|
After the ReportTennessee Democrats, Rep. Bryant stake out differing positions on the Clinton matter.by Jackson Baker
In theory, 7th District U.S. Rep. Ed Bryant, a second-term congressman and a member of the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee, is uncommitted on the issue of articles of impeachment. But Bryant, who will soon enough get to vote on whether to bring an impeachment resolution to the full House, left little doubt Saturday how he leaned. “A president must have both the trust and the respect of the American people,” Bryant said Saturday at the monthly Dutch Treat Luncheon at the Midway Cafe, adding of the just-released Starr Report, “If all that the report alleges is true, it gets awfully close to my definition of high crimes and misdemeanors.” That last turn of phrase, of course, evoked the exact language of the Constitution in spelling out what presidential offenses might merit impeachment. “Even if it takes a lame-duck special session, we need to go ahead and resolve this matter before we swear in a new Congress,” Bryant said. He enumerated a few of the issues, foreign and domestic, facing the country, and said President Clinton appeared “too distracted” to be able to deal with them capably. (Clinton’s legal team had argued unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court then that the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, which led to the revelations of Clinton’s relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, would in fact “distract” the president.) Bryant said the country needed to regroup and “get behind somebody” as soon as possible – an obvious indication that he leaned toward impeachment or a presidential resignation. “Our party’s prospects look real good right now for the year 2000, whether we’re faced with Vice President Al Gore or anybody else,” he said.
And, though there was some question among observers and even some of the participants about how much good it would do the beneficiaries, the committee made a point of rallying around both President Clinton and the party’s gubernatorial nominee, John Jay Hooker. By unanimous vote, the gathered Democrats approved a resolution from committee members David Upton of Memphis and Bill Owens of Nashville to continue giving unstinted support to Clinton and to urge the party’s representatives in Congress to oppose impeachment proceedings. (Since President Clinton’s recent admission of a relationship with Lewinsky, and especially in the wake of the release of the Starr Report last week, there had been significant slippage in the degree of Tennessee congressmen’s support; even a formerly stalwart supporter like U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis said on MSNBC that the president’s actions were “indefensible.”) And the party’s new committee members gave a rousing reception to Hooker, who addressed them on his favored theme of campaign finance reform and – either through design or through neglect – did not ask them for a formal endorsement of his far-reaching proposals, one of which would ban campaign contributions by persons from outside the geographical limits of the area which a candidates aspires to serve. Hooker pledged the committee members a “people’s campaign” against “fat cats,” and promised not to be “Don Sundquist’s stray dog.”
Stamps has been serving as chairman of the state House Republican Caucus but decided against running for reelection this year – in part, he told SCRW members, so he could feel freer about criticizing things as they are. “They take reprisals against your district if you cross them,” he said. “They,” in the course of Stamps’ remarks, were specified as Jimmy Naifeh of Covington, the Democrat who serves as Speaker of the state House of Representatives, and Lois DeBerry of Memphis, Speaker Pro Tem. After recounting some of the rigors suffered by his aviator father in the course of World War II, Stamps proclaimed, “My father didn’t go fight the Germans in order to let DeBerry and Jimmy Naifeh make all the laws in Tennessee.” Stamps drew the wartime parallel as tight as he could, calling Naifeh a “tyrannical leader” and, by way of calling for his defeat this year, saying, “The enemy is not Russia anymore, nor Germany and the Nazis.” After scoring dictators of the past, Stamps said “Jimmy Naifeh is the same way. He has no respect for rules.” The Speaker had ignored parliamentary rules and, moreover, had “sold our House to the highest bidder” by establishing quotas last year for lobbyists to contribute to the House Democratic Caucus campaign fund, Stamps said. The putative beneficiary of Stamps’ rhetoric, Joe Johnson of Covington, Naifeh’s Republican opponent this year, was in the audience. Johnson, a retired minister, said he had raised some $3,000 so far and hoped to raise as much as $30,000 before the November 3rd election.
Developer Shep Wilbun was elected chairman unanimously, and the nomination speech by Morris Fair, redolent with phrases like “highly qualified” and “totally dedicated,” was only slightly less effusive than the tributes paid to outgoing chairman Tommy Hart by Wilbun (who cited Hart’s “fairness and evenhandedness”) and others. Wilbun promised that his one-year term would be characterized by efforts to unify the community and by his “commitment to an inclusive future … representative of the diversity of this entire region.” He admonished the seven white Republicans on the commission as well as his five black Democratic colleagues to step “outside the box” of partisan considerations. Along with fellow Democrat (and former chairman) Julian Bolton, Wilbun has often taken the lead on controversial matters, especially those with racial implications, which in recent years had often divided the commission on a 7-6 party-line basis. A prospective candidate for mayor of Memphis next year, Wilbun has been at pains lately to be conciliatory and was so diffident Monday that he had difficulty casting a vote for himself. “It’s okay,” Republican Commissioner Mark Norris finally assured him. The GOP’s Buck Wellford was elected, also unanimously, to serve
as chairman pro tem.
Clinton a Sex Addict?Kitty Dukakis recommends a 12-step program.BOSTON – Time was when Bill and Hillary Clinton, as the embodiments of a triumphant New Democracy, were widely contrasted to their unsuccessful and less glamorous would-be predecessors, Michael and Kitty Dukakis, the putative Democratic first couple from the presidential election of 1988. Now that the White House floors seem to be turning to quicksand for the Clintons, the Dukasises might be pardoned for wanting to deliver a few cautionary judgments from the relative terra firma of their political retirement. Mingling with their fellow guests at a wedding reception in Boston weekend before last, they viewed the Clinton’s current predicament with sadness, alarm, and a sense of saw-it-all-coming. Dukakis, who expressed gratitude for being asked to serve on an advisory board or two by Clinton, thought the president still might summon up enough luck and pluck to survive the Lewinsky mess but saw real trouble coming from Attorney General Janet Reno’s decision to start the 90-day clock on a probe of possible presidential fund-raising misdeeds. “They [the Clinton campaign] were careless, and they lost all sense of judgment. That’s what could finally bring them down,” said the former Massachusetts governor, who criticized such Clinton-Gore fund-raisers as Marvin Rosen by name, and reflected on his own campaign’s scrupulously by-the-books fund-raising effort. “We never wanted for campaign money. That wasn’t what beat us,” said Dukakis, who declined in general to pass the buck for his 1988 failure. “It wasn’t the times, and it wasn’t Willie Horton. It was me. I should have been ready to deal with the opposition’s attack mode, and I just wasn’t,” Dukakis said, expressing misgivings that Clinton had thus far not taken full responsibility for his current predicament. “It’s not just a matter of apologizing. He’ll have to own up and take the blame for letting things get this far out of control.” Kitty Dukakis was even more explicit. “My husband and I have known him [Clinton] for 22 years, and all that time we’ve known what he was. His problem is that he’s an addictive personality. That’s the source of his sexual behavior. It’s not a matter of his judgment, and an apology is really beside the point.” The woman whose own problems with alcohol and a variety of other intoxicants led her to publicly acknowledge her own status as an addict said that the president could not hope to change unless he realized the true source of his sexual compulsiveness and owned up to it publicly. “He’ll have to admit to himself and to others that he’s a sexual addict and go through a good 12-step program the way I and so many others did. If he does that, there’s real hope for him.” Both Dukakises said they continued to believe that President Clinton’s programs had been good for the nation and that – if he could bring himself to express a true mea culpa – he still had much to offer. – J.B. |
he issuance last week of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s report
to Congress on his four-year investigation of President Clinton
– heavy on sexual references – dominated political thinking locally
as well as nationally.
Meanwhile, Tennessee’s Democrats, facing the spectre of impeachment
at the national level and an uphill gubernatorial battle at the
state level, were doing their own regrouping in Nashville Saturday,
as the newly reformed state Democratic Executive Committee met
in Nashville for its first post-election meeting.
