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WHERE'S CLINTON'S SANDMAN? . . .

 

By Robert D. Novak January 26, 1998

Noting the eerie silence from Capitol Hill while allegations about Bill Clinton swirled through Washington last week, a close adviser to the president asked: "Where is our Charles Sandman?"

 

The late Charles W. Sandman Jr., a veteran Republican politician from New Jersey first elected to Congress in 1966, was a fiercely loyal supporter of Richard M. Nixon. From the Watergate break-in to the president's resignation, Sandman never wavered in his defense of Nixon โ€“ voting against impeachment in 1974 as a member of the House Judiciary Committee. It cost him his seat in Congress that year.

 

Sandman's performance was not isolated. Better-known Republicans โ€“ such as the future Senate majority leader Trent Lott โ€“ stuck with Nixon to the end. But the Clinton accusations, far less sweeping and considerably less substantiated than the case against Nixon, have generated no professions of loyalty from Democrats in Congress. That reflects a great divide in the Democratic Party and more trouble ahead.

 

One senior Democratic House member, a strong supporter of Clinton, for the first time in a 20-year relationship declined to take my telephone call. A respected senator, one of the few Democrats willing to talk about this even off the record, called the entire business "unseemly" without offering any defense of the president. Another Democratic senator who is much closer to Clinton said: "I cannot tell you how upset I am about the president's irresponsibility โ€“ how betrayed I feel."

 

Easy reasons for the Capitol's uncharacteristic silence were the physical unavailability of lawmakers during the last week of the long congressional recess and their lack of factual knowledge about the allegations. But such explanations do not satisfy even presidential aides. A more basic problem: It is hard to find many Democratic politicians, in Congress or outside, who fully believe the president's denials.

 

Indeed, recently reported confirmation that Clinton had sexual relations in Little Rock with Gennifer Flowers hardly came as a surprise to these Democrats. One member of the president's Cabinet privately โ€“ and inaccurately โ€“ assessed almost six years ago that her revelations would end the Clinton presidency.

 

But diehards in the mold of Charles Sandman supported Nixon less because they were convinced of his innocence than because they viewed him as the cutting edge of the Republican Party. That spirit is lacking among Democrats a generation later.

 

"This is what triangulation gets us," the presidential aide who raised the Sandman analogy told me. According to this theory, former Clinton political strategist Dick Morris's concept of a triangle with left, right and Clinton sides has robbed the Democrats of a fervent desire to support their chief. The Democratic congressional party never accepted the president's centrist tactics, which carried him but not the lawmakers to victory.

 

Calling Democrats around the country evinced little more backing for Clinton than could be found in Congress. In Chicago, for example, a closed meeting Friday of Cook County ward and township committeemen agreed that the party will be hurt in this year's elections even if the president survives this crisis. "The truth is," one Chicago organization wheel horse told me, "that Clinton has never been that popular with us Democrats in Illinois." But what did they think of the allegations? "Disgusting," he said.

 

For all this negativism about the first Democrat elected to a second term since Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is no talk among party leaders that they would be better off in the November balloting if Al Gore were president. Contrary to a widespread view, there is still some honor among politicians.

 

Nor is the president's departure at hand. It is hard to find anybody who knows him that thinks Bill Clinton will ever resign the presidency. If the present inquiry turns into impeachment, it will be a long process, posing this question: Should Congress impeach and convict a president for the crime of suborning perjury concerning a sexual-harassment case? The Democrats who are so slow to defend the president may well have to deal with him for three more years. (C) 1998, Creators Syndicate Inc.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1998/01/26/wheres-clintons-sandman/f74c6406-6469-403b-b5c5-b89b5af3c3d3/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f65fd78b69b1