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Articles
Partisanship
Works Both Ways
by
Jason Kelly
01/22/1999
Far too
much has been made of the partisanship surrounding President
Clinton's impeachment trial. Reporters become outraged at
the herd of Republicans pursuing the president's removal.
Reporters call it a corruption of the political process.
But
it's not. We live under a partisan political process and,
by definition, it works both ways. It's extremely rare to
have only one side of a two-party political system behaving
in a partisan manner. Just as the Republicans seem loosely
united in their desire to oust the president, so the Democrats
seem loosely united in their desire to keep him in office.
Still, the media proclaim, it's the partisanship of the GOP
that keeps this sideshow in business.
However, it's interesting that the same media noted smugly
that the Senate did not have the two-thirds needed to vote
Clinton out. Why could that be? Perhaps because they knew
that Democrats would vote in a partisan manner to keep
the president in? Of course. There's no other way anybody
could have known before the trial had been held that the president
would emerge the victor.
There is nothing wrong with partisanship. It makes sense that
most Republicans will share beliefs on various issues. They
are, after all, members of the same political party. If a
congressman didn't feel some allegiance to the values of the
party then he would be a democrat or a member of a different
party. I'm sure that in that case he would vote along with
other democrats or fellow members of the different party.
Common beliefs are why we join together into political parties.
Furthermore,
the process seems to be working. The partisanship of Republicans
in the House impeached the president and it looks as though
the partisanship of the Senate will allow him to remain in
office. Why that angers the media is beyond me.
The framers built this country right. It takes a lot of agreement
across the various political parties to remove a president
from office. That guarantees that only the most egregious
offenses will suffice. Some believe that the president has
committed offenses that qualify. I'm among those people. But
if the vast majority of our elected officials don't feel that
he has, he stays. That keeps any complaints about renegade
forces attacking the presidency at bay. The renegade force
must become not only the majority of the Senate, but the overwhelming
majority.
That shows the system doing its part to protect the dignity
of the office, even if President Clinton won't. Whether he
leaves by force or because his term has ended, I can't wait
for the day.
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