My life

He chided the House managers for having no compassion. Then came the most dramatic moment of Dale’s speech: “Put yourself in his position . . . we are, none of us, perfect . . . he should have thought of all that beforehand. And indeed he should have, just as Adam and Eve should have”—now he pointed at the senators—“just as you and you and you and you and millions of other people who have been caught in similar circumstances should have thought of it before. As I say, none of us is perfect.”

Dale then said that I had already been punished severely for my mistake, that the people didn’t want me removed, and that the Senate should listen to the world leaders who had stood up for me, including Havel, Mandela, and King Hussein.

He closed with an erudite and detailed history of the Constitutional Convention’s deliberations on the impeachment provision, saying that our framers took it from English law, which plainly covered offenses “distinctly ‘political’ against the state.” He pleaded with the Senate not to defile the Constitution, but instead to hear the American people “calling on you to rise above politics . . . and do your solemn duty.”

Bumpers’ speech was magnificent, by turns erudite and emotional, earthy and profound. If the Senate roll had been called at that moment, there wouldn’t have been many votes for removal. Instead, the process would drag out for three more weeks, as the House managers and their allies tried to find a way to persuade more Republican senators to vote with them. After the two sides had made their presentations, it was clear that all the Democratic senators and several Republicans were going to vote no.

While the Senate was sitting in trial, I was doing what I always did at this time of the year—getting ready for the State of the Union speech and promoting around the country the new initiatives that would be in it. The speech was scheduled for the nineteenth, the same day my defense opened in the Senate. Some Republican senators had urged me to delay the speech, but I wasn’t about to do that. The impeachment had already cost the American people lots of their hard-earned tax dollars, diverted the Congress from pressing business, and weakened the fabric of the Constitution. If I had delayed my speech, it would have sent a message to the American people that their business had been put on the back burner.

If possible, the atmosphere at this State of the Union was even more surreal than it had been the previous year. As always, I entered the Capitol and was taken to the Speaker’s quarters, which were now occupied by Dennis Hastert of Illinois, a stocky former wrestling coach who was quite conservative but less abrasive and confrontational than Gingrich, Armey, and DeLay. Before long, a bipartisan delegation of senators and representatives came to take me to the House chamber. We shook hands and talked as if nothing else in the world was going on. When I was introduced and began to walk down the aisle, the Democrats cheered loudly as most Republicans clapped politely. Since the aisle splits the Republicans and Democrats, I expected to spend the trip down to the podium shaking hands on the Democratic side and was surprised that, for whatever reason, several Republican House members held out their hands, too.