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There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life,
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
-- The Tragedy of Julius
Caesar, Act IV Scene III
Now, as the 106th Congress
comes to town to take their seats and is confronted with an agenda
they didn't want, some are calling for the President to postpone
The State Of The Union Speech. In the wake of the tumultuous
and excrescently partisan-divisions that marked the end of the
105th, Senator Trent Lott has been unsuccessful to sell a short
version of impeachment to colleagues like Phil Gramm of Texas
and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who represent the Conservative
faction that feels a full trial with witnesses is called for.
In this confused atmosphere, some are suggesting that the President
postpone his State of the Union. "I think it would
be unseemly and distracting for the President to be giving a
State of the Union address in Congress while he was under trial
in the Senate." In other words, since we've [the impeachment
mongers] have this situation so screwed up unnecessarily, please
don't make us look even more irrelevant and foolish by continuing
to conduct the business of the government. Or, as Mr. Gramm put
it, "The President should not be speaking to Congree when
he is under this cloud." You may remember that last year,
Mr. Clinton proceeded with his State of the Union address within
days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaking in the worldwide
press. And, if truth be told, many of the
surviving members of the Republican House are now making claims
on the agenda of the President and probably fear that if he does
speak, he will do what he has done five previous times, and outline
his legislative agenda for the upcoming
year, upstaging them.
Some of these guys are suggesting that the President just mail
his address in, as presidents did in the old days. That strikes
me as a little bit cynical. Many Americans tune in as a civic
responsibilty to hear the State of the Union address. So let's
just change everything because roughly 20% of adamant House members
would not back off in the face of an unprecedented election reversal
and continuing polls of the American people which indicate that
this whole impeachment thing is over, over, over.
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Mr. Lieberman, a Senate Democrat and a "moderate,"
is cited as supporting a postponement while the Senate tries
to work out a compromise on the length and details of the coming
trial. He worries that if the Senate doesn't settle on an agreement
soon, "we are going to descend, I fear, to the kind of partisan
rancor that characterized the House proceedings."
But difficult to escape, and the essential element of irritation,
is the relationship that currently exists between the House Republican
and the Senate Democrats. And in between, we have the Senate
Republicans, upon whom the country is relying for wisdom, compromise
and leadership.
![](../../../../Photos/Downloads99/ashcroft.gif) ![](../../../../Photos/Downloads99/hatch.gif) ![](../../../../Photos/Downloads99/helms.gif)
(Top) Gramm (Middle, left
to right) Ashcroft, Hatch, Helms, (Bottom, left to right, Lott,
Lugar, Thurmond.)
![](../../../../Photos/Downloads99/Lott.gif) ![](../../../../Photos/Downloads99/lugar.gif)
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