A so-silent majority in the Senate
Clinton trial: Day two
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Your support makes all the difference.CORALLED IN the chamber for six or seven hours at a time, the 100 senators sitting in judgment on Bill Clinton must abandon the habits of a lifetime - and the skill that brought many of them their jobs - and keep quiet.
The rules of the impeachment trial stipulate that as jurors they must be silent throughout the proceedings, except when called upon to vote. If they want to "say" anything, they must put it in writing and submit it to the presiding judge.
Once the day's session is over, however, it is a quite different matter. Media-savvy senators skip off to the television studios around Washington to deliver themselves of their views on the hearing for the benefit of the viewers around the country.
The result is that employed Americans who have not wanted, or been able, to watch the impeachment trial during the day find themselves watching a "spun" version of it through the evening.
The US does not have a sub- judice law to prohibit people from discussing a case once charges have been laid, so Americans are accustomed to hearing partisan views in advance of a trial. Also, unlike in Britain, members of a jury may speak publicly about their deliberations after they have pronounced their verdict. What neither lawyers nor jurors may do, however, is to speak to the media during the trial itself.
When the similarities and differences between the Senate impeachment trial and a court trial were rehearsed by legal experts before the hearing opened, the extent of the senators' silence was not broached, nor is there any provision one way or another in the Senate rules.
The last - and only time - a presidential impeachment trial was held was in 1868 and hardly offers a precedent in media terms. Members of the American public, however, take a dim view of the after-hours garrulousness of the senators and, it has to be said, the House "prosecutors" as well. Calls to C-Span radio ran strongly against allowing them to speak.
The Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, who has so far refrained from joining the media circuit himself, has now told Repubicans that they should stay off the airwaves.
The Democrats, however, have so far been given no such "advice" and, so long as they continue to talk, Mr Lott's flock will probably do so, too.
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