by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
Traveling to work last week, I was caught in a traffic jam near our nation's Capitol. Rolling down my window for some air, I heard chilling words which I will never forget.
"Let us disregard the outside influences," the well-dressed man declared from a giant screen television in the department store window, the sound system projecting his words out of the store's revolving doors and into the street.
People nearby, hurrying to catch their bus, turned toward the life-size image glaring at them from the store window, some of them stopping to listen.
The face and voice confronting them were those of Republican Congressman Robert L. Livingston, the man Republicans had selected to replace retiring Rep. Newt Gingrich as the next speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Along with the majority of American voters, the men and women I observed watching Congressman Livingston would soon understand that they were the "outsiders" to whom the Republican leader referred. The public's overwhelming preference that President Clinton remain in office was the "influence" radical House Republicans were determined to disregard.
Several days later, I recalled that Washington street corner scene as I watched speaker-designate Livingston fall from power, consumed by the politics of personal destruction his radical allies had unleashed. While I awaited my role in the House impeachment debate, I thought back to the dejected and angry faces of those working Americans when they heard their wishes dismissed as insignificant.
"We are engaged in a historic struggle about the people's right to govern," I thought. "Democracy, itself, is being challenged by what is happening here today."
When my time came to speak against impeachment, my words gave voice to the concerns of my constituents and the overwhelming majority of Americans, good people whom the Republicans also consider to be outside influences. I argued that the framers of the Constitution did not entrust the House of Representatives with authority to legitimately impeach the President of the United States for matters of personal morality.
"Impeachment was meant to be a constitutional shield against executive tyranny," I declared, "not a moral nor a political sword."
Although I doubt whether the actual evidence would justify the president's criminal conviction of perjury or obstruction of justice, I observed that Congress should leave resolution of the president's personal problems to the courts, the branch of government to which the constitution assigns them. Congress needs to get back to the legislative duties that the Constitution entrusts to our care, work which the American people urgently need us to perform.
"Serious crimes have been committed that Congress needs to address," I went on to say. "Every morning, children across this nation go to school and site in overcrowded classrooms in deteriorating, crumbling facilities. Congress turns a blind eye. That is a serious crime."
"Every afternoon, people find themselves lacking access to affordable health care, trying to figure out how to afford the prescription drugs they need. People are suffering, even dying, and Congress turns a blind eye. That is a serious crime."
"Every evening, people sit at the dinner table wondering how they will afford a college education for their children. Congress turns a blind eye. That also is a serious crime."
I do not believe that the House Republican leadership fulfilled its duty on Dec. 19 when a partisan Republican majority impeached the president and denied us the reasonable alternative of a censure vote. Nevertheless, although neither President Clinton nor the American public was treated fairly in the House, I am hopeful that the Senate will succeed where we failed.
It is crucial that the Senate does so. President Clinton has been leading this nation toward an American that faces up to her public moral obligations. He is prepared to accept responsibility for his personal failings. The American people know this; and that is why the majority of Americans have supported the President during his time of personal trial.
That is also why the moralistic use of impeachment as a sword against this president is so ironic. Congress can fulfill its duty to the American people only by doing what we were elected to do -- improving schools, making health care more affordable and accessible, helping the working families of this country achieve a living wage and preserving the social security upon which so many in our country depend.
These Congressional actions, of course, are the very steps toward social justice which President Clinton has been pushing the Republican congressional leadership to undertake. The republican majority should be less concerned with the President's private morality and more concerned with its own public morality.
President Clinton must be judged fairly by the Senate and allowed to complete the work he has so ably begun -- for our sake as much as his own. As freedom rider and Congressman John Lewis declared in his eloquent challenge to the House during our impeachment debate, "Today, my colleagues, you must choose . . . between community and chaos . . . the course of partisan destruction or national reconciliation."
There can be no national reconciliation, however, without a comparable national commitment to social justice. People support President Clinton because they want us to be a nation in which no one is an outsider, a new America that must be achieved if we are to survive as a free society.
We all can agree with Congressman Lewis' observations that "Today, our nation stands at the crossroads -- at the intersection of participatory democracy and the politics of personal destruction." Now, we must join together to create the "One America" which can spring only from the participation of all of us in our democracy.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.