"13 ANGRY MEN": DALE BUMPER'S AD HOMINEM IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF PRESIDENT CLINTON.

• Author: Brovero, Adrienne F.

When this trial began four long weeks ago, we said that what was on trial was the truth and the rule of law. That has not changed despite the lengthy legal arguments you have heard. The truth is still the truth, and a lie is still a lie, and the rule of law should apply to everyone, no matter what excuses are made by the president's defenders. The news media characterizes the managers as 13 angry men. They are right in that we are angry, but they are dead wrong about what we are angry about. We have not spent long hours poring through the evidence, sacrificed time with our families, and subjected ourselves to intense political criticism to further a political vendetta.

House Manager F. James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin Republican

For just over a year, the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the predominant issue in American politics. For many months, a dress, some lies and a videotaped deposition were the focus of extensive media attention. Many predicted this would be the "big one" -- The one that would bring down Bill Clinton's presidency. Strangely, what did not end up killing him might have made him stronger. President Clinton survived the impeachment. Others did not, arguably falling victim to a backlash against Republican partisanship, namely House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and his heir apparent, Bob Livingston (R-LA).

Even in the earliest days of the scandal in January of 1998, the accusation surfaced that the scandal was the product of a partisan witch-hunt aimed at destroying the President and the First Lady. Hillary Rodham Clinton made that accusation on national television in an interview with Matt Lauer on the popular Today Show. The media picked up on her accusation, and clips of the First Lady denouncing the scandal as part of an elaborate rightwing conspiracy were televised repeatedly. Over the course of the year, accusations of incivility and partisanship were lodged by and against parties on either side of the impeachment battle.

The accusations intensified as the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to impeach. The impeachment proceedings in the House were roundly criticized as overly partisan. When the Senate convened in early January of 1999, its leaders went to great lengths to avoid accusations of partisanship or incivility, compromising on procedures geared toward providing for a fair and expedient trial. Similarly, both the House Managers and Clinton's defense team publicly endorsed the notion of a fair trial yielding an objective determination of justice. However, on January 21, 1999, the last day of the Clinton defense team's presentation of opening arguments, the House Managers' endorsement was called into question.

Dale Bumpers, the recently retired senior senator from Arkansas, agreed to be the closer for Clinton's defense team on the last day of the first phase of arguments. Among other reasons, Bumpers was chosen because he had been a loyal friend to President Clinton and had always had a good rapport with his colleagues in the Senate. Senator Bumpers demonstrated this rapport early on in the speech, often referring to his "colleagues," referencing specific senators by name, and by cracking self-deprecating jokes. His tone ranged from comedic to congenial to very serious--he cracked jokes, he chatted with colleagues, and he admonished the Senate of the dire consequences of a conviction.

A recurring thread running throughout Senator Bumpers' speech was his concern that the prosecution had been overzealous in its pursuit of charges against President Clinton. In an early portion of the speech, Senator Bumpers described the lengths to which those investigating and prosecuting President Clinton were willing to go:

This is the only caustic thing I will say in these remarks this afternoon, but the question is, how did we come to be here? We are here because of a five-year, relentless, unending investigation of the President; $50 million, hundreds of F.B.I. agents fanning across the nation examining in detail the microscopic lives of people. Maybe the most intense investigation not only of a President but of anybody, ever.

I feel strongly about this because of my state and what we have endured. So you'll have to excuse me. But that investigation has also shown that the judicial system in this country can and does get out of kilter unless it's controlled, because there are innocent people, innocent people, who have been financially and mentally bankrupt.

In the particular section of the speech to be analyzed, Senator Bumpers argued that the prosecution's overwhelming desire to win had led them to seriously distort or misrepresent the facts surrounding the obstruction of justice charge against the President. The goal of this essay is to analyze Senator Bumpers' argument as a type of ad hominem argument. Specifically, this argument will be classified as a bias type of ad hominem. This paper will demonstrate that Senator Bumpers' bias ad hominem argument was reasonable in the argumentative context in which it took place.

In Ad Hominem Arguments and The New Dialectic, Walton outlined criteria for evaluating whether or not arguments are fallacious. These pragmatic criteria determine whether "arguments are evaluated correct or incorrect insofar as they are used to either contribute to or to impede the goals of the dialogue" (New Dialectic 3). The type of discourse and the argument's place in it are critical determinants of an argument's fallaciousness or reasonableness.

Fallacy-type arguments "take place in a context of dialogue with characteristic, conventional types" (New Dialectic 8). Walton's dialogue typology is goal-based. Each dialogue type has specific, defining goals (New Dialectic 8). An argument is determined to be fallacious or reasonable to the extent that it further advances the goals of the type of dialogue at hand (New Dialectic 8).

Walton's criteria function as part of a process that tests whether the argument in question is both argumentatively relevant and dialectically relevant. The ad hominem is argumentatively relevant if it sufficiently responds to the critical questions for the argument's scheme. Doing so shifts the burden of disproving the validity of the ad hominem argument to the accused, the "victim" of the ad hominem attack (Ad Hominem 269). Dialectical relevance is determined by the responses to the larger set of questions regarding the context of the dialogue (Ad flominem 268-9). These questions assess the type, stage, goal(s), argument schemes, sequences of argumentation, and institutional constraints of the dialogue (Ad Hominem 268-9). The entire process of analysis can be thought of as a series of five steps -

1) Identifying the argument

2) Classifying the argument as a type of ad hominem

3) Assessing the argument's argumentative relevance

4) Assessing the argument's dialectical relevance

5) Evaluating whether the argument is fallacious or reasonable

Combined, these steps enable a judgment about the reasonableness of Senator Bumpers' charge that the House Managers were biased.

In his speech, Senator Bumpers made the argument that the House Managers were guilty of "wanting to win too badly." Their behavior was counterproductive to the impeachment process. Early on in the speech, Senator Bumpers referenced the words of Alexander Hamilton, to argue against such partisanship in the impeachment process. Bumpers noted:

But he said-and I must say this, and you all know it-he said it would be difficult to get a what he called "well-constituted court" from wholly elected...