles of impeachment that explicitly called for Clinton's "impeachment and trial, and removal from office."
Castle said he always favored censure over impeachment. But, he noted, Republican leaders in the House had refused to give members that choice, instead presenting the House a stark choice: impeach the president or let him off with no punishment at all.
New voices welcome
Eager to welcome new voices for censure, White House aides refused to question the moderates' motives. "I think the real question is why didn't the [Republican] leadership offer them a chance to vote their conscience," said Joe Lockhart, Clinton's spokesman.
Castle said yesterday that Franks' demands for a confession to illegal acts might be unrealistic and could scuttle a search for compromise, because Clinton is keenly aware that such a confession would leave him vulnerable to prosecution once he leaves office.
"The last thing these lawyers are going to give in to is some sort of admission, either orally or in writing, that he committed a crime," Castle said.
But Castle said senators would ultimately agree on a censure resolution that stopped short of demanding such a confession and instead compelled the president only to agree he had been "untruthful" or "misleading."
And, he added, a deal must be reached quickly to avert a trial that would further polarize the parties and ensure that nothing of substance is achieved in Congress until the next millennium.
"Now we're at a point where we can sit down and make a valiant attempt to resolve this in a way that would be fair to everybody," Castle said. "I'm an optimist. I think [Clinton] is pragmatic enough that he can rebuild working relationships with Congress. But I'm not optimistic that that can happen if this goes on for six more months."
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, agreed, saying some tentative agreement should be reached within five days to avert "a hardening of positions."
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota spent yesterday consulting with other senators.
"I'm more encouraged than I was late last week," he said. "There has been some degree of movement among Republicans and Democrats toward a consensus on the impeachment procedure we should follow."
Conservative senators continued to push a hard line, saying a Senate trial would be convened.
"The president lied under oath. That's a fact," declared Sen. Robert F. Bennett of Utah.
"Everybody knows it."
But even he held out the prospects of a punishment short of removing Clinton from office. Whatever was agreed to, however, would have to be "a very public humiliation of the president," Bennett said.
The White House has welcomed talk of censure. But Clinton has not retreated from his insistence that he did not commit perjury.
And the House actions Saturday may have made it easier for the president and his lawyers to hold their ground. The most flagrant examples of apparent lying under oath occurred in a deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit, but the House refused to send that matter to the Senate for trial. House members defeated an article of impeachment charging perjury in the Jones matter.
Instances of lying
Instead, they approved a separate article of impeachment that charged that Clinton lied to a federal grand jury in four instances: when he said his relationship with Lewinsky began in January 1996 instead of November 1995, as Lewinsky maintains; when he said he believed he had been accurate in his Jones deposition; when he denied touching Lewinsky's breasts or genitals; and when he said he did not believe he was trying to influence his secretary, Betty Currie, when he asked her a series of leading questions after he was deposed by Jones' lawyers.
Democrats have always believed it would be easier to defend against those charges because they would require Republican prosecutors to refute what Clinton said he "believed" and to show Clinton lied about sexual activity that no one but the president and Lewinsky witnessed. In the final matter, Currie testified that she did not feel pressured by Clinton's questioning.
Still, Lockhart, Clinton's spokesman, declined to shut down any options, even when pressed on whether the president would confess to criminal behavior.
"We're not in a position to prescribe the details of" Senate censure proposals, Lockhart said, "and I'm not going to get in the position of speculating on what they might be or might become."
Pub Date: 12/23/98