Christian right steps lightly for votes

WASHINGTON

For an organization that has been portrayed as a powerful engine behind the House move to impeach President Clinton, the Christian Coalition is leading a very tentative and defensive charge against a president whose job approval numbers continue to be astonishingly high.

Organizing an impeachment in the face of heavy public majorities opposing it is possible, but proving very tricky.

Randy Tate, executive director of the powerful conservative group, acknowledges there could be a backlash by voters if Clinton's impeachment is mishandled. And, facing public opinion polls that seem consistently supportive of Clinton, Tate says he wants to avoid making impeachment the dominant issue in the November election. In its famous "voter guides" that Tate says will be distributed to 45 million voters this year, the coalition will not even list the forthcoming House vote on authorizing an impeachment inquiry.

The Nov. 3 election will be a "referendum on the issue of values," not impeachment. And the impeachment process itself should be strictly a matter of law, not interpreting national moral standards, says Tate.

Tate, himself, seems torn by how to handle the question of why Clinton's popularity remains high and most Americans do not appear to want him out.

"It doesn't really matter what the polls say," said Tate. Yet, in the next breath, he declares the polls indicating support for Clinton are "troubling for all of us."

The danger is in being seen as a moral scold against the citizenry, thus taking the focus off of Clinton.

"Elect Joe Jones president: he thinks your morals stink." That would be a novel campaign tactic.

Bill Bennett, the former education secretary who has eschewed a presidential bid, has openly condemned the loss of the national moral compass and bitterly decried the public's failure to demand Clinton's ouster.

Tate dances around that flame but stops short. He decries a "morally callous public" but blames that on a president who "dumbs down standards." Under a lot of invitations to go further at a press breakfast here this week, Tate held back.

For state and local Republicans on the stump, saying that the people who have stood with Clinton and oppose his resignation have lost their moral bearings may be smart in certain congressional districts -- and maybe more than a few. But saying that would be counter-intuitive at the national level. Besides, it may not be entirely true. A lot of the support for Clinton is the result of a humming economy, not Hollywood moral values.

In next week's House votes whether to authorize a full-blown impeachment inquiry, conservative leaders like Tate and Family Research Council's Gary L. Bauer curiously are attempting to implant the notion that the vote is a strict matter of law, not morals. Although both have made careers out of morality, they say the question is whether Congress will enforce laws against perjury and obstruction of justice, not whether it should respond to the public's moral judgment on Clinton.

Bauer cautions Congress "against looking for their principles in a poll." And Tate declares, "We can 't govern by polls." Forget public opinion, and simply act to set the moral tone for the country, not follow it, they say.

Others think that impeachment is essentially a political process governed by legal standards, but not controlled by them.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., the dean of Senate Democrats and a student of all things involving Congress and the Constitution, says the House has not only a right but a duty to look at public opinion when deciding impeachment. The Senate sits as a court to render judgment after the House acts, and there may be a slightly elevated standard there. But the House impeachment process is essentially a political one, says Byrd.

That sounds a lot like the old thumbs up-thumbs down judgments in the Roman coliseum. But the loosest standard for impeachment yet was proposed by Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott. He thinks any "bad conduct" can be an impeachable offense. Even Tate thinks that goes too far.

John Hall is the Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service.