President Bill Clintons Trial - Essay Example

? Clinton Trail Introduction William Jefferson Blythe III known to many people as Bill Clinton was born in August 19th 1946 in Hope, Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas for a two year term of five months before becoming a president that was since 1979 to 1992. In 1992, he defeated George H.W.Bush and became the42nd president of the United State. This made him the third youngest president at the age of 46 of the United State. In history, Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. In 1996, Clinton was re-elected as the president of the United State for a second term becoming the first democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected twice. However, in 1998, he was accused for perjury and obstruction of justice during a case against him. These two accusations were related to a scandal concerning a white house intern. Although he was acquitted by the U.S Senate and completed his term in office the trial marked a great part of American history. Clinton’s Trial President Bill Clinton’s trial for the charges brought up against him of perjury and obstruction of justice, started in January 7 1999, in the Senate. As indicated in Article 1 of the United State Constitution, Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court was sworn in to preside over the trial and the juniors sworn in were the 100 senators. This was the second time in the United State history that the senate conducted a trial of a head of state (Sigelman et al, 2001). The origin of Clinton’s trial was in a sexual harassment lawsuit claimed by one Paula Jones in Arkansas in May, 1994. Paula Jones was a former Arkansas state employee. Paula claimed that in May 8, 1991 while she was helping to staff a state-sponsored conference at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, a member of at that time Governor Bill Clinton’s security, Danny Ferguson, came to her and told her that the Governor was asking to meet her in his hotel suite. Jones saw this as an opportunity to advance her career therefore she took the elevator to the Governor’s suite. According to her statement, Jones claims that when she got to the suite, the Governor, Clinton at that time, continuously made increasingly aggressive moves on her. In her account, she claimed that the Governor forced her to do sexual things but, according to the security guard outside the suite, Jones looked happy when she got out of the Governor’s suite. The lawyers of Clinton asked the court to dismiss Jones claims in 1997 saying it would only disrupt his work at the white house but the supreme court ruled against the president and allowed the discovery of the case to continue that was in May 1997. An independent Counsel Ken Starr was the one in charge of the investigation (umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/clinton/). Counsel Ken had history with investigating the officials in the white house although many of his cases had failed to hold in court for example his case on the land deal years earlier known as White-water. It was during this investigation that he got prove of Clinton’s misuse of power by being intimate with an employee, Monica Lewinsky. Consequently, Clinton’s trial had a lot of impact to the political sector mainly in Clintons rating and publicity. During this Lewinsky/impeachment controversy, Bill Clinton received the highest job approval ratings of his administration. Furthermore, as the Lewinsky situation unfolded, Clinton's approval in terms of his job went up, not down as was expected. Moreover, his ratings remained high for the duration of the impeachment proceedings. However while Clinton's job approval rating went up during the scandal with Lewinsky and the trial, his poll numbers though went down concerning the question of honesty, integrity and moral character as a political leader. As a result of this low ratings about his moral character and honesty led to change the political leadership of the United States. George.W.Bush was the president elected defeating Gore in the 2000 presidential elections and according to analysts; majority of the people who voted for Bush over the retiring president preferred candidate Gore was because of his moral character. The promise made by Bush to restore honor and dignity in White House made him more popular to the people unlike Gore who was negatively affected by Clinton’s trial and scandals hence leading to his defeat. The congress house was also affected politically by the trial of Clinton in that the speaker of the house, Gingrich, who had been in the front line in supporting Clinton’s trial to take place in the supreme court resigned after the elections. Gingrich had high hopes of the republicans gaining the majority of seats in the congress house because of Clinton’s scandal and trial and he had been reassure before elections by a private polling that due to the scandal the republicans will gain the majority of the seats in the house (Sigelman et al, 2001). However, this did not happen since after the elections the republicans had lost five seats to the democrats and this was an embarrassment to Gingrich hence, leading to him resigning. He officially resigned in January 3, 1999 that was after he had found a replacement to the vacant seat he was leaving behind. Furthermore, Clinton’s trial had great impacts on his presidency, first and foremost the publicity he got surrounding the revelation of Lewinsky about their relationship correlated with a visible large jump in Clinton’s job approval rating. During his trial the public gave Bill Clinton the highest job approval ratings compared to any of the 25 quarters of his administration to date. However, Clinton’s job approval ratings fell after the trial and he was acquitted. Although Clinton had an increasing positive rating on the way he handled the economy, the rating of his moral character as a person in office went down. The rating by the public of Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness were very low. The public viewed his moral characters and his ability to do his work as required by the people who voted for him differently. They rated him as a good economy driver but rated him negatively on his moral character. The public understood that the case was basically featuring mainly questions on his private work and not his official work and although he had lied before about his relationship with Lewinsky, all that had not affected hi performance in office. Also the trial of Clinton affected his presidency in that it made it difficult for people to take presidents seriously. The destruction of the mystery behind the authority figure like the president is a consequence to be lamented upon. People usually view the president with a lot of respect and admiration because mostly they do not know what goes on behind the image that is portrayed himself, his advisers and the media so therefore when their dirty laundry starts to be unveiled all over then the people will start looking at them differently. That is what happened to Clinton because of the trial and the scandals. The lie that Clinton told on oath about not having a relationship with Monica Lewinsky made him lose some credibility with the people and that’s why they did not vote for the preferred candidate by their retiring president. In U.S history, the trial of Bill Clinton was historic as it brought out a lot about the aspect of American culture. The public understood that the case was basically featuring mainly questions on his private work and not his official work and although he had lied before about his relationship with Lewinsky, all that had not affected hi performance in office. Most liberal and open minded people did not take much weight on the scandal that faced Clinton as the they saw it as an issue concerning his private life. Since the lies concerned his private life, it did not seem to have much impact on the lives of many Americans. This clearly shows that most it’s an American culture to not be concern with other people’s private lives and what they do about their lives as long as it does not affects them directly. However, in some important cases, the press leaned on the suspicions of investigators that did not hold up and downplayed the denials of the accused Moreover, there was a lot of controversy from the report from the media as; The report in initial New York Times account stated that Currie told investigators about Clinton having led her to tell about the relationship with Lewinsky and the gifts she received from Lewinsky. Contrary, The Times, however, reported that in the 17th paragraph Currie’s response through her attorney. Furthermore, some other subsequent reports elsewhere elaborated on what the Times reported. However, in some instances, the press was similarly careful about who started Currie retrieving the gifts from Lewinsky. Further, some commentators were quick to broad conclusions in speculating about what effect that Currie and the gifts would have on the future of Clinton. In the end, Starr makes Currie a key part of the impeachment case, but admits that he has conflicting testimony about what happened. Generally, the New York Times account holds up well as it constituted the principal source for other reporting. This clearly shows how the media contradicted giving the same story but with different reports. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was significant as it contributed to a franker national discussion about sex and, by showing how many skeletons exist in the closets of politicians. Furthermore, it might lead to hopefully future elections in terms of considering matters of substance when electing leaders than what one of the candidates did sometime in the past. In conclusion, there was a lot of debated from commentators on the significance of the incident. Some looked at it as a partisan power struggle, or an effort to evict a president who inspired deep hate among his enemies. Furthermore, others looked at it as a debate about the sexual mores of the country, with Clinton's opponents campaigned for a return to Victorian norms that punished behaviors that were not normal while his supporters were defending a new, more tolerant morality (umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/clinton/). Consequently, the debate also brought to light a gulf between the public, most of which wished to see Clinton stay in office, and elite journalists and politicians in Washington, who demanded Clinton's resignation. Consequently, though short lived the impeachment, stained Clinton’s record, and probably caused a lot more harm to the Republicans compared to the Democrats. However, Clinton remained enormously popular the whole time, while the Republicans saw their public standing going down. Consequently, it is argued in some instances that the most lasting effect of the affair was to divert Clinton and the Congress from other concerns, thus keeping them from accomplishing more in his second term. Reference Sigelman, Lee, Christopher J. Deering, and Burdett A. Loomis. "Wading Knee Deep In Words, Words, Words": Senatorial Rhetoric In The Johnson And Clinton Impeachment Trials." Congress & The Presidency 28.2 (2001): 119-139. Print. "The Impeachment Trial of President William Jefferson Clinton." The Impeachment Trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. . Read More