What will Trump do tonight?
Dick Shelby, the tall, rumpled, soft-spoken senator from Alabama, sauntered into a pack of reporters in the basement of the Capitol late on a January day in 1999.
It was in the midst of the Bill Clinton Senate impeachment trial for perjury and obstruction of justice, although the real subject was the president’s sexual misdeeds involving a White House intern. Moments earlier, the Senate dean, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, had closed the day’s proceedings with a speech calling for an end to the trial.
“The White House has sullied itself,” Byrd said, standing next to his Senate desk. “The Senate is teetering on the brink of that same black pit.”
Shelby, a former Democrat who became a Republican in 1994, had clearly been unnerved.
“When Sen. Byrd speaks you’ve got to listen,” he told reporters.
Shelby was seemingly on the verge of defying his party in favor of stopping the trial then and there.
When the matter was put to a vote, however, Shelby was safely back in the party fold. He had reversed course. Someone or something (party loyalty?) had gotten to him.
The trial of William Jefferson Clinton staggered on for another three weeks or so. It ended on the second Friday in February with a vote to acquit.
Truth be told, there were Republicans other than Shelby who would have been more than happy to throw in the towel. Clinton, riding the crest of an economic boom, was quite popular. It’s one thing to toss a president from office whose approval ratings are south of 50 percent. It’s quite another to reverse the election of a guy who is basking in the sunny rays of public acclaim.
Almost as compelling was the sick feeling in the pit of many senatorial stomachs for this whole sex-crazed spectacle, foisted on them by the rabid partisans in the Republican House of Representatives.
Senators recoiled at the idea of having Bill Clinton’s sexual transgressions paraded before them, befouling their cherished institution. The prospect of sitting Monica Lewinsky in a witness chair in front of the Senate dais and listening to her recall private encounters with the president in the West Wing was especially distasteful. The very idea sent chills down many senators’ spines.
Both Pennsylvania senators, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, favored live witnesses.
Its political antenna quivering to a different frequency, the Senate as a whole said no.
Lewinsky never testified from the well of the Senate. The circus never came to town. Decorum, common decency and political scruples prevailed.
All of this should serve as a cautionary tale for Donald Trump. He has broadly hinted that in tonight’s debate with Hillary Clinton he was prepared to reprosecute the case against Bill Clinton as serial philanderer, lashing Hillary to Bill’s side as chief apologist and, therefore, an enemy to women everywhere.
My best guess is that the nation, including a great many ordinary, church-going, suburban, middle class Republicans, don’t want to hear it. They really don’t want to hear it from the twice-divorced Trump, who carries a swinger’s stench with him, having publicly commented on the size of female breasts and his own sexual endowments.
Trump is in no position to discredit Hillary with women voters. He’s on his third wife. He brought the name Rosie O’Donnell up at the first debate. Rosie O’Donnell! He insulted a Miss Universe for gaining weight. He’s tweeted about sex tapes.
The Donald needs a victory in tonight’s get together with Hillary, the second of three scheduled encounters. He can hardly do worse than he did in the first debate. He was manic, unprepared, infantile. He was a parody of himself.
Aides should be pounding into his head not to pounce on Bill’s checkered private past and Hillary’s public agony in trying to hold her family together. It will be interesting to see what the voice inside the Trump brain compels him to say and do.
In one sense, the country would be well served if the Republican candidate were to regurgitate the most sordid moments of the first Clinton presidency. It would help insure a second.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.