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skillful Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, asked Starr when he had reached that conclusion.

“Some months ago,” said Starr.

“Why did you withhold that before the election when you were sending a referral with a lot of negative stuff about the President and only now … give us this exoneration of the President several weeks after the election?”

The independent counsel had no response.

The next day, Sam Dash, the OIC’s ethical adviser who had appeared oblivious to previous lapses by Starr and his subordinates, resigned in protest over Starr’s testimony.

Dash, who had been chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 and 1974, wrote a letter accusing Starr of abusing his position by “unlawfully” injecting himself into the impeachment process. His resignation had no apparent effect on the proceedings.

Nor did an open letter issued by 400 historians―including co-sponsors Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr., of City University of New York; Sean Wilentz of Princeton University and C. Vann Woodward of Yale University―that openly urged Congress to reject impeachment because the constitutional standards for it had not been met. Their statement should be required reading in civics classes:

As historians as well as citizens, we deplore the present drive to impeach the President. We believe that this drive, if successful, will have the most serious implications for our constitutional order.

Under our Constitution, impeachment of the President is a grave and momentous step. The Framers explicitly reserved that step for high crimes and misdemeanors in the exercise of executive power. Impeachment for anything else would, according to James Madison, leave the President to serve “during the pleasure of the Senate,” thereby mangling the system of checks and balances that is our chief safeguard against abuses of public power.

Although we do not condone President Clinton’s private behavior or his subsequent attempts to deceive, the current charges against him depart from what the Framers saw as grounds for impeachment. The vote of the House of Representatives to conduct an open-ended inquiry creates a novel, all-purpose search for any offense by which to remove a President from office.

The theory of impeachment underlying these efforts is unprecedented in our history. The new processes are extremely ominous for the future of our political institutions. If carried forward, they will leave the Presidency permanently disfigured and diminished, at the mercy as never before of the caprices of any Congress.

The Presidency, historically the center of leadership during our great national ordeals, will be crippled in meeting the inevitable challenges of the future.

We face a choice between preserving or undermining our Constitution. Do we want to establish a precedent for the future harassment of presidents and to tie up our government with a protracted national agony of search and accusation? Or do we want to protect the Constitution and get back to the public business?

We urge you, whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, to oppose the dangerous new theory of impeachment, and to demand the restoration of the normal operations of our federal government.

In early December, the Vice President’s father, Albert Gore, Sr., died at age ninetyone at his home in Carthage, Tennessee. On December 8, Bill and I flew down to Nashville for a service in the War Memorial Auditorium. Al Gore stood next to the flagdraped casket and delivered a beautiful eulogy for his father, the once powerful and courageous U.S. Senator who lost his seat in 1970 because he opposed the Vietnam War. Al spoke directly from his heart with humor and empathy. It was the best speech I’d ever heard him give.

There has been immense speculation about how our relationship with the Gores was affected by the impeachment scandal. Al and Tipper were as shocked and hurt as everybody else in August when Bill admitted his wrongdoing, but both were supportive throughout the ordeal, personally and politically. They were there whenever we needed them, sometimes when we asked for their help, sometimes when they sensed we could use it.

Starting on December 11 and finishing early on the twelfth, the Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to refer four articles of impeachment to the full House for a vote.

This was no surprise, though we still had held out hope that we could gain enough support for a compromise on censure.

While Congress pursued impeachment, Bill focused on his official duties and I on mine. I felt strongly that I had a duty as First Lady to continue my public responsibilities, including a trip I was determined to make with members of Congress to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti to bring aid and comfort to citizens there who were recovering from Hurricane Georges. Keeping my regular schedule often got me up and going. I never believed that I had the luxury of climbing into bed and pulling the covers over my head.

From December 12 to 15, Bill and I visited the Middle East. We went with Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, to Masada, a symbol of Jewish resistance and martyrdom that Bill and I had first visited seventeen years before when we were part of a Holy Land tour led by Bill’s Southern Baptist pastor, Dr. W. O. Vaught.

He had since died, and I wished often that he had been around as a pastor to counsel, and confront, Bill. I was deeply appreciative that three ministers did offer guidance―Rev.

Phil Wogaman, Rev. Tony Campolo and Rev. Gordon MacDonald met and prayed with him regularly as he sought understanding and forgiveness.

On that earlier visit, we had also gone to Bethlehem; now we returned there with Yasir Arafat to visit the Church of the Nativity, where we sang Christmas carols with Christian Palestinians, still holding out hope for the peace process. Bill was scheduled to make a groundbreaking address to the Palestinian National Council and hold other meetings with the Palestinians, and we landed at the brand new Gaza International Airport. This was a momentous event because the opening of the airport had been one of the tenets of the recent Wye Peace Accords that Bill had brokered between