[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 301-307]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



     UNDERLYING THE IMPEACHMENT CRISIS--HISTORY: THE WAY WE SEE IT

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JESSE L. JACKSON, JR.

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, January 6, 1999

  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, Republicans say the underlying 
issue is not about sex, it's about perjury and obstruction of justice. 
Democrats say the underlying issue is

[[Page 302]]

about sex--a private consensual sexual relationship--and the President 
lied about it, possibly committing perjury in the process. But since 
lying about sex is not an act that involved using his official position 
against the state, as Nixon did, Democrats say Clinton's sins do not 
reach the Constitutional standard for impeachment.
  That is the essence of the arguments we heard presented by members of 
the House Judiciary Committee and members on the floor of the Congress 
who voted, along partisan party lines, to impeach President Clinton. 
That is what the current Republicans and Democrats are saying. What 
will history say?
  Underlying the Clinton impeachment is neither sex, nor lying, nor 
perjury, but American history itself. Essentially the same economic and 
political forces that drove the presidential impeachment process 
against Andrew Johnson in 1868 are driving the impeachment process 130 
years later. There has been a ``role reversal''--the Republicans of 
1998 were the Democrats of 1868 and I will show how their roles 
reversed--but the underlying issue is essentially the same; 
reconstruction. Our nation's first effort at economic reconstruction 
after the Civil War was at issue in 1868, our nation's second effort at 
economic reconstruction after the Civil War, beginning with Brown in 
1954, is at issue in 1998.
  The end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to 
the Constitution on December 18, 1865 ended legal slavery. Slavery, the 
Democratic Party, its geography and its ideology were all defeated. But 
Lincoln's assassination five days after Appomattox denied him and the 
Republican Party the opportunity to pursue a ``Big Federal Government'' 
policy of economic reconstruction and political enfranchisement for all 
Americans, leaving no American behind.
  When legal slavery ended, there were nine million people in the old 
Confederacy, which was led by the party of Thomas Jefferson. Then, the 
Democratic Party defined itself in exclusive terms--as slave holders 
with private property rights, which were protected legally by ``states' 
rights'' governments. Four million of the southerners were uneducated 
and untrained former slaves who needed to be educated, trained and 
brought into the economic mainstream and politically enfranchised with 
the right and ability to vote. That didn't include poor and working 
class whites who had similar needs and had been exploited, manipulated, 
misused and politically diverted through a focus on social issues 
(then, perpetuating the fear of interracial marriage and sex) by the 
slave owners to preserve and protect the southern economic system of 
elite special interests.
  Just eight years earlier, in 1857, in the Dred Scott decision, the 
Court had ruled that blacks had no rights that a white man must respect 
and that Congress could not outlaw slavery anywhere in the U.S. The 
Confederacy--its economy, religion, family, social customs, mores and 
politics--was based and built on the institution of slavery. The Civil 
War ended slavery, but there were still two outstanding problems: (1) 
How to bring four million former slaves into the economic mainstream? 
And (2) How to politically enfranchise them? That was the goal of the 
First Reconstruction and its goal has never been realized and those 
twin problems have never been completely fixed! One-hundred-and-thirty-
two historically black colleges and universities were founded in this 
context.

  It was a massive Federal government commitment to educate the newly 
freed slaves--who were nearly half the population of the eleven former 
confederate states--not a commitment by those states to educate them. 
This Federal commitment to educate the newly freed slaves was 
determined to be central to a new black middle-class that could then 
lift themselves or take advantage of opportunities in the general 
economy. Northern Republican Federal troops were occupying the South 
after the Civil War because they could not depend on the Democratic 
South to enforce federal laws. With regard to education, it was the 
only way the Federal Government could prevent racial discrimination and 
ensure that educated blacks had an equal opportunity of getting hired 
after they were educated and trained.
  Lincoln fought to preserve the Union and to end slavery. He defeated 
the southern slave forces militarily at a national cost of 620,000 
lives and was prepared to reconstruct the nation with a Republican 
program of inclusion and political enfranchisement. ``Former'' 
Democratic Confederates opposed and resisted the ``Big Centralized 
Republican Federal Government'' and wanted ``the government off of 
their states' backs'' so they could go back to a legal system 
(``States' Rights'') that protected their economic interests (the 
ability to own slaves).
  The identification of Lincoln and the Republican Party with ending 
slavery and commencing reconstruction led southern Democrats to refer 
to Lincoln as the Black President and the Republican Party as the Black 
Republican Party. Blacks, after Lincoln's assassination, remained loyal 
to the Republican Party until 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second 
term. The New Deal appealed to black economic interests. Roosevelt 
defined a new more inclusive Democratic Party by offering an economic 
agenda that appealed to every American. The political history of 
African Americans shows that their loyalty follows reconstructive 
efforts.
  Senator Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who had refused to 
join his fellow southern Democratic Confederates and stayed with the 
northern Unionists. Lincoln's concern about preserving and reunifying 
the nation following the war led our first Republican President to 
reward Johnson's loyalty by nominating him for Vice President in the 
1864 campaign.
  After Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson focused on putting 
the Union back together, but lacked the Republican commitment to build 
a ``more perfect Union'' for all Americans. Unlike Lincoln and the 
Republicans, he was willing to preserve the Union by leaving some 
Americans behind, sacrificing the rights and interests of the former 
slaves. As a result, angry northern Radical Republicans investigated a 
vulnerable Johnson--who was not unlike Bill Clinton in terms of his 
personal foibles--to try to come up with an excuse to impeach him. It 
was a partisan Republican attack on a Democratic President in order to 
preserve undertaking the Republicans' First Reconstruction program.
  The struggle between these radical progressive northern Republicans 
and these radical conservative southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) 
continued following the Civil War, and finally came to a head in the 
1876 presidential election and Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877--which 
ended reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, was finally 
elected President by one vote in the House in exchange for pulling out 
Federal troops protecting the newly freed slaves in the South, and 
agreeing to appoint conservative Dixiecrats to the Supreme Court. The 
Dixiecrats, with the help of new ``black laws'' of discrimination, 
psychological intimidation, physical violence and murder, were now on 
their way back to power in the South.
  By 1896, the Supreme Court appointments resulted in Plessy, which 
ushered in Jim Crow, and by 1901 the first Congressional Black Caucus 
was completedly eliminated from Congress, not to return for three 
decades.
  It is the same elitist southern forces and their continuing anti-
Federal government ideology--except today they are called Republicans--
who want, this time, not to preserve but undo the nation's effort at 
reconstruction, a Second Reconstruction begun in 1954 with Brown--the 
desegregation of all aspects of American life, from public facilities 
to private corporate behavior--and continued with the 1964 Civil Rights 
Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, affirmative action and majority-
minority political districts. The southern Democratic Party, with the 
legacy of the Confederacy, generally found itself on the wrong side of 
history again in the 1960s. Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Lester 
Maddox of Georgia and Orville Faubus of Arkansas were all Democrats 
from Dixie. Renowed segregationists like Senator Richard Russell of 
Georgia and Congressman Howard Smith from Virginia were Democrats. 
Today's Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard Shelby of 
Alabama were originally Dixiecrats, but are now Republicans.
  Today's conservative southern-based Republicans' target is Second 
Reconstruction, especially the ``liberalism'' of Democratic President 
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but also ultimately including many of 
the ``Big Government'' economic programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 
New Deal. The real underlying dynamic of this impeachment proceeding is 
not the removal of Bill Clinton, but the removal of the social and 
economic programs of the New Deal and the Second Reconstruction of the 
Great Society, a weakening of the Big Federal Government generally, and 
the destruction of liberalism as a viable political ideology in 
particular.
  Whether these conservative anti-Federal government Republicans are 
successful or not will be determined by history. There will be a few 
pro-impeachment Democrats thrown in for good measure because, 
politically, they must factor in the old Democratic forces in the 
South, now controlled by the Republicans. The Republican impeachment 
strategy can only be measured by future elections. Will the American 
people be lead astray again by the Republicans' new sex diversion or 
will a strong political leader be able to get them to focus on their 
real economic interests of full employment, comprehensive and universal 
health

[[Page 303]]

care, affordable housing and a quality public education? History--not 
President Clinton or the current crop of Democrats and Republicans-- 
will render that judgment!
  Today, the political, ideological and geographical roots of the anti-
reconstruction and anti-more-perfect-union effort is in the South, 
though its tentacles have spread beyond the South. This Republican 
impeachment effort allows us to look at the roots, dynamic and current 
political structure of this post-Civil War and Current conservative 
political movement. One-hundred-and-thirty-three years after the 
``Great Quake,'' the impeachment of President Clinton is a mere tremor 
in the on-going struggle to reconstruct America.

  Begin with the Judiciary Committee. Ten of the eighteen Republican 
members of the Judiciary Committee are ultra-conservatives from former 
Confederate states. In the middle of the impeachment hearings, one of 
them, Bob Barr of Georgia, was exposed for having recently spoken 
before a white supremist group.
  Move on to the House Republican leadership. The outgoing Speaker is 
Newt Gingrich (R-GA), whose history is laced with not-so-subtle new 
racial code words, and the Speaker-elect is Bob Livingston (R-LA). 
Their styles are different, but their substance is essentially the 
same. Both abdicated their leadership roles in the impeachment crisis 
only to have another southern conservative, Rep. Tom ``The Hammer'' 
Delay (R-TX), fill the void. He, through intimidation, forced 
Republicans, not to vote against censure, but to vote with their party 
on a procedural vote--which, in essence, is a vote to kill a vote of 
conscience for censure of the President's private behavior.
  In addition, call the roll of House leadership and committee 
chairmanships in the 105th Congress: Richard Armey (TX), Majority 
Leader; Bill Archer (TX), Ways & Means; Bob Livingston (LA), 
Appropriations; Floyd Spence (SC), National Security; Thomas Bliley 
(VA), Commerce; Porter Goss (FL), Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence.
  In the 105th Republican-controlled Senate: Trent Lott (MS), Senate 
Majority Leader; Strom Thurmond (SC), President Pro Tem (3rd in line to 
be President), Chairman, Armed Services; Jesse Helms (NC), Senate 
Foreign Relations; John Warner (VA), Rules; Richard Shelby (AL), Select 
Committee on Intelligence. Today in Congress there are more people 
arguing on behalf of States rights than there are people arguing on 
behalf of building a more perfect union. That is why fighting against 
racial injustice cannot be relegated to a department of the government. 
That is why several of the nation's top journalists have chosen to 
focus on what Trent Lott (R-MS) and Bob Barr (R-GA) do with their 
political spare time, including speaking before and having memberships 
in certain southern political organizations. The institutional nature 
of our historic problem requires eternal vigilance on many fronts and 
in every election.
  The presiding officer at an impeachment trial in the Senate will be 
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the ultimate 
conservative states' righter. Nominated to the Court by Nixon and 
elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan, this intellectually gifted 
conservative, while clerking for Justice Robert H. Jackson between 1952 
and 1953, wrote a memorandum arguing in favor of upholding the 
``separate but equal'' doctrine of Plessy versus Ferguson in 
preparation for the 1954 decision on Brown. As a conservative Phoenix 
lawyer, he appeared as a witness before the Phoenix City Council in 
opposition to a public accommodations ordinance and took part in a 
program of challenging African American voters at the polls.
  From 1969 until 1971, he served as assistant attorney general for the 
Office of Legal Counsel. In that position, he supported executive 
authority to order wiretapping and surveillance without a court order, 
no-knock entry by the police, preventive detention and abolishing the 
exclusionary rule, that is, a rule to dismiss evidence gathered in an 
illegal way.

  As a member of the Burger Court, Rehnquist played a crucial role in 
reviving the debate regarding the relationship between government and 
the states. The consequences of Rehnquist's state-centered federalism 
surfaced dramatically in the area of individual rights. Since the 
1960s, the Court had held that nearly every provision in the Bill of 
Rights applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 
Fourteenth Amendment. Rehnquist voiced his disagreement with such a 
method of determining the constitutional requirements of state action, 
particularly in the context of criminal proceedings, urging a return to 
an earlier approach whereby the states were not required to comply with 
the Bill of Rights but only to treat individuals with ``fundamental 
fairness.''
  Likewise, Rehnquist narrowly construed the Fourteenth Amendment's 
mandate to the states not to deny any person the equal protection of 
the laws. He contended that all that the framers of the Fourteenth 
Amendment hoped to achieve with the Equal Protection Clause was to 
prevent the states from treating black and white citizens differently. 
The most important value for Rehnquist is his state-centered 
federalism, followed by private property and individual rights. In 
other words, his current views are consistent with the core of the 
states' rights legal philosophy a century-and-a-half-ago, where the 
individual right to own property (slaves) was to be protected by a 
states' rights government! (Source: The Oxford Companion To The Supreme 
Court)
  To capture a new political base, Republicans abandoned the essence of 
Lincoln and decided to go after Dixie, using social issues as cover for 
their narrow economic interests. Barry Goldwater launched this modern 
conservative anti-Federal government movement with his 1964 
presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan picked it up and sent the same 
signal by launching his southern campaign from Philadelphia, 
Mississippi in 1980, in the name of states' rights, where two Jews and 
a Black were murdered, in the name of states' rights, fighting for the 
right to vote. Now Republicans want to complete Mr. Gingrich's 1994 
``Revolution of Devolution'' by defeating and eliminating the twin evil 
forces of ``liberalism'' and ``Big Government'' in the 2000 election.
  The Republicans know that, based on the information they have 
gathered, if the President is impeached in the House, he will not be 
convicted in the Senate. They don't want him convicted and out of 
office, with President Al Gore given two years to solidify his hold on 
the White House. They want an impeached, but not convicted, President 
twisting in the wind for two years leading up to the 2000 election. 
This is a continuation of the November 3, 1998, strategy of the 
Republican hard liners to motivate and build their conservative 
``social values'' political base as a diversion from economic justice 
issues. The Republicans will not allow censure because that would allow 
Democrats to say that they took some action against the President for 
his immoral actions, which would take away their ``social-moral'' issue 
for 2000 campaign.
  What the Republicans want out of this impeachment crisis is a 
``family values'' issue for the 2000 presidential campaign. They want 
to say that Clinton's sexual misconduct is the result of the ``decadent 
values'' of the 1960's and liberalism generally. In other words, in 
some form, the Lewinsky matter will become a Republican ``wedge issue'' 
in the 2000 campaign. The fact that African Americans are so closely 
identified with both President Clinton and liberal ``Big Government'' 
programs fits perfectly with their consistent use of race to divide the 
electorate in presidential campaigns. They can send the subliminal race 
signal while publicly denying they are using race as an issue in the 
campaign,

  The Republican goal in 2000 is to use this strategy to retain control 
of the House and Senate and to gain control of the White House. They 
can then appoint hardcore right wing conservatives to the Supreme Court 
after 2001. Remember, Kenneth Starr's ambition before being sullied by 
the Lewinsky affair was to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
  Republicans, with Dixie as its geo-political and theological center, 
in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the 
Federal government, could turn the clock back to a twenty-first century 
version of the States' Rights days of the 1850s and the 1896 ``separate 
but equal'' days of Plesssy versus Ferguson--not a return to slavery, 
but a return to the days when equal opportunity for all is twisted and 
converted to equal opportunity for a limited few.
  By putting impeachment in the legislative rather than the judicial 
branch of government, the framers of the Constitution deliberately made 
it a political-legal affair. Republicans have done in 1998, what 
Democrats did in 1868. They have use the political-legal nature of the 
impeachment process to turn it into a political-political affair to 
further their anti-Big Government aims.
  Clinton launched a dialogue to talk about race, but the real race 
dialogue is what will happen to economic reconstruction in 2001 if the 
reactionary Republican strategy works. Clinton has worked hard to 
separate the race dialogue from the economic dialogue--joining with the 
Republicans in 1997, and ignoring his strongest liberal supporters 
today, to cut a budget deal to ``balance the budget'' with conservative 
Republicans. That deal assures that there will not be enough money to 
fix our historic problem or build a bridge to the future for Americans 
left behind. He has reduced his own defense to a personal defense 
instead of a defense of history.
  Republicans are trying to impeach reconstruction. The President's 
reckless behavior

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played into the political hands of Dixie's history-driven religiously-
based self-righteous politics of advancing it's own lost cause.
  To whom much is given, much is required. The President was not 
elected to be our pastor, priest, rabbi or imam. He was elected to 
protect our constitutional rights. All Presidents are public servants, 
not perfect servants. His error of private behavior and poor public 
judgment played perfectly into Dixie's regional politics to undermine a 
century-and-and-a quarter of economic progress for all. President 
Clinton risked all of that history of social and economic progress by 
lying about an issue of personal satisfaction. He has not committed 
treason as defined by the Constitution as an impeachable offense. His 
``teason'' is against the cause of building a more perfect union.
  After economic and socially conservative Presidents Nixon, Ford, 
Carter (and economic conservative, but more liberal socially), Reagan 
and Bush, a moderate-to-conservative southern Democrat, President 
Clinton, has helped to prepare an economic bridge which would allow us 
to again begin to work on some of the unfinished and unreconstructed 
tasks of the Civil War. The Monica Lewinsky affair has now reduced the 
defense of that agenda to a defense of him.

  On December 19, 1998, Republicans are trying to impeach Social 
Security (privatize it), affirmative action, Medicare, Medicaid, a 
clean environment, women's freedom to choose, Supreme Court justices 
who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans, public 
education for all over vouchers for some, universal and comprehensive 
health coverage over medical savings accounts for the few, affordable 
housing for all, versus mansions for a select few.
  Something deeper in history than sex, lying and perjury is at issue 
here--just as something deeper in history than the removal of a cabinet 
secretary was at stake in 1868. At stake in 1868 was the First 
Reconstruction. At stake in 1998 is the Second Reconstruction. The 
struggle taking place in Congress and nationally today is between those 
political forces who want to build a more perfect union for all 
Americans, leaving no American behind, and those who want to return an 
elitist economic program of more perfect ``States' Rights'' for the 
few. That is what underlies the impeachment crisis.

               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1998]

             130 Years Ago, Parallels Up to a Boiling Point

                           (By Peter Carlson)

       The president was a Southern Democrat who'd risen from the 
     class scorned as ``white trash.'' His personal life inspired 
     widespread snickering. The Republicans who controlled 
     Congress detested him. They investigated every aspect of his 
     life and then voted to impeach him. With his fate in the 
     hands of a few moderates, he hired a claque of lawyers 
     skilled in nitpicking and pettifoggery.
       The president was, of course, Andrew Johnson. The year was 
     1868. When news of Johnson's impeachment reached 
     Philadelphia, Republicans celebrated by firing a 50-gun 
     salute while Democrats threatened to send scores of armed men 
     to defy Congress. In 1868, unlike 1998, Americans were not 
     blase about impeachment. Passions ran high, at least at the 
     beginning. The issue was not sex--or even perjury. It was far 
     more incendiary. On paper, the question was whether the 
     president could fire the secretary of war without the consent 
     of Congress. In reality, it was a battle over 
     Reconstruction--over the fate of former Confederates and 
     former slaves.
       Wild rumors spread: Johnson would use the Army to stay in 
     power. Confederates were marching toward Washington to help 
     him. The Houston Telegraph reported that the War Department 
     had been burned, the secretary wounded in battle. The 
     Louisville Democrat asked readers: ``Are you ready once more 
     to take up the musket?'' Many Americans were ready to fight. 
     Iowa's governor, who supported impeachment, cabled his 
     state's congressional delegation: ``100,000 Iowans are ready 
     to maintain the integrity of the Union.'' On the same day, a 
     man from Terre Haute cabled Johnson: ``Indiana will sustain 
     you with 100,000 of her brave, stalwart and tried men.''
       For a while, it seemed that America was on the verge of a 
     second Civil War. But soon things settled into a spectacle 
     more familiar to today's impeachment watchers--one part 
     drama, one part farce and many, many parts legal 
     hairsplitting, windy speechifying and mind-numbing tedium.


                          The Secretary of War

       ``I am in favor of the official death of Andrew Johnson,'' 
     an Indiana congressman said during the House debate on 
     impeachment. ``I am not surprised that one who began his 
     presidential career in drunkenness should end it in crime.''
       Other congressmen were almost as nasty. One said the 
     president was stained with ``the filth of treason.'' Another 
     called him a ``despicable, besotted, traitorous man.''
       The only American president ever impeached was a tailor by 
     trade. He grew up dirt poor in Raleigh, N.C., and didn't 
     learn to read until he married and his bride tutored him. He 
     opened a tailor shop in Tennessee and drifted into 
     politics. He had a gift for oratorical invective--populist 
     volleys directed at the Southern planter elite. He was 
     elected state legislator, then congressman, then governor, 
     then senator.
       In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and 
     Southern states began seceding from the Union, Sen. Johnson 
     returned to Tennessee to campaign against secession. He 
     wasn't opposed to slavery--he owned a few slaves himself--but 
     he was loyal to the Union. When Tennessee joined the 
     Confederacy, Johnson returned to Washington. On the way, he 
     was nearly lynched by a rebel mob in Lynchburg, Va.
       The only Southern senator who stayed with the Union, he was 
     a hero in the North--``the greatest man of the age,'' said 
     the New York Times. In 1864, Lincoln chose him as his vice 
     presidential running mate. Feeling a tad sick on inauguration 
     day in 1865, Johnson fortified himself with whiskey--too much 
     whiskey. Visibly soused, he delivered an incoherent speech, 
     and forever after his enemies mocked him as a drunk.
       When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson inherited the task 
     of reuniting the nation. He was determined to bring the South 
     back into the Union as quickly as possible. Under his rules, 
     the rebel states merely had to end slavery and pledge loyalty 
     and they could send representatives to Congress. In December 
     1865--only eight months after the war's end at Appomattox--
     those representatives arrived. Chosen in whites-only 
     elections, they included the Confederate vice president, six 
     members of the Confederate Cabinet and four Confederate 
     generals.
       Northern congressmen were incensed. Asked Sen. Ben Wade of 
     Ohio: Did any nation in history ever welcome ``traitors'' 
     into its Congress as equals? ``Would a man who was not 
     utterly insane advocate such a thing?''
       Congress refused to seat the Southern delegations. Johnson 
     was outraged. It was the beginning of the long battle that 
     led to impeachment.
       When the Republican-dominated Congress passed a bill giving 
     full citizenship rights to blacks, Johnson vetoed it. When 
     Congress passed a bill funding a Freedmen's Bureau to assist 
     former slaves, Johnson vetoed it. When Congress passed a bill 
     allowing blacks in the District of Columbia to vote, Johnson 
     vetoed it.
       In the South, the all-white ``Johnson governments'' passed 
     laws denying blacks the right to vote or buy property or own 
     firearms. Angry Republicans asked: Are we losing in peace 
     what we won in war?
       But Johnson wasn't interested in the problems of former 
     slaves. He wanted only to reunite the country. He was for 
     union in 1860, he said, and he was still for union in 1866. 
     He broke with the Republicans and toured the country 
     campaigning against them.
       His strategy backfired. Republicans won big in the election 
     of 1866. Emboldened, they started investigating Johnson, 
     spreading rumors that he had conspired with the men who 
     killed Lincoln. Over his veto, they enacted a 
     Reconstruction Bill that dissolved the ``Johnson 
     governments'' and put the South under military rule.
       That law gave Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ran the 
     military, a great deal of power over Reconstruction. Stanton 
     was allied with the Republicans. To keep him in office, 
     Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the 
     president from firing Cabinet secretaries without the consent 
     of the Senate. Johnson asked for Stanton's resignation. 
     Stanton refused. Johnson asked the Senate to fire him. The 
     Senate refused. Johnson fired him anyway but Stanton refused 
     to leave, barricading himself in his office.
       Johnson's treasury secretary warned the president that he 
     could be impeached if he persisted in removing Stanton.
       ``Impeach and be damned,'' Johnson replied.


                                The Show

       Slowly, painfully, Thaddeus Stevens, the aged, sickly 
     leader of the House Republicans, shuffled into the hushed 
     Senate chamber on Feb. 25, 1868, followed by a group of 
     congressmen.
       ``We appear before you,'' Stevens said, ``and in the name 
     of the House of Representatives and all the people of the 
     United States, do impeach Andrew Johnson, president of the 
     United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.''
       Clubfooted, gaunt and grim-faced, Stevens, 76, was an avid 
     abolitionist who had spent the war urging Lincoln to crush 
     the Confederates mercilessly, even if ``their whole country 
     is to be laid waste.'' The rebels hated him so much they 
     detoured on their way to Gettysburg just to burn down his 
     Pennsylvania ironworks. After the war, he lived in sin with 
     his black housekeeper and didn't much care who gossiped about 
     it. He sponsored the impeachment bill, and after it passed, 
     126-47, the House named him to the committee that would 
     prosecute the president in the Senate.
       The smart money was betting on conviction. Acquittal, the 
     New York Times reported, ``is looked upon as simply 
     impossible,

[[Page 305]]

     unless some new and startling development takes place.''
       The president hired five crafty lawyers, including his 
     attorney general, and paid them each $2,000 out of his own 
     pocket. They opted to stall. On March 13, they asked for 
     another 40 days to prepare their case.
       ``Forty days!'' roared Rep. Ben Butler, the former Union 
     general who was serving with Stevens as a prosecutor. ``As 
     long as it took God to destroy the world by a flood!''
       Butler wanted to start the trial immediately. The Senate 
     compromised, scheduling the case for March 30.
       When that day arrived, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase 
     presided over the Senate, which was stuffed with 150 extra 
     chairs to accommodate House members. The President did not 
     appear--nor was he expected--but the galleries were packed, 
     mostly with well-dressed women who had connections to 
     senators, who each got four gallery tickets, or to 
     congressmen, who each got two.
       ``Congressmen appear to be very good judges of female 
     beauty,'' the Washington Star reported. ``We looked and 
     looked in vain for a dozen plain-looking women in the 
     galleries.''
       Butler delivered the prosecution's opening statement. He 
     started slowly, droning on about this unique historical 
     moment, but soon he was orating grandiloquently: ``By murder 
     most foul he succeeded to the presidency and is the elect of 
     an assassin to that high office!''
       After a few hours, Butler's audience began to wilt but 
     Butler kept going. He was still chugging along on April 
     Fool's Day, when wags in the press gallery amused themselves 
     by sending notes, purportedly from women in the galleries, to 
     the congressmen on the floor, and then snickering as they 
     read the congressmen's replies.
       When Butler finally finished his opening statement, he 
     began calling witnesses who had observed the attempt to 
     remove Stanton from office. The scene they described barely 
     rose above farce: Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, the new appointee as 
     secretary, went to Stanton's office and ordered him to leave. 
     Stanton refused and ordered Thomas to leave. Thomas refused. 
     Back and forth it went, each man ordering the other to leave, 
     until finally Stanton poured two stiff shots of whiskey and 
     the dueling secretaries sat down for a friendly chat.
       One witness, a Delaware buddy of Thomas, recalled his 
     efforts to buck up the general during this historic 
     confrontation: ``Said I to him. `General, the eyes of 
     Delaware are upon you.' ''
       The senators burst out laughing.
       Next, Butler summoned several newspaper reporters to 
     testify about the president's speeches during the 1866 
     campaign. The reporters confirmed that the president had 
     indeed said many nasty things about his Republican 
     congressional enemies. To Butler, this was proof that Johnson 
     was subverting the power of Congress. To most observers, it 
     was proof of nothing more than politics as usual.
       Tedium was setting in. Many hours were spent in the reading 
     of legal documents and senatorial speechifying. ``Spectators 
     found the proceedings rather uninteresting,'' the Star 
     reported. Rep. James Garfield was equally bored: ``This trial 
     has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane love 
     of speaking among public men,'' the congressman wrote in a 
     letter. ``We are wading knee deep in words, words, words . 
     . . and are but little more than half across the turbid 
     stream.''
       Newspaper editorialists began complaining about the lack of 
     public interest in the impeachment controversy. The Baltimore 
     Gazette lamented that ``the greatest act known to the 
     Constitution--the trial of a President of the United States'' 
     was inspiring ``less interest in the public mind than the 
     report of a prize fight.''
       Johnson could have enlivened things by appearing at his 
     trial but he never did. He also refused to make any public 
     comment on impeachment. Privately, he contemptuously referred 
     to the proceedings as ``the show.''
       Behind the scenes, the president was wooing moderate 
     Republican senators by appointing officials whom they 
     supported and by sending signals that he would stop 
     obstructing Reconstruction. ``The president,'' the Chicago 
     Tribune reported, ``has been on his good behavior.''
       Finally, at the end of April, both sides began to sum up 
     their cases. The ailing Thaddeus Stevens, who spent most of 
     the trial huddled under a blanket, rose on wobbly legs to 
     make his final statement. The case was about Reconstruction, 
     he said, about how the president had usurped congressional 
     power and helped to create new Confederate governments in the 
     South. Stevens denounced Johnson as a ``wretched man'' and a 
     ``pettifogging political trickster,'' but then his strength 
     gave out and he had to sit down and let Butler read the rest 
     of his speech.
       The next day, while another prosecutor was delivering a 
     long summation, British novelist Anthony Trollope fell asleep 
     in the gallery, much to the amusement of the press corps.
       Then the defense began its summation, and the president's 
     lawyers more than earned their $2,000 fees. They quibbled 
     about the definition of ``high crimes and misdemeanors'' and 
     concluded that the president's actions did not rise to that 
     level. They said the Tenure of Office Act was 
     unconstitutional. They said that violating that act couldn't 
     be an impeachable offense because the act hadn't been passed 
     when the Constitution was adopted. Finally, in a delightful 
     demonstration of the art of legal hairsplitting, they claimed 
     that Johnson could not be convicted of removing Stanton from 
     office but only of attempting to remove Stanton from office. 
     After all, Stanton had never left his office--he was still 
     barricaded in his suite at the War Department.
       As the speakers droned on, the Washington Star tracked the 
     daily fluctuations in the betting action. On May 2, the odds 
     were 3 to 1 for conviction. On May 5, the odds were 2 to 1 
     for acquittal. The next day, the paper reported: ``Today 
     impeachment stock is as unaccountably up as it was 
     unaccountably down yesterday. The bulls have it.''
       On May 6, as prosecutor John Bingham prepared to deliver 
     the final summation of the trial, a false rumor swept the 
     galleries that Sen. James Grimes had died. Grimes was a 
     Johnson backer, and Republicans in the galleries began to 
     sing gleefully: ``Old Grimes is dead, that bad old man.''
       Justice Chase gaveled for order and then Bingham began his 
     speech. It was a full-blown barn-burner. ``We stand this day 
     pleading for the violated majesty of the law, by the graves 
     of half a million martyred hero-patriots who made death 
     beautiful by the sacrifice of themselves for their country.''
       After much florid rhetoric, he spoke the last words of the 
     trial: ``Before man and God, he is guilty!''
       Now it was time to decide the question--except the senators 
     insisted on discussing the matter in secret sessions for a 
     few days.
       Finally, on May 16, 1868, they were ready to vote.


                               Close Call

       The galleries and the Senate floor were packed but the room 
     was absolutely silent as Chief Justice Chase called the roll. 
     Conviction required a two-thirds majority, which meant 36 of 
     the 54 senators, and everyone knew that the vote would be 
     close.
       ``Mr. Senator Anthony, how say you?'' Chase asked.
       ``Guilty,'' said Henry Anthony, a Rhode Island Republican.
       ``Mr. Senator Bayard, how say you?''
       ``Not guilty,'' said James Bayard, a Delaware Democrat.
       Those votes were no surprise. Anthony and Bayard, like most 
     of the senators, had already announced their opinions. There 
     were 35 certain votes for conviction and three undecided. The 
     first of the undecided was William Pitt Fessenden, a 
     Republican from Maine.
       ``Mr. Senator Fessenden, how say you?'' Chase asked.
       ``Not guilty.''
       Across the country, crowds packed newspaper offices to get 
     news of each vote as it came over the telegraph. In the White 
     House, Johnson also learned of each vote by a separate 
     telegram.
       The next undecided voter was Sen. Joseph Fowler. He was 
     from Tennessee, Johnson's home state, but he was a Republican 
     who'd frequently voted against the president.
       ``Mr. Senator Fowler, how say you?''
       Fowler mumbled something that sounded like ``guilty.''
       ``Did the court hear his answer?'' a senator called out.
       Chase asked the question again.
       ``Not guilty,'' Fowler shouted.
       Now it all came down to Edmund G. Ross. A Kansas 
     Republican, Ross was new in office, having replaced a senator 
     who had committed suicide in 1866. Ross disliked Johnson and 
     voted against his Reconstruction policies. He'd been seen as 
     a certain vote for conviction until he sided with Johnson 
     supporters on some procedural motions. Since then, he'd been 
     bombarded by mail demanding that he vote to convict. But he 
     worried that conviction would damage the presidency forever. 
     During the vote, he sat at his desk, nervously ripping papers 
     into strips. When his name was called, he stood up and the 
     strips fell to the floor.
       ``Mr. Senator Ross, how say you?''
       ``Not guilty.''
       It was over. The president was saved by a single vote. His 
     lawyers sprinted to the White House to bring him the news. 
     Johnson wept with joy. He called for whiskey, poured shots 
     for his lawyers, and they celebrated with a silent toast.
       Back in the Capitol, the senators elbowed their way through 
     a rowdy crowd. ``Fessenden, you villainous traitor!'' 
     somebody yelled. Fessenden said nothing and kept moving.
       Too ill to walk, Thaddeus Stevens was carried from the 
     chamber in a chair. Seething with rage, he glared down at the 
     crowd. Someone asked him what had happened.
       ``The country,'' he screamed, ``is going to the Devil!''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 18, 1998]

                        The Man Behind the Votes

                      (By Joseph A. Califano, Jr.)

       The president most responsible for the Democratic victories 
     in 1998 is the stealth president whom Democrats are loath to 
     mention: Lyndon Johnson.

[[Page 306]]

       In March of 1965, when racial tension was high and taking a 
     pro-civil rights stand was sure to put the solid South (and 
     much of the North) in political play, President Johnson 
     addressed a joint session of Congress to propose the Voting 
     Rights Act. Flying in the face of polls that showed his 
     position was hurting his popularity, he said that ensuring 
     everyone the right to vote was an act of obedience to the 
     oath that the president and Congress take before ``God to 
     support and defend the Constitution.'' Looking members on the 
     floor straight in the eye, he closed by intoning the battle 
     hymn of the civil rights movement, ``And we shall overcome.'' 
     One southern congressman seated next to White House counsel 
     Harry McPherson exclaimed in shocked surprise, ``God damn!''
       That summer, with Johnson hovering over it, Congress passed 
     the Voting Rights Act. The president was so excited that he 
     rushed over to the Capitol to have a few celebratory drinks 
     with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Republican 
     Minority leader Everett Dirksen. The next day LBJ pressed 
     Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders to turn their 
     energy to registering black voters.
       LBJ planned every detail of the signing ceremony in the 
     Capitol Rotunda. He wanted ``a section for special people I 
     can invite,'' such as Rosa Parks (the 42-year-old black 
     seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a bus in 
     Montgomery) and Vivian Malone (the first black woman admitted 
     to the University of Alabama, in 1963). He told me to get ``a 
     table so people can say, `This is the table on which LBJ 
     signed the Voting Rights Bill.' ''
       He was exuberant as he drove with me and other staffers up 
     to Capitol Hill for the signing. Riding in the presidential 
     limo he spoke of a new day, ``If, if, if, if,'' he said, 
     ``the Negro leaders get their people to register and vote.''
       I rarely saw him happier than on that day. For years after 
     that, he fretted that too many black leaders were more 
     interested in a rousing speech or demonstration full of sound 
     bites and action for the TV cameras than in marshaling the 
     voting power of their people.
       Well, if he was looking down on us on Nov. 3--and I'm sure 
     he was up there counting votes--he saw his dream come true. 
     Without the heavy black turnout, the Democrats would not have 
     held their own in the Senate, picked up seats in the House 
     and moved into more state houses. In Georgia, the black share 
     of the total vote rose 10 points to 29 percent, helping to 
     elect a Democratic governor and the state's first black 
     attorney general.
       In Maryland, that share rose eight points to 21 percent, 
     saving the unpopular Gov. Parris Glendening from defeat. The 
     black vote in South Carolina kept Fritz Hollings in his 
     Senate seat, defeated Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina and 
     ensured Chuck Schumer's victory over Al D'Amato in New York.
       Here and there across the country, the black vote provided 
     the margin of victory for democratic governors and 
     congressmen--and where Republicans such as the Bush brothers 
     attracted large percentages of Hispanic and black voters, 
     helped roll up majorities with national implications.
       The Voting Rights Act is not the only thing Democrats can 
     thank LBJ for. Johnson captured for the Democratic Party 
     issues that were decisively important in this election. He 
     got Congress to pass the Elementary and Secondary Education 
     Act, which for the first time told the people they could look 
     to the federal government for help in local school districts. 
     It is his Medicare that Democrats promised to protect from 
     conservative Republican sledgehammers. LBJ was the president 
     who ratcheted up Social Security payments to lift more than 2 
     million Americans above the poverty line.
       Together Medicare and Social Security have changed the 
     nature of growing old in America and freed millions of baby 
     boomers to buy homes and send their kids to college rather 
     than spend the money to help their aging parents. The Great 
     Society's Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, Motor Vehicle 
     Pollution, Solid Waste Disposal and Highway Beautification 
     acts have given Democrats a lock on environmental issues.
       LBJ was also the president who created the unified budget 
     to include Social Security, which helped produce a balanced 
     budget in fiscal year 1969. Without that budget system, 
     President Clinton would not be able to claim credit for 
     producing the first balanced budget in 30 years.
       As exit polls showed, the Democratic command of the terrain 
     of education, health care, Social Security, the economy and 
     the environment--and the growth of the minority vote--paved 
     the road to electoral success in 1998.
       With the demise of Newt Gingrich, many Republicans think 
     it's time to mute his libelous assault on the Great Society 
     programs he loved to hate. Isn't it also time for Democrats 
     to come out of the closet and recognize the legacy of the 
     president who opened the polls to minorities and established 
     federal beachheads in education, health care and the 
     environment. After all, it's the Democrats' promise to 
     protect these beachheads and forge forward that accounts for 
     much of their success this November and offers their best 
     chance to retain the White House and recapture the House of 
     Representatives in 2000.
       The writer was President Lyndon Johnson's special assistant 
     for domestic affairs.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1998]

                  Barr Spoke to White Supremacy Group

                          (By Thomas B. Edsal)

       A spokesman for Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.) 
     acknowledged yesterday that Barr was a keynote speaker 
     earlier this year at a meeting of the Council of Conservative 
     Citizens, an organization promoting views that interracial 
     marriage amounts to white genocide and that Abraham Lincoln 
     was elected by socialists and communists.
       Barr spoke at the organization's semiannual convention on 
     June 6 in Charleston, S.C. His presence was cited by Harvard 
     law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who testified against the 
     impeachment of President Clinton at a hearing of the House 
     Judiciary Committee. Barr, the most outspoken proponent of 
     impeachment in the House, serves on the committee.
       ``Congressman Barr, who was fully aware of this 
     organization's racist and antisemitic agenda, not only gave 
     the keynote address to the CCC's national board, but even 
     allowed himself to be photographed literally embracing one of 
     their national directors,'' Dershowitz wrote Judiciary 
     Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) last week.
       In a letter to Hyde responding to Dershowitz, Barr declared 
     that Dershowitz's ``accusations are unfounded and 
     deplorable.''
       Asked to comment on the views of the council, Brad 
     Alexander, Barr's spokesman, said Barr is working full time 
     on impeachment, and ``he is not going to take time away from 
     it to respond to groundless attacks by Professor 
     Dershowitz.''
       In the letter to Hyde, Barr counterattacked, accusing 
     Dershowitz of ``condoning the use of racism in court, most 
     notably in the O.J. Simpson case,'' in which Dershowitz 
     served as part of the defense team.
       The World Wide Web site of the Council of Conservative 
     Citizens is dominated by material portraying the ``white 
     race'' as under siege. A council columnist described only as 
     ``H. Millard'' writes:
       ``Take 10 bottles of milk to represent all humans on earth. 
     Nine of them will be chocolate and only one white. Now mix 
     all those bottles together and you have gotten rid of that 
     troublesome bottle of white milk. There too is the way to get 
     rid of the world of whites. Convince them to mix their few 
     genes with the genes of the many. Genocide via the bedroom 
     chamber is as long lasting as genocide via war.''
                                  ____


                           Lott's Odd Friends

                          (By Colbert I. King)

       When the Senate convenes in January, its first order of 
     business should be to review Majority Leader Trent Lott's 
     fitness to serve as guiding light of the world's most 
     deliberative body. You heard it right. Before the senior 
     senator from Mississippi sits in judgment of anybody, most of 
     all the president, Lott's colleagues ought to pass fresh 
     judgment on him.
       The need for a closer look arises from recent articles by 
     Port reporter Thomas Edsall on Georgia Republican Rep. Robert 
     Barr's keynote address to the Council of Conservative 
     Citizens, a white ``racialist'' group that, among other 
     things, publishes anti-black screeds capable of making bigots 
     weak in the knees with delight. And Barr isn't alone. Lott 
     and the council have kept company, too.
       Barr's link with the council was first disclosed by Harvard 
     Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz during the House Judiciary 
     Committee's impeachment hearing. Barr initially screamed like 
     a stuck pig, claiming he knew nothing about the council's 
     alleged racist and antisemitic agenda. He only schmoozed it 
     up with council members at their meeting, said Barr, because 
     the group enjoyed the blessings of other big-name southern 
     conservatives, including Trent Lott, whom the council presses 
     to the bosom as one of its own.
       Lott, now at the peak of his GOP legislative career and 
     recognizing a banana peel when he sees one, demonstrated the 
     public relations smoothness that helped get him where he is 
     today by swiftly denying through a spokesman any council 
     membership. Lott has ``no firsthand knowledge of the group's 
     views,'' said the spokesman. Would that those words had been 
     uttered under oath.
       No sooner had Lott freed himself from the group than the 
     head of the council's national capital branch, Mark Cerr, 
     embraced the senator as an active member who had spoken to 
     the group in the past. And guess what? The Post next produced 
     a copy of the group's newsletter, Citizens Informer, with who 
     else but Lott on the front page delivering a suck-up speech 
     to a council gathering in Greenwood, Miss., in 1992. Lott 
     told those staunch proponents of preserving the white race 
     from immigration, intermarriage and ``the dark forces'' that 
     are overwhelming America that the council ``stand[s] for the 
     right principles and the right philosophy.''
       Lott spokesman John Czwartacki told me this week that the 
     '92 event was just another case of a politician delivering a 
     stump speech to a local group of unknown political

[[Page 307]]

     pedigree--no big deal. What's more, after being confronted 
     with evidence of the 1992 speech and the group's views, Lott 
     renounced the council and said he won't truck with the likes 
     of them now or henceforth forevermore.
       Well, not so fast.
       If, as it is now being argued in Lott's behalf, the 
     majority leader is not comfortable with xenophobic, race-
     baiting bigots, when did he first grow suspicious and really 
     start keeping his distance from the group? Because contrary 
     to claims that he participated in the council event in '92 
     because he didn't know any better, they seem to have been 
     keeping company for some time.
       On my desk is a copy of a page from the 1997 Citizens 
     Informer with a smiling Trent Lott pictured meeting in his 
     Washington office with council national officers William D. 
     Lord Jr., president Tom Dover and CEO Gordon Lee Baum. Lord 
     and Baum were also in the '92 photo. And who is Lord? The 
     Post reports Lord was a regional organizer for the southern-
     based segregationist Citizen Councils. In the '60s, white 
     Citizen Council members shared the Ku Klux Klan's views on 
     civil rights but tended to speak and dress better and not 
     slink around after dark in white hoods.
       So much could be said about the Council of Conservative 
     Citizens. But let's let Citizens Informer, the group's Web 
     site and its other document speak for themselves:
       ``Given what has come out in the press about Mr. Clinton's 
     alleged [sexual] preferences, and his apparent belief that 
     oral sex is not sex one wonders if perhaps Mr. Clinton isn't 
     America's first liberal black president. . . . His beliefs 
     are actually a result of his inner black culture. Call him an 
     Oreo turned inside out'' (H. Millard, 1998).
       ``Life Magazine, the glossy photo album of folksy liberals, 
     has been enlarging depraved miscreants like John F. Kennedy 
     and Martin Luther King into national heroes for decades'' 
     (1998).
       ``The most important issue facing us is the continued 
     existence of our people, the European derived descendants of 
     the founders of the American nation. As immigration fills our 
     country with aliens, we risk being disposed and, ultimately 
     displaced entirely'' (1995).
       ``A Formal Protest of the [Arthur] Ashe Statue unveiling 
     ceremony will be held on the site of a Confederate 
     Fortification with Battle Flags. . . . Those with confederate 
     battle flags will assemble behind the statue. . . . Come 
     early and dress formal (coat and tie) No racial slurs 
     please'' (Richmond Chapter, June 30, 1996).
       ``Black rule in South Africa a total failure.'' ``The 
     increase of crime and barbarism in South Africa is nothing 
     more than the emergence of the African ethos, so long 
     submerged by strong pre-deKlerk National Party governments'' 
     (Citizens Informer, Winter, 1997-98).
       ``The Jews' motto is `never forget, and never forgive.' One 
     can't agree with the way they've turned spite into welfare 
     billions for themselves, but the `never forget' part is very 
     sound'' (``A Southern View,'' Citizens Informer, 1997).
       ``Our liberal establishment is using the media of 
     television to promote racial intimacy and miscegenation. . . 
     . all of the news teams on the major networks have black and 
     white newscasters of opposite sexes'' (Citizens Informer, 
     1998).
       And as for Trent Lott's view of the council before the 
     Citizens Informer article appeared in Edsall's story? A 1995 
     council promotional mailer quotes Lott: ``America needs a 
     national organization to mobilize conservative, patriotic 
     citizens to help protect our flag, Constitution and other 
     symbols of freedom.''
       Trent Lott's column regularly appears in the Informer 
     newsletter (including its most recent issue in 1998) along 
     with the publication's offensive racial columns and articles. 
     However, Lott's spokesman said it would be wrong to associate 
     his boss's noncontroversial and businesslike column, which is 
     widely distributed, with the repugnant views and materials 
     published by the council. Fair enough.
       But has Lott kept his distance from the council--or are the 
     ties long-running and cozy? And if the relationship is ended, 
     when did he do it, and how clean is the break? Before hearing 
     the case against Bill Clinton, the Senate and the country 
     need to hear Republican majority leader Trent Lott's case for 
     himself.
                                  ____


              [From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1998]

                GOP in South Sees a Civil War It Can Win

                       (By Earl Ofari Hutchinson)


``Racists lead the impeachment battle to punish Clinton for his social 
                  programs and civil rights stands.''

       Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia gives us an answer to why so many 
     House Republicans defy public opinion, ignore the advice of 
     GOP governors, reject the advice of party moderates in the 
     Senate and are willing to paralyze the government to nail 
     President Clinton. Barr says that they are fighting a civil 
     war.
       Since November 1997, Barr has been the point man for 
     Southern Republicans in calling for Bill Clinton's head. This 
     isn't the usual conservative political rage at a politician 
     they regard as a corrupt, immoral, big-spending, big-
     government Democrat.
       Barr, who represents the mostly white, conservative, 
     suburban 7th District in Georgia, is a big booster of the 
     Council of Conservative Citizens. This is the outfit that 
     issued ``A Call to White Americans,'' has denounced blacks as 
     intellectually inferior, champions the Confederate flag and 
     maintains tight ties to Klansman David Duke.
       In House speeches, Barr has slammed the Congressional Black 
     Caucus, opposed hate crime laws and spending on social 
     programs. His Web page is linked to the pages of the most 
     extreme right-wing groups in the nation. His campaign against 
     Clinton is part of the Republican Party's Southern strategy 
     to roll back the civil rights gains and eliminate the social 
     programs of the 1960s.
       Although Barr is one of the most extreme GOP race-baiters 
     in Congress, he has got the political muscle to push the 
     South's vendetta. Southern Republicans control 82 out of 228 
     Republican House seats, by far the largest single bloc in 
     Congress. Clinton's victory in 1992 temporarily derailed the 
     Southern bloc's plan to gut civil rights and social programs. 
     Southern Republicans watched as more than 85% of African 
     Americans voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and provided the 
     swing vote for many Democrats in congressional and state 
     races this November. African Americans regard Clinton more 
     favorably than Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrakhan.
       The Southern bloc is distressed that the Congressional 
     Black Caucus has been Clinton's biggest defender against the 
     GOP assault and dismayed that far more African Americans than 
     whites oppose impeachment. These Republicans are disgusted 
     that Clinton has appointed more blacks to high administrative 
     offices than any other president, supported minority 
     redistricting in the South, called for tougher action against 
     church burnings and convened the first-ever White House 
     conference to push for tougher penalties to combat hate 
     crimes.
       Barr and his cohorts are enraged that Clinton is the first 
     president since Lyndon Johnson to empanel a commission to 
     talk seriously about racial problems and supported the U.S. 
     Sentencing Commission's recommendations to ``equalize'' the 
     disproportionate drug sentences given to minority offenders. 
     They are affronted that Clinton increased funding for job and 
     education programs, made numerous high-profile appearances at 
     black churches, conferences and ceremonies on school 
     integration in the South and opposed the anti-affirmative 
     action Proposition 209 in California. They are distressed 
     that Clinton is the first president to travel to and support 
     economic initiatives in Caribbean and sub-saharan African 
     nations.
       The faster the Southern Republicans rush to dump Clinton, 
     the greater his popularity will be among African Americans. 
     Many blacks see impeachment as a thinly disguised attempt to 
     hammer the president for acting and speaking out on black 
     causes, and as a backdoor power grab for the White House in 
     the year 2000--and they're right. But as long as Southern 
     Republicans control such a huge block of congressional votes, 
     they believe that impeachment is the civil war they can win.
       Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of ``The Crisis in 
     Black and Black'' (Middle Passage Press, 1998)

     

                          ____________________