Life After Impeachment.

• Position: Boll Clinton impeachment investigation

For the last year, political debate in Washington has been an endless series of reruns. Impeaching the President is the name of the show. To watch it, you'd think the range of political opinion stretches from those who think Congress should impeach the President for lying about a sordid sexual affair to those who would stand by Clinton no matter what he does. If you're not for Clinton, you must be for impeachment, and if you're not for impeachment, you must be for Clinton.

Here at The Progressive, we're neither. We have vocally opposed Bill Clinton since his first election campaign. We also think the Ken Starr investigation and the impeachment process have been a ridiculous farce. But then this magazine is published in that vast and mysterious expanse of the American continent beyond the Beltway, and out here most of the American public got fed up with both the White House and the impeachment process long ago. To the Washington political establishment's consternation, most of us do not agree with members of the House and Senate, whose insufferable speeches on impeachment drone on, that this is the trial of the century. The pundits and politicians in Washington know about public opinion, because they read the polls. But they don't really understand it, since they continue to discuss and analyze the problem only with their peers in Washington, D.C., whose appetite for the sex scandal and the impeachment debate appears to be bottomless.

Our position is simple: Clinton has been a terrible President, not because of his sexual compulsions, but because of his willingness to sacrifice any principle and turn on any friend for the sake of his own political ambition. Clinton is the architect of the New Democrat ideal. He insisted that the Democratic Party abandon its traditional, embarrassingly down-at-the-heels constituencies: the poor and afflicted, single mothers on welfare, rank-and-file unionists who are losing their jobs because of global trade deals, anti-war activists, and civil libertarians.

We're not about to stick up for Clinton. But we can't endorse the idea that he should be removed from office for lying about an affair in the course of an investigation designed to bring him down at any cost. Independent counsel Ken Starr was so determined to pin something on the President that he finally nailed him for crimes that took place within the context of the Starr investigation itself. The articles of impeachment voted out of the House of...