THE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT
Post-mortem for a debacle
By Fred
Goldstein
Now that the farcical drama of impeachment has played itself
out, the masses have finally been released from 13 months of
forced intellectual imprisonment, during which time they were
compelled to endure endless hype and sensationalist speculation
fueled by the television rating wars. The entire capitalist
political establishment was driven on a forced march by the
Republican right wing, compelled to enact a "trial" of
President Bill Clinton over an affair that could not be of any
consequence whatsoever to the capitalist class.
All but the right wing were excruciatingly aware of the
relative political triviality of the underlying issues, as well
as the inevitability of the outcome. The entire cast of
congressional characters had to strain to the utmost to breathe
a sense of political importance and constitutional gravity into
the proceedings.
How else could they justify going through a process normally
reserved for an extreme crisis within the capitalist state?
But no matter how hard they tried, they could not convince
the masses that the Clinton-Lewinsky affair was of such grave
import as to warrant the political extravaganza of
impeachment.
Yes, the impeachment crisis was suffocating to endure. But
when the two parties were preoccupied with fighting each other,
the masses were probably better off. Now Congress is preparing
to resume its legislative role, issuing statements of
determination to "get on with the people's business."
What they really mean is getting on with the business of the
capitalist class--the business of collecting the bribes, under
the euphemism of contributions, that corporate lobbyists pay
them to get things done.
The Republicans and Democrats are about to fight over
whether to give the Pentagon an extra $112 billion over the
next five years, as Clinton proposes, or $150 billion as the
Republicans propose.
They are about to battle over whether to give Wall Street
speculators $700 billion of the workers' Social Security funds
to be invested by the government as the Democrats propose, or
to follow the Republican plan that gives much more than that
and compels the workers to invest directly.
They are about to battle over how best to save the killer
HMOs from themselves by proposing token health-care legislation
before there is a mass revolt against these health-for-profit
bloodsuckers.
No great victory for workers
There are those who regard the acquittal of Clinton as a
major progressive victory for the people. But while the
acquittal was a setback for the right wing, it was nevertheless
the work of the mainstream section of the capitalist class.
The entire process began with the right-wing-inspired
Kenneth Starr investigations of Clinton. The original
Whitewater investigation could have been the beginning and end
of the entire matter, except for the fact that the entire
Republican Party, under Newt Gingrich, seized on it to try to
unseat the Democrats.
Furthermore, the federal courts consistently opened the door
to expanding the investigation. The Supreme Court ruled that
the president could be brought to trial in the Paula Jones
case.
All this time, the capitalist media, led by the organs of
the mainstream bourgeoisie--the New York Times, Washington
Post, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and the
television networks--fanned the anti-Clinton flames.
Clinton had no strong base in the ruling class, even though
he clearly let the bosses and bankers know that he would be
their tool and turned the Democratic Party sharply to the
right. He captured the Democratic political machinery and the
nomination through hard work, winning the presidency from
George Bush largely because of the recession and Ross Perot's
candidacy.
The right wing considered him a leftover from the 1960s. The
moderate bourgeoisie considered him an outsider and a shifting
opportunist who degraded the presidency. In short, up until the
moment when impeachment became imminent, Clinton was under
siege from all sides.
But as the right wing pushed relentlessly forward toward
impeachment, the ruling class tried to put the skids under
their campaign. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the
Los Angeles Times pulled back and warned against the
"disproportionality" of impeachment. There was no earthly
reason to put the capitalist establishment through such a
political trauma.
Concretely, the bosses poured money into the coffers of
centrists in both parties for the 1998 elections. When the
smoke cleared, Gingrich was gone; Alfonse D'Amato was gone; a
strong Jesse Helms ally in North Carolina was gone; and the
Republican majority had been whittled down.
But the right wing still had control of the House Judiciary
Committee and the apparatus of congressional committee
appointments and campaign funds with which to threaten the rest
of the Republican representatives.
U.S. House of Lords ends it
The job of putting an end to this farce was now in the
Senate's hands. The two-thirds majority required to convict an
impeached president under the Constitution was calculated to
insure that no minority faction of the ruling class could
impose its will on the rest of the class. This is called
capitalist democracy--that is, democracy for the
capitalists.
And the Senate is most likely to reflect the richest and
broadest section of the ruling class. The Senate was designed
to be the "upper body" of the capitalist political
establishment. It is known as the house of millionaires. It
more directly reflects the richest and most powerful capitalist
groupings.
It takes anywhere from $3 million to $13 million to elect a
senator, as of the 1998 elections. Barbara Boxer spent $12
million, Chuck Schumer $13 million. To elect a representative,
however, it takes anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a
million dollars.
The Senate was not elected by popular vote until 1913.
Unlike the House, it is not based on proportional
representation. The 32 million people in California get the
same number of senators as the half-million in Wyoming.
It has the right to ratify treaties, vote on Cabinet members
and high military officials, pass on judges, and block
legislation coming from the House. Senators serve for six
years--longer than representatives in Congress or the
president.
In short, the Senate was designed as an instrument to assure
the political control of the richest of the ruling class. It is
the U.S. version of Britain's House of Lords, as it existed in
earlier centuries.
Role of the masses
To be sure, the masses had a role in the impeachment
process, but it was a strictly passive one. Clinton's high
ratings during the whole process had two sides. On the one
hand, they showed conclusively that there was no right-wing
mood down below. The appeals of the Henry Hyde-Tom DeLay-Bob
Barr right-wing racists and bigots had no resonance.
This gave the lie to those preaching the danger of an
imminent threat of fascism. There was no hint of deep social
crisis at home stirring civil strife. Nor was there any grave
foreign policy crisis driving the right-wing attack.
The capitalist boom ensured social stability and Clinton was
doing the work of the ruling class to their general
satisfaction--although they are never satisfied.
On the other hand, Clinton's high approval ratings were
based on capitalist prosperity and on the fear that the only
way to fight the right was to bolster him. One way or the
other, it amounted to a lack of class consciousness.
There was reluctance to break with the administration--even
though it had just delivered grave blows to the population by
destroying welfare, building more prisons, bolstering the
police, stepping up repression including the death penalty,
undermining the labor movement with NAFTA and so on.
Another element that came to light during the impeachment
crisis is the relationship between elected officials and the
capitalist state.
The impeachment struggle bears some resemblance to the
parliamentary deadlocks that often occur in Europe. The parties
consume themselves with maneuvering for no-confidence votes in
order to oust the incumbent regime. At times like these, the
capitalist state is more noticeable--because whatever paralysis
overcomes the political establishment, the military, the
police, the courts, the prisons and the bureaucracy continue
repressing the masses.
During this entire impeachment scandal, the military has
managed to orchestrate an escalation of its lawless attacks on
the Iraqi government and people; it has not skipped a beat as
it moves to reduce Yugoslavia to a subject nation through
bombing threats and plans for ground troops.
The prisons have continued executing prisoners. The courts
have continued packing the jails with young people,
disproportionately Black and Latino. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service has continued terrorizing and rounding
up undocumented workers.
The police have continued brutalizing and murdering people
of color. The judiciary is still waging its war against the
labor movement with investigations and injunctions. All this to
sustain the system of capitalist exploitation.
Another element that surfaced in the impeachment crisis is
the disproportionate influence of the right wing in capitalist
politics, far out of proportion to its numbers. While the right
wing of the Republican Party has been momentarily defeated, the
tendency that revives it and gives it nourishment is the system
of class domination. It always gets a sympathetic response
among the bosses and bankers. Racism and oppression of women,
lesbians, gays, bi and transgendered people is a message that
will always resonate more loudly among the bosses and bankers
than any message of sympathy for the masses.
The Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party and the Black
and Latino legislative caucuses are not much smaller than the
extreme right of the Republican Party. Yet their message of
social services, anti-racism and progressive support for the
poor and for workers is drowned out. Under normal conditions of
capitalist stability, such an agenda never becomes the starting
point of any major political development on a par with the
impeachment crisis.
After all, capitalism lives by profit. And profit must come
out of the hides of the workers. The only time a progressive
message takes on any force in the halls of Congress or the
White House is when the entire system is threatened by mass
protests--as it was in the 1930s and again in the 1960s.
The movement must resist any tendency to get behind the
Democratic Party--a party of big business--and "get back" at
the Republican right. The way to fight the right is by mass
mobilization--not just against the right but ultimately against
capitalism itself.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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