Columnist David Broder: Question of presidential leadership remains

David Broder

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 12:04 p.m.

IN A statement explaining his votes to convict President Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, an influential Republican voice on foreign policy, raised the most important question left unanswered by the Senate's acquittal verdicts: Is Clinton still trusted enough to lead?

"The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, because we are the strongest country economically and militarily -- and in the appeal of our idealism," Lugar said. But, he added, a president can exert that influence only to the extent "he personifies the rule of law that he is sworn to uphold and protect."

"We must believe him and trust him if we are to follow him," Lugar said. "His influence on domestic and foreign policies comes from that trust ... "

Lugar's words -- and his votes -- carry special weight, because there is no one on Capitol Hill with wider contacts in the international community and no one whose views on foreign policy sway more colleagues in both parties.

Coming out of the impeachment trial, Clinton actually enjoys a good deal of leverage with the Republican Congress on domestic issues. Republicans desperately need to show some progress on the issues people care about -- education, health care, Social Security and the rest -- in order to erase the image that they are fixated on punishing Clinton. To do that means they must forge compromises with the president.

But there is no such imperative on foreign policy. The public is not pushing for anything to be done; quite the contrary, the less the United States is involved in bailing out other countries' problems -- economically or militarily -- the better most Americans like it.

Clinton, on the other hand, has learned that the world becomes a much more dangerous place when America fails to lead. And a cadre of Republican senators, headed by Lugar on the Foreign Relations Committee, has been prepared to help the president maintain at least a degree of bipartisanship in his foreign policy.

The committee chairman, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, remains implacably opposed to major parts of administration foreign policy, despite all the flattery Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can apply.

But right behind him in seniority are four internationalist Republicans who have provided critical support on key issues from expansion of NATO to engagement with China: Lugar, the respected former Rhodes Scholar and former chairman of the committee; Paul Coverdell of Georgia, a former Peace Corps director; and two talented, relatively junior members, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, both former businessmen with a strong grasp of the realities of the international economy.

Unfortunately, Coverdell, Hagel and Smith all share Lugar's profound disquiet with the behavior that put the president on trial. All four voted to remove him from office.

Smith, for example, said, "Political prisoners around the world look to the United States for hope," largely because of our adherence to the rule of law. "If the president of the United States is allowed to break our laws when they prove embarrassing to him or conflict with his political interests," the confidence of people abroad, as well as at home, shrivels.

In the aftermath, all of these senators vowed they would continue to support Clinton's policies when they think them correct. Coverdell, for example, said, "We will deal with the president as president." But he conceded that Clinton has a credibility problem with the committee "that may be increased by the trial."

And Hagel told me, "There will be consequences for a world that depends on American leadership. The real challenge is whether we can rise above this."

In the world, as much as at home, that is the lingering question.