WASHINGTON _ Bill Clinton's impeachment two decades ago set the modern template for President Donald Trump's upcoming trial in the Senate. But the process may be even more contentious this time given sharper tribal divisions in Washington.
Clinton's four-week proceeding in 1999 riveted the nation. Thirteen Republican House managers marched across the Capitol to present articles of impeachment, led by the silver-maned chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde. An old-school grand orator, he cast Clinton's impeachment as a matter of national honor and invoked the sacrifices of war dead.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist presided, clad in a custom robe adorned with gold stripes he had designed based on a costume from a Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera.
Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with the Democratic president, gave video testimony. And Arkansas Sen. Dale Bumpers rebutted with a folksy drawl the managers' argument that the case was about principle rather than merely a titillating scandal: "When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex,' it's about sex."
Partisan strife threatens to engulf the Senate once again as the chamber prepares a trial for two articles of impeachment against Trump, accusing him of abusing his power and blocking Congress' investigation into that abuse.
The rancor in 1999 eventually subsided as leaders from both parties moved to contain the damage. But they were navigating political cross-currents that produced very different incentives than their counterparts face today.
Senate leaders in the Clinton trial recognized that their own interests diverged from their party allies. The Democratic White House wanted the entire process discredited as a partisan vendetta, but many Democrats were at the same time repulsed by the president's conduct and didn't want to defend it. Republican senators, meanwhile, were acutely aware of GOP losses in the midterm House election, held in the middle of the process and widely seen as a repudiation of the drive to impeach the president.
This time there's little sign that Senate Republicans feel the need to distance themselves from the White House. Trump holds a firmer grasp over his party than Clinton did _ the biggest political threat to Republican incumbents is primary challengers, not Democrats.
Unlike the last impeachment, Trump is almost certain to lead the national Republican ticket again in 2020, tying the fortunes of lower-level officeholders more closely to his standing. Underscoring the point, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has openly declared he's coordinating with the president's lawyers to set procedures for the trial. And precedent isn't binding on McConnell.
"He has a lot of latitude," said Trent Lott, the Republican Senate majority leader during the Clinton trial. "There is nobody who knows the rules of the Senate like Mitch McConnell. He also knows this is a different time, a different set of facts."
