Clinton Foe is Doubtful of Senate
As written in the New York Times
October 29, 1998, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
Section A; Page 22; Column 1; National Desk
The humorlessness of Representative Bob Barr, the scowling conservative who started the drive to impeach President Clinton, was celebrated by hometown supporters tonight in a political roast, and Mr. Barr agreed that they had a point.
"I am smiling," he declared in a poker-faced joke on himself even as the impeachment stalwart on the House Judiciary Committee was stoking fresh scorn for an unlikely target: his Republican colleagues in the Senate who he fears lack the "backbone" for an impeachment trial. "How little interest, how little backbone they have to really take on tough issues," Mr. Barr said in an interview, offering a concession of sorts from atop the impeachment ramparts that the campaign might founder as a one-house effort.
"I don't know if the Senate, with the current makeup, really has the stomach for it," Mr. Barr said, offering a stark assessment of the difficulty Republicans anticipate when they resume their effort after Election Day.
"Clinton will declare victory no matter what happens," Mr. Barr said, finally smiling at what strikes him as the absurdity of the President's apparent invincibility in opinion polls and the proclivity of Republicans to "cave" and play into his hands. "It's the Clinton magic mystery tour," Mr. Barr conceded, sounding as frustrated as Wile E. Coyote in pursuit of the Presidential Roadrunner. "It's a wonder to behold what this guy can do with Republicans. We knock him down and then we pull him up and say, 'Sorry, may we dust off your coat?' "
At the fund-raising roast, Mr. Barr was celebrated as a vital patriot by the actor Charlton Heston and other right-wing celebrities who proclaimed the nation's right to "keep and bear Bob Barr"—a play on Mr. Barr's serving as Congressional point man for the National Rifle Association, which Mr. Heston heads.
"Congressman Barr has promised me that I'll get to arrest Hillary," exulted another roaster, Gary Aldrich, the former White House F.B.I. agent who has been disparaging the Clintons as a book writer and speaker on the conservative circuit. Dinner guests guffawed as he brandished handcuffs before Mr. Barr, a former Federal prosecutor who first made his anti-corruption reputation here by bringing down politicians in both parties.
The 49-year-old Mr. Barr faces the world with a dark mustache and steady glare that Clintonites rate villainous but supporters hail as vigilance personified. He first sampled the intrigues of Washington as a lobbyist for the Central Intelligence Agency.
"If we fulfill our duty in the House and the Senate fails to fulfill theirs, shame on them," Mr. Barr said, adding that the Senate's recent rejection of a House-approved tax cut was evidence of timidity toward contentious issues like impeachment.
The sympathetic partisans who teased Mr. Barr included a Bill Clinton imitator who fecklessly grinned upon the pro-impeachment audience and serenaded Mr. Barr with this advice: "Smile, though your heart is breaking."
