Media voices

WASHINGTON, DEC 20: Leading us newspapers reacted with dismay Sunday to President Bill Clinton8217;s impeachment, with one Washington Post writer concluding his story feels awfully confusing.8217;Heads here were spinning after a day which saw the first impeachment of a US president in 130 years, the end of a military campaign in Iraq and the sudden resignation of the incoming speaker of the House of Representatives, Bob Livingston, after he was found to have had extramarital affairs.

8220;It was a day of memorable speeches and vacuous ones, of gestures grand and petty, of shock, confusion, the momentous and the banal, of sudden shifts of mood and shattered logic, of wrong notes and portentous chords, a day of heroes and opportunists in such a frenzy of manoeuvering that they could be one and the same person from one hour to the next,8221; the Washington Post said.The Los Angeles Times opined, 8220;The House8217;s action culminated an extraordinary week in which the impeachment drama unfolded along with Livingston8217;srevelations of his own infidelity, and the United States launched Air strikes against Iraq.8221;The New York Times, in its editorials, said the House vote said that 8220;in the end, the will of the people meant nothing.8221; US public opinion polls have consistently shown that American voters support a censure for Clinton at the worst, with little backing for his removal by the Senate.8220;The radicals on the Hill would hear nothing but the echoes of their own fanaticism.

Impeach! Impeach!,8221; the Times said. 8220;The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen attempt to drag a President from the White House.8221;The daily also reported that the White House would be changing its low-key strategy for a more aggressive one.8220;The Republicans run a risk if they pursue a strategy that puts America8217;s interest last,8221; said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. 8220;The public has a certain amount of tolerance for partisan politics, and they8217;ve had just about enough.8221;The Post argued that the impeachment arose from changes inAmerican culture. These include an insatiable appetite for real-life soap opera, the worst congressional partisanship in more than three decades and culture wars unresolved since the Vietnam War.

Hillary beats the men

Time magazine named President Bill Clinton and his nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth Starr, as its men of the year in its edition out this week. The cover shows a determined looking Clinton casting a shadow over a bespectacled Starr, the man whose investigation into a series of minor scandals inexorably led to Sunday8217;s impeachment vote.But, First Lady Hillary Clinton was more popular than either of the men, with a 65 per cent favourability rating. Twenty-five per cent viewed the President8217;s wife unfavourably. A survey released by the magazine found that while 68 per cent of those surveyed believed that Clinton had acted irresponsibly, a solid 59 per cent viewed the President favourably.