David Frum

In the fall of 1998 the House Judiciary Committee met to consider impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton, following their receipt of a report by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Starr had accused Clinton of impeachable offenses of perjury and obstruction of justice while attempting to conceal an affair with a White House intern. The only previous time in the twentieth century the committee had seriously considered impeaching a sitting

U.S. president was in 1974, when it approved impeachment articles against Richard Nixon for his part in the Watergate scandal. In the following viewpoint, David Frum argues that strong similarities exist between the two presidential scandals. Both involved suborning of perjury, the refusal to provide full disclosure of past actions to Congress or the public (“stonewalling”), and the abuse of...