Throwback

DAVID Schippers, chief counsel to Henry Hyde’s Judiciary Commit- tee, was at home in Chicago when the Starr report was delivered to Capitol Hill. It seemed from media reports that the referral was “just sex,” so he told friends he expected to be home for good in a couple of weeks. “I was fully prepared to review it and go back to Henry and say, ‘It’s over,’” he recalls. Within a month, though, the veteran Democratic lawyer (who, by the way, voted for Bill Clinton twice) was outlining 15 possible criminal counts against the president. As he helps prepare the House managers to make their case before a jury of senators, he explains, “What changed my mind was the evidence.” If enough of his fellow Democrats in the Senate agree with him that “the office of the presidency is more important than the man,” they, too, could be persuaded by the very facts Schippers found he couldn’t ignore.

Schippers readily admits to being “an anachronism, a throwback.” He is an old-style, Truman Democrat, holding accountable the first New Democrat to occupy the White House. He finds the Clinton machine’s treatment of its adversaries “terrifying, from a moral standpoint.” He is particularly offended in behalf of the president’s female accusers, who have been, he says, “trashed.” “I have five daughters, and there was a time people would be out horsewhipping over that.”

About the Author

Kate O'Beirne

DAVID Schippers, chief counsel to Henry Hyde’s Judiciary Commit- tee, was at home in Chicago when the Starr report was delivered to Capitol Hill. It seemed from media reports that the referral was “just sex,” so he told friends he expected to be home for good in a couple of weeks. “I was fully prepared to review it and go back to Henry and say, ‘It’s over,’” he recalls. Within a month, though, the veteran Democratic lawyer (who, by the way, voted for Bill Clinton twice) was outlining 15 possible criminal counts against the president. As he helps prepare the House managers to make their case before a jury of senators, he explains, “What changed my mind was the evidence.” If enough of his fellow Democrats in the Senate agree with him that “the office of the presidency is more important than the man,” they, too, could be persuaded by the very facts Schippers found he couldn’t ignore.

Schippers readily admits to being “an anachronism, a throwback.” He is an old-style, Truman Democrat, holding accountable the first New Democrat to occupy the White House. He finds the Clinton machine’s treatment of its adversaries “terrifying, from a moral standpoint.” He is particularly offended in behalf of the president’s female accusers, who have been, he says, “trashed.” “I have five daughters, and there was a time people would be out horsewhipping over that.”