On The Impeachment of Bill Clinton

Amechi A. Okolo, PhD.
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12/16/98


Bill Clinton,
President of the United States
White House
Washington, DC


Dear Mr. President,

A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF WHY IMPEACHMENT WILL BE GOOD FOR YOU, MR. PRESIDENT!

The first thing I want to state in this letter is that I am a very strong supporter of you and the First Lady. My wife and myself are very big fans of two of you which means that we are naturally not happy with the way things are going.
I know that I should have written this letter earlier but I kept hoping that the crisis would go away so that my advice might not be needed after all. However, after all the ups and downs, we are now at the crunch time. The Judiciary Committee has voted to impeach you and the full House will approve the articles this week (unless a miracle happens). So for all intents and purposes it is safe to assume that the President will be impeached this week. Meanwhile, everybody is acting or behaving as if impeachment is the worst thing that could ever happen to Clinton and/or whether it will be the end of the world for the President and the nation.
Mr. President, I most respectfully beg to disagree. Impeachment is not the most terrible thing that could happen to you in this crisis. In fact, given the current political equation, impeachment by the House is not only your most favored option but what you must insist on. You should give the Republicans only two options — to impeach you or leave you alone — and my bet is that they will drop the entire matter and leave you alone because they are the ones to lose if they go for impeachment.
I am writing this therefore to urge you not to accept any form of censure. Those who are urging you to accept censure as the alternative to impeachment have either not taken the time to make their own independent study, analysis and hence come to their own rational conclusions or that they are actually your real enemies whose ulterior motive is to goad you to your actual disaster. The truth however, is that your acceptance of any form of censure will mean ultimate disaster for you and a historical victory for the Republicans. Equally, the opposite, your impeachment by the House will ultimately lead to your glorious vindication and a permanent historical indictment and embarrassment of the Republicans. Mr. President, I make the above assertions with the highest sense of professional responsibility and I urge any scholar in the country to contradict my position with historical or theoretical evidence. Again, briefly, my position is this — that given the current political equation censure will mean a historical disaster for you and a resounding historical victory for the Republicans while the alternative of impeachment will lead to a resounding historical victory and vindication for you and a permanent shameful indictment and embarrassment for the Republicans. I am therefore urging you to read this letter very carefully, study and discuss it with your closest advisers before proceeding on your current strategy of pleading for censorship which I believe is seriously ill-informed.
My urgency in writing this letter therefore derives from my basic assumption that the President will be impeached this week. In fact, impeachment will be my preferred outcome this week. The various censor alternatives being proffered are more ominous and unacceptable to me. I am aware that censors are being proposed by the Democrats and some President’s friends in Washington, and that the President himself has even indicated his willingness to accept some form of censor, but censor is a bad idea and I firmly advise against it for reasons I will give.
The President’s friends are proposing censure because of political pressures where they must be seen to be supporting some kind of “punishment” for the President. The President himself also proposed to accept censure — I believe, because of political pressures — to show that he has really repented and ready to accept some form of punishment for his transgressions and not because he felt that he deserved it.
Briefly, I write this therefore for the following reasons:
1. To urge you not to accept censure (I will give more reasons later).
2. To plead with you never, never to resign, (as Hyde and others are now suggesting).
3. To let the constitutional process go its full route which will culminate in the Senate trial and your ultimate acquittal.

The President should not accept censure because it will be the worst option for him at this point given all the possible "“punishments" he might receive from impeachment. Actually if the Republicans think their options thoroughly and rationally they should be the ones calling for censure. They should then craft the worst forms of censure for you (Like the one Dole is now peddling around), which might include complete “voluntary” admission of legal wrong doings, unbearable financial fines and a binding pledge never to seek or accept Presidential pardon and/or run for any future political office.
And I am sure that given the current pressures surrounding you now that many people would urge you to accept the above censure terms including any other possible unthinkable punitive terms they might think of because their basic argument is that anything would be better for you than impeachment which is absolutely not true.
Well, Mr. President, I respectfully beg to disagree. I am a Professor, and I have been teaching American society and public policies for the past twenty years and there is nothing that I have seen or read since then to suggest to me that censure should be preferred by you. In fact all evidence suggest to the contrary.
By accepting censure, you are voluntarily accepting legal liability for whatever these guys might throw at you now and in the future. But more importantly, you will be providing the only authentic and indisputable evidence for history to judge and confirm that you were really wrong and that the Republicans were right. Please, I plead with you, do not give them that more evidence on a platter of gold. Let those ultra radical (i.e. conservative) Republicans work for their own historical exculpation without your further help. You have already helped them enough to get yourself into the mess that we are in today and I hate to see you lend them any further rope to hang you.
If you agree that you lied under oath as some are suggesting, it will not help your case. It will only complicate your case. It will tantamount to plea bargain. But the ultra conservative Republicans who push this impeachment process have only shown extreme predilection for your demise, and they will not rest until you are removed after which they will face Al Gore who will represent continuation of your policies which are the real issues in contention here.
I agree with the Republicans here that the real issue is neither Monica Lewinsky nor sex. They are all facades designed to mask the real Republican deep seated problems with Bill Clinton. I am certain that if they did not find Monica Lewinsky that they would have found something else because the main strategy is not only that Clinton has to be brought down but that he must be politically destroyed permanently. The most important question therefore is this — Why such venomous hatred against President Clinton? The answer is because Clinton represents the clearest and consistent repudiation of Reaganomics with its trickle down socio-economic policies. Clinton not only confirmed the voodism (which Bush recognized in his sane years) of trickle down anti-masses policies of Reagan era in the United States but also proceeded to bury Thatcherism and like policies in Britain and Europe. Tony Blair, Schroeder and the successes of like minds in Europe and other places are the enduring and indisputable testimonies to indomitable and insuperable spirit of the duo — Bill and Hilary. Initially, they were not sure who to destroy first. They vacillated between Hilary and Bill but when they found Hilary too tough to handle they zeroed in on Bill who fortunately opened the floodgate for them with the Monica Lewinsky.
It is no surprising that the 80’s were gloomy years of economic recession and untold increasing misery and poverty for the masses in the United States and world wide while fewer and fewer got richer and richer as designed by Reaganomics.
In contrast the Clinton years have witnessed increased economic boom and prosperity for an increasing percentage of the people than was imagined before. Simply put, Clinton has shown that the harsh and ruthless capitalism of Reaganomics was unnecessary and even sheer wickedness. Furthermore, some of the “smart” Republicans are emulating Clinton to be relevant in the coming century. For example, it is no wonder that the Bush children (George Jr. and Jeb) had to shed their ultra conservative positions to be relevant in the current politics. In fact, not only the Bush siblings, it was generally recognized that those Republicans who did well were those who “re-invented” themselves in the Clinton image. That is a monumental achievement for the poor guy from Hope, Arkansas who was raised mainly by his mother — Virginia, of blessed memory. Without the political environment created by Clinton, how could Jeb or his brother have been forced to recognize the importance of the minorities, or how could Governor Pataki of New York or Mayor Gulliani (whom many believe was rightly called Rudolph Hitler by one the contestants during the last election due to his undisguised and often aggressive hatred of minorities) have been behaving by now. They probably might have been devoting all their energies to building more prison camps to contain the minorities instead of scuttling now to grudgingly recognize their relevance. These national achievements can only be attributed to Clinton — and the Republicans are mortified by the prospects of perpetually playing second fiddle to Clinton.
Why is Impeachment Good for Clinton?
The curious question would then be, Why would a Clinton supporter opt for impeachment? I have briefly explained above why censure would be the worst terrible option for him at this time. Now let me also briefly deal with why impeachment is his best option at this point. Of course there is no doubt that my preferred option is for the Republicans to recognize the futility of their actions and recoil back to sanity by jettisoning their insidious efforts to defy the consistent, vocal and loud will and acclamations of the American people who have never failed to declare what they want. I have been hearing many different theories of democracies and representation, and the interesting one Henry Hyde and his henchmen are fostering on us now is that the majority views of the people are not important in a representative democracy. In fact, Henry Hyde is demonstrating that the dictatorship of the minority is possible even in God’s own America — the citadel of democracy.
We are however, still watching to see how Henry Hyde plays out the ultimate contradictions in their chosen path but let me briefly deal with why impeachment is the best for Clinton and the worst alternative for the Republicans.
Impeachment is first and foremost a political process. It is simply the equivalent of indictment in a criminal proceedings. Under the Judeo-Christian tradition of American jurisprudence, indictment does not mean that someone has been found guilty of the any offence. It simply means that the prosecutor with the nodding of grand jury thinks that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a felony has been committed. Millions of people are indicted everyday and many of them are eventually found innocent in a trial of a jury of their peers. And once found innocent, the person proceeds with his or her life as usual.
In between the trial however, the prosecutors usually fly a number of trial balloons in the form of plea bargains which will promise the accused some form of reduced sentence for his or her confessions for those of similar crimes. Now depending on the accused person, the type of evidence against him and the many social factors involved, he might accept the plea bargain or insist on his right to trial by jury. It is interesting to note, at this point, that the prosecutors including even the judges are usually not happy with the accused who insists on a trial. The good news, however is not only that many accused persons insist on a trial but that many are actually acquitted in the trial.
Now, let us see what happens to the person if he had accepted the plea bargain offered by the prosecutors as his best option. Again depending on the plea bargain, he might have to spend sometime and/or suffer some kind of immediate punishment. But the most important and perhaps most damaging punishment for the accused is the negative legal record that is usually and undeniably created for the accused with the plea bargain. In other words, even if plea bargain, in its best form, might create an illusion of decreased immediate punishment for the accused, it will unarguably creates a permanent legal record of deviance for the accused. It is for the above reasons that no defense lawyer of any respect should ever advise his client to accept a plea bargain unless there are no arguments about the facts.
Now, let us see what happens to the accused or indicted person who insists on a trial and eventually wins. First he is acquitted and home free and secondly no deviance record is ever created for him. And the fact that he was ever accused would be of no legal, historical or substantive relevance. The case of Mr. Espy, the former Secretary of Agriculture in his trial by the Independent Counsel is perhaps, the most recent empirical evidence that indictment does not kill someone. If he had accepted plea bargain from the Independent Counsel, he would have had to live with the accusations for the rest of his life. But now that he has been tried and acquitted, he is home free and ready to restart his life.
The point I am making is that no defense counsel should ever advise his client to accept plea bargain unless there is a hundred percent probability of conviction. In other words, unless the facts of the case make the certainty of conviction absolute, no self-respecting defense lawyer should advise plea bargain.
In the current situation, not only are the facts of the case murky, political and arguable, the probability of conviction is zero. Given the current political equation in the country, there is no way that the Senate reality can be transformed from its current 55:45 ratio to the 67:33 equation that will be needed to convict and remove the President. I do not think that the above facts are in dispute because even the most virulent haters of Clinton will easily concede that they do not have the votes to convict and remove him from office in the Senate. So why is the Clinton camp so mortified of impeachment that they have gone out begging/pleading for censorship.
Like I said, I can understand why some Republicans and pseudo-friends would be pushing for censure because it is a sure way to short-circuit the constitutional process and mask the weakness and falsity of their position. I am however, totally at a loss to understand why Clinton’s political and legal advisers including some of his genuine friends will be pushing for some form of censure. Is it because they are afraid of trials? And why should lawyers be afraid of trials? More importantly, why should lawyers be afraid of trials where they are certain to win? Or are we witnessing a huge, gigantic and complex conspiracy against the Clintons that defies analysis and understanding?
I am very interested in the responses to the above questions. I am particularly interested in why defense lawyers should not jump at a trial where they are certain to win. What is so horrendous about Senate trial? I would like to know. Some have said that the trials will tear the country apart. Therefore Clinton should admit legal culpability and accept censure to spare the nation from protracted agony. Such are not only inverted arguments that are standing on their heads but they are plain wrong. The first argument against such philistine and senile statements is that Clinton did not impeach himself. If Ken Starr and his cohorts did not find it offensive and outrageously demeaning to constitute themselves into grossly over-paid federal sex cops, as Congressman Conyers rightly called them, why should Clinton not use all the legal and constitutional options to defend himself? The Republicans have sought to impeach him over the past four years and they are finally getting their wish. So the fault cannot be Clinton.


However, some more serious arguments in favor of Senate trial are:
1. For Clinton: The Senate trial will afford him the only legal and constitutional opportunity to exonerate himself. And since there will be no new embarrassing information which will be heard to further harm the President (because I think we have heard it all by now), the President should actually have nothing to fear from the trial. Once the Senate does not vote to convict him and remove him from office, he is home free and will be able to complete his tenure. Moreover, the Republican failure at the Senate will fundamentally destroy their credibility and expose their extremism to historical ridicule.
2. For the Presidency and Nation: Again, the arguments that the Senate trial will destroy the Presidency and the nation is not valid. The Senate trail of the President is a constitutional requirement and therefore, ipso facto cannot be destructive of the nation. It is a fundamental constitutional requirement that when a president is reasonably suspected to have committed high crimes and misdemeanor he, should be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate. So how can a Senate trial be destructive of the Presidency, the nation or the constitution? If the House votes to impeach the president as it is bent to, the only legal and constitutional option is for the Senate to complete the process with its own trial.

Anything, short of a Senate trial after a House vote for impeachment would be circumventing the constitution and therefore illegal. Equally, any vote for anything other than impeachment in the House will be evading the constitution and therefore illegal. The House should vote only for or against impeachment — and any other vote on this should be illegal. If the House then votes to impeach the President, the Senate trial must proceed, and if the House votes not to impeach, then the matter should be considered dead. If we want to change the law to include other options, then it should be done later, because we cannot change the rules of the game at the middle of the game. As at now, the only options in the Constitution are impeachment or nothing.
There will therefore be nothing in the Senate trial that will be offending to our national process. In fact, a Senate trial will represent the ultimate affirmation of our democratic process. That we can put our President on public trial for such obviously mundane infrastructure affirms our generation as continuing the revolt of our founding fathers who rose against King George and all his monarchical assumptions.
The truth is that Americans are, in a sense, the ultimate rebels. We started life by carrying arms against a foreign monarchy for his dictatorial actions. And our founding Fathers constructed a system that carried on the tradition of fighting the possible rise of dictatorships through their various constitutional provisions. Impeachment is therefore, one of their major guards against the possible rise of dictatorships in the system. It is therefore a healthy process — one that should be welcomed, if and when it does occur. No one is suggesting that impeachment is a light process and/or that it should be embarked upon recklessly. All we are saying is that it is not something someone or the nation should be mortally afraid of because it could also be healthy for the nation.
The children and everyone watching it could really come to see and believe that truly everyone is subject to the law when transgressions are reasonably suspected. And the President by standing the trial, will be affirming his mortality and bondage with the common man in two major ways. First he will be confirming to the American people that the law is truly no respecter of persons. Secondly, he will be empirically communicating to the American people and especially the children that one should stand up to his rights. It will represent the prime time demonstration of what Hilary Clinton had once told Senator D’Amato. When Senator D’Amato first started harassing the First Lady through his Senate Committee, she effectively stopped the pugnacious Senator when she openly, solemnly and firmly declared, “My father taught me never to give in to bullies.” That statement was one of the major events that sent the Senator packing and running for cover. The Senator never attacked the First Lady after that statement. Unfortunately for the Senator, the First Lady carried the battle to the Senator’s home front here in New York when during the last Senatorial race (of November 1998), she called the Senator, “a Jesse Helm’s clone.” She reminded us New Yorkers that we deserve a better senatorial representation than someone who votes like the ultra conservative Jesse Helms. New Yorkers agreed with the First Lady and overwhelmingly voted out Al D’Amato which is good riddance because he was truly an oddity as our Senator.
I particularly like the First Lady because she stood up against the bullying tactics of the Senator and his cohorts. I personally hate oppression and I hate bullies myself and will personally join any fight anytime, anywhere against bullies. These whole crises are the results of mindless and unrelenting witch hunts against the Clintons that are clearly unjust, unprecedented, and un-American, and by fighting it all the way to its constitutional provision, President Clinton would be teaching the American children that one does not have to give in to bullies just as the First Lady did. Moreover, he will be doing a great service to the Presidency by showing future presidents that they do not have to give in to the partisan pressures and threat of impeachment by the congress but must stand up to their rights. Moreover, as the chief law office of the country, is it not also part of his duties to insist that the law and the constitution must be followed?
It is for all the above that I insist that impeachment will not be as bad as it is being made out to be. It is just like indictment where the person is presumed innocent according to our law which shows the quality and superiority of our jurisprudence. The presumption of innocence as the fundamental feature of our jurisprudence is the root of the superiority of our political system. That an accused person is presumed innocent is the proud heritage of our democracy and what distinguishes us from tin-god dictatorships like Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Nigeria’s General Abacha where the Head of State is also the law.
In the United States, we are different. Our laws are independent of individuals and must not be bent to exonerate or punish any individual. — no matter how high or low. Also no one should ever be pressured directly or indirectly to accept any guilt to which one is not comfortable with. In this case, I see the orchestrated concentric efforts on Clinton to publicly plead guilty and accept censorship as a deliberate effort to sabotage the constitution and circumvent the law.
The job of the House is to impeach the President if they feel that they have good grounds; and the impeachment grounds are so vague that anyone who wants to vote for impeachment can always find enough grounds to do so. I do not think there are enough grounds for impeachment at this time, but I do not think it is useful to protest against any one’s impeachment vote. I however think that it is sinister and malicious for anyone to vote for impeachment and then start calling on the President to admit guilt and/or to resign as Henry Hyde did over the weekend. It is a dirty old man’s trick. Why pressure the president to resign. His Committee has voted to impeach the President in a most partisan vote of our recorded history in clear opposition and arrogant defiance of America’s general will only to turn around and start asking the President to resign. It is democracy a la Henry Hyde — dictatorship and arrogance of the minority.
The whole episode is why some have called Clinton, the first black President because Republican strategy largely mimics the various ways that prosecutors use to get blacks into prisons. First, the prosecutor charges the black with some heinous crimes, then pressures him to accept them in some forms for the prospect of a reduced sentence. The prosecutor then gets angry and impatient and threatens more hell and fire if the accused does not accept and confess quick enough to declare himself guilty. The accused protests and protests to no avail until exhausted, he accepts and signs anything that is put in front of him. The judge and the system is now happy with the prosecutor because he has made their job quite easy while the accused minority is put away for life. Meanwhile, the prosecutor is promoted to higher positions where he continues his ungodly acts.
My point therefore, is that it is regrettable that Henry Hyde and his over zealous Republicans in the Committee should vote for Clinton’s impeachment but that I find it maliciously contrite, disingenuous and dishonest for him to start calling for the President’s resignation. If Henry Hyde and his henchmen know that a trial will tear the country apart, then they should not vote for impeachment. Clinton did not vote for impeachment. It is Henry Hyde and his band who deliberately and consciously voted for impeachment. It was William Shakespeare who correctly said that, what ever will be will be.”
So, let it be. We shall have the trial of William Jefferson Clinton in the Senate, and whatever will be will be. But I can assure Henry Hyde and his bunch one thing — that William Jefferson Clinton will not be the loser in the Senate vote. Thank God, the Republicans just do not have enough votes in the Senate to convict and/or remove the President. This means that Henry Hyde and his cohorts will obviously fail in their ultimate ambition of removing the President.
Now, what happens in the post-impeachment-era after all the Republican efforts have finally failed to remove Clinton from office. People may then be sober to sit back and reflect on the whole crisis and to appreciate the height of personal injustice and invasion of privacy which the Clintons endured. The hypocrisy, single-mindedness and viciousness of Ken Starr’s approach would then be discussed;and there might be a mass revolt by the Republicans to unseat their recalcitrant and heady leaderships just as they revolted against Newt after he led them through the election disaster.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s policies would gain greater credence and he will sail through 1999 and triumphantly hands over the mantle of leadership to Al Gore who will continue Clinton’s enlightenment policies.
Perhaps, the last questions on this are — should our nation be ashamed of the trial? Will it diminish our global stature to see our President on trial in the Senate? The answers to the questions are resounding no. There is no reason for us to be ashamed. In fact we should be proud of our vigorous democracy. Some other nations may actually admire what we are doing. We are showing the whole world that our President is also under the law. It may help others to believe us more when we tell them to go democratic and to respect the rule of law.
It is for all the above reasons that I urge Clinton again:
1. Not to agree to any act of perjury
2. Not to seek or accept censure, no matter how mild it might seem.
3. To insist on Senate trial — because he will get his best outcome there — complete acquittal and historical shame and blame for the Republicans.

Thank you and good luck.

Sincerely yours

Amechi Okolo, PhD.

+ PS: With your permission, I am sending a copy of this letter to the following who are very important and genuinely close to you at this point:

1. The First Lady: Her views on these issues are very important; and must be sought. I need not remind you that she is your most eloquent and most credible defender.
2. The First Daughter, Chelsea: I know that she is young and must be protected. But she is growing and reality demands that she must deal with these matters. Therefore, the more information she has about them the better.
3. The Vice-President, Al Gore: He is your heir apparent and is therefore entitled to all the inner details and decisions about this case.
4. Your Legal Team and Political Advisers: So that they may be persuaded to change their strategy.
5. The Chief of Staff: Hopefully, you will make copies available to all your Cabinet Officers so that an informed administration debate, discussions and understanding can ensure.