Common wisdom, touted by politicians and pundits on both the left and the right is that the impeachment of Bill Clinton backfired on the Republicans politically. This had lead to scores of Democratic Representatives and Senators wringing their hands over impeaching President Trump for what are clearly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” fearing that they could lose control of the House of Representatives, and, should the Senate acquit Trump, the presidency for another four years, in spite of the fact that we are enduring the most corrupt administration in American history.
The basis of their reluctance is a fallacious argument that has somehow endured for the past twenty years. The impeachment of Bill Clinton did not backfire on the Republicans, and, indeed they profited from it. Impeachment was a successful strategy. The so-called backlash in the 1998 midterm elections left both the House and the Senate in control of the Republicans. There were some Republican losses, but not enough make any difference politically. The most famous of these losses, that of Newt Gingrich, had less to do with Republican overreach, than it had to do with Gingrich’s own scandalous personal conduct.
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s impeachment haunted Al Gore. In spite of the fact that Clinton had the highest approval ratings of his presidency in its last year, he was forced to sit out the entire campaign and the shame of his personal conduct and impeachment weighed down Democrats up and down the ticket. In the end, Republican George W. Bush took the White House and the Republicans held on to the House. The Democrats managed to gain parity in the Senate, but this was negated by Vice President Cheney being the tiebreaker.
Impeachment worked out just fine for the Republicans.
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