Bryan says boorish behavior not covered by Constitution

Scott Sonner

Thursday, Feb. 11, 1999 | 9:16 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - President Clinton's boorish behavior may be unworthy of the presidency but it is not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they created impeachment, Sen. Richard Bryan said.

"The president's conduct is boorish, indefensible, even reprehensible," Bryan, D-Nev., said in a prepared statement.

"It does not threaten the Republic," he said remarks he intended to deliver at the Senate impeachment trial.

"It does not impact our national security. It does not undermine or compromise our position of unchallenged leadership in international affairs."

Bryan's office released his "intended statement" to media outlets in Nevada Wednesday night. Each senator has been given 15 minutes to address the Senate in closed session.

Bryan earlier said he would vote to acquit Clinton. The former governor and attorney general of Nevada said the impeachment process was not intended to mete out punishment against an individual president.

Rather, it was created "to protect the nation from a president who has brought grave harm to the office and to the country," Bryan said.

"These are distinctly different goals."

Bryan said all five judicial impeachments that have reached the Senate this century resulted in convictions on a bipartisan vote.

The only presidential impeachments - of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and now Clinton - have come to the Senate "under an ominous cloud of partisanship," Bryan said.

The Senate's acquittal of Johnson reaffirmed the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers - that the executive branch "should not be subservient to the prevailing views of a congressional majority," he said.

"How different the course of our constitutional history might have been had President Andrew Johnson been convicted," the senator said.

"Our system of government today might be more like a parliamentary system undermining the independence of the chief executive.

"Further presidents may have been forced to operate within the omnipresent shadow of impeachment whenever a legislative majority was hostile to their policies."

Bryan said he would support strong censure of the president and that Clinton could potentially be subject to criminal charges.

He said the president had an improper relationship in the White House with a 22-year-old intern, lied to his family and the American people and "pursued a course of conduct to conceal his improper relationship with the White House intern.

"The president's conduct was wrong and immoral," Bryan said.

"The American people need to hear from us in strong and unambiguous language that the president's personal conduct is unacceptable and unworthy of the president of the United States."