I was a DC correspondent during the Clinton impeachment. This is how it’s different with Trump

This time, the American public seems less interested. Worse, what is widely seen by his supporters as a Democrat vendetta could rebound in next year’s election

As I follow the impeachment of the 45th president of the United States from the European side of the Atlantic, it is hard not to feel like blurting out “here we go again”.

Not only has Donald Trump become the third US president to be impeached, the second in recent times, but the vote came 21 years minus one day since Bill Clinton was impeached for what will be forever known as the Monica Lewinsky affair.

In fact, we’re not going here again – except in one respect, which I will come to later. As The Independent’s correspondent in Washington at the time, I covered the Clinton impeachment, and both the atmosphere then and what was at stake are quite different.

In 1998 (Clinton’s second term), a protracted investigation conducted by the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, had meandered from allegations of dishonesty and corruption (the Whitewater affair), through charges of sexual harassment (brought by an Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones), to Clinton’s denial and eventual admission that, depending on your definition, he did have “sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky”. Punctuated by ever more salacious leaks, the impeachment hearings took place in a highly charged atmosphere in which Clinton’s survival as president really seemed in peril.

In part, of course, because of the nature of the allegations, there was all-consuming public interest in what was happening. It is true that many people insisted that they were not really following what was going on because they found it all too distasteful (the US is still more prudish than most of Europe), and a recurrent theme on daytime talk shows was “what should we tell our children”, accompanied by much shaking of heads and cast-down eyes. But all those denials were as disingenuous as Clinton’s: people were devouring every tiny detail of the media stories.

When the recording of Clinton’s grand jury testimony was televised on 21 September 1998 – he was questioned in the Map Room at the White House to avoid the complicated question of whether a sitting president can be summoned to court – every television screen in every home and office that could be seen from The Independent’s office in downtown Washington was showing the proceedings. For the four straight hours of the transmission, the streets were quiet. And it wasn’t just Washington. The whole country was gripped.

A real discussion of principle was going on, too – aired also during the impeachment debate – about how far the president’s relationship with Lewinsky was a private matter, and how far it was something that should threaten his presidency. Did it come anywhere near being an impeachable offence, rather than a matter of personal morality?

As well as the all-consuming public interest through those months and the sense that Clinton’s presidency really was endangered, the president’s response to the investigation was quite different from Trump’s. The personal shame of Clinton and the effects on his family were all too evident. Few will forget the wrenching pictures of Bill, Hillary and Chelsea boarding their helicopter for what was clearly going to be an excruciating holiday at Martha’s Vineyard. Hillary also caught flak from prominent feminists for not leaving him.

Yes, there were times when Clinton seemed truculent or defiant or bitter. But there was nothing akin to Trump’s furious outpourings, both in denying what he is accused of – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – and in the injustice, as he sees it, of impeachment.

And yet, the American public seems less interested. His recent six-page diatribe to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, may have been upwards a few notches of his usual register, as were his indignant tweets after the impeachment vote. But they were all of a piece with his whole presidency, which has been something of a continuous shouting match played out at double forte.

What seems public vigilance rather than all-consuming interest in the Trump impeachment may reflect the fact that the issues are genuinely more complex, and more contested. Did the president withhold military aid to Ukraine against an undertaking to investigate the son of his likely rival for the presidency, Joe Biden? Was the Ukraine’s new president aware that there was a quid pro quo, or even that the aid had been suspended?

So far, there has been no investigation in Ukraine, but the aid restarted nonetheless. Might there be legitimate reasons for the US to investigate Biden junior’s activities in Ukraine? After all, a one-time Trump aide, Paul Manafort, was convicted by a US court of money-laundering and tax evasion in connection with his work in Ukraine. And anyway, how much was any of this within the president’s discretion; where is the line between the use and abuse of power?

There is, though, as I mentioned, something that the Clinton and Trump impeachments have in common: the extent to which the initiative was taken in both cases by groups harbouring a visceral hatred of the president and the belief that he should never have been elected. When Trump talks about a witch-hunt and his enemies wanting to impeach him from day one, he is not completely wrong. Clinton elicited some of the same extreme partisan hostility from a section of the Republican Party – some of whom it later turned out had very similar moral flaws to his.

The partisan nature of these impeachments is why Clinton was not convicted at his senate trial (the Democrat majority saw him through) and why it is even less likely that Trump will be found guilty, given the Republican majority today. Why impeach Trump at this stage in his presidency anyway? If, as expected, he runs for re-election next November, then the voters will have the chance to throw him out by the conventional democratic means.

Americans tend to take a highly serious and reverential view of their Constitution, which has indeed admirably stood the test of time. This is one reason why Nancy Pelosi told Democrats to halt their applause after the impeachment votes. It suggested that vindictiveness, rather than justice or the honour of the presidency was the main motive (which indeed it appears to have been), and this is not what impeachment was intended for.

Its purpose was to remove a president who had been guilty of a “high crime or misdemeanour” through a trial conducted essentially by his peers. As used against Clinton and Trump, it has become a weapon for oppositions that want to evict a president without waiting for the verdict of the ballot-box, rather than the quasi-judicial process transcending party politics that it was intended to be. If this continues, the whole mechanism may have to be re-thought.

In Bill Clinton’s case, impeachment proved a serious distraction – even a blight – on his second term, which may also have cost vice-president Al Gore the White House in 2000. Aside from going down in history as an impeached president, the damage is likely to be less for Trump: he has only a year of his first term to serve, and what is widely seen by his supporters as a Democrat vendetta could rebound in the run-up to next year’s election. Whether that would discourage oppositions from using impeachment for party political purposes in future, though, is another matter.