1 gen 1999 anni - Clinton acquitted of impeachment charges in Senate

Descrizione:

Clinton won reelection with relative ease in 1996, but any hopes for major progress in a second term unraveled when a tawdry scandal led to his impeachment. Clinton publicly denied having had a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, but Republicans concluded that Clinton was lying — and thus guilty of perjury, because he had had told the lie during a legal deposition, related to a civil lawsuit being brought against him for sexual harassment during his tenure as governor of Arkansas, while under oath. Historically, Americans have understood “high crimes and misdemeanors” — the constitutional standard for impeachment — as involving a serious abuse of public trust that endangered the republic. But in 1998, conservative Republicans favored a much lower standard, as part of a total opposition to the Clinton presidency. On December 19, the House of Representatives narrowly approved two articles of impeachment. According to a CBS News poll, 38 percent of Americans favored impeachment, whereas 58 percent opposed it. Chastened by this lack of public support, many Senate Republicans shied away from convicting Clinton, and the impeachment trial held in 1999 fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to remove the president. But like Andrew Johnson, the only other president to be tried by the Senate up to that time, Clinton and the Democratic Party paid a high price for his acquittal. Preoccupied with defending himself, the president was unable to fashion a Democratic alternative to the Republicans’ domestic agenda.

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