The only "winner" to emerge from the recent Senate trial of President Bill Clinton is the U.S. Constitution, contended Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) during a recent visit to campus.

For those who lived inside "the fishbowl of impeachment" in Washington, D.C. during the last year and suffered from "impeachment fatigue," the thud of the gavel marking the conclusion of the Senate trial was "truly a welcome sound," said Lieberman. His talk, which took place on Feb. 18, barely a week after the Senate trial ended, was sponsored by the Chubb Fellowship at Timothy Dwight College.

Lieberman pointed out that the word Americans have used most often to describe their reaction to the impeachment proceedings is "disgusted." He, however, feels "satisfaction and even pride with the outcome," he told the packed audience in the Law School's Levinson Auditorium.

The nation's two-centuries-old Constitution "worked in a remarkably modern context," said Lieberman, noting that, despite his personal condemnation of Clinton's "misbehavior," he believes the Senate came to the "correct Constitutional conclusion -- that the President should remain in office."

However, the Senator contended, "The events of the last year ... were less an aberration than a culmination of things that have been brewing in our political system for a long time." These include the rise of "gotcha politics," the "alienation" of the American public from public institutions and "disappearing" journalistic standards, he said.

"It's not too soon to worry about what the future holds for our democracy," stated Lieberman.

The increasing tendency of politicians "to demonize the opposition" has "undermined our ability to do our jobs as lawmakers and public servants" and created a "permanent scandal infrastructure" in which "proportionality seems to be an afterthought," said Lieberman.

This "lowering of politics to a kind of soap opera" has engendered a "corrosive cynicism" among the American people that Lieberman fears may lead to a "wider democratic disconnection." He pointed out that there has been a steady decline in electoral participation in recent years, and that only 36.6 percent of eligible voters went to the polls last November, the lowest turnout since 1942. He also noted that a recent survey of the world's democracies showed that the United States ranked 139th in voter turnout -- the lowest of any major democratic nation.

"Cynicism is trumping citizenship in America today," said the Senator.

For instance, when asked in a recent survey why they believe people go into politics, two-thirds of Americans answered "for personal gain," noted Lieberman. That same survey, he said, showed that half of those questioned view the President, the media and the "whole political process" less favorably today than before the impeachment proceedings began; that 58 percent believed partisan politics will "stay the same" in the post-impeachment world; and that 58 percent believed "nothing will get done" by the current Congress.

Lieberman said he feared that this "sense of powerlessness" among the American people "may impede us from fixing what's wrong in our society."

Like many of his generation, the Yale alumnus (B.A. 1964, LL.B. 1967) was inspired to pursue a career in public service by such figures as John F. Kennedy, Lieberman said. However, he admitted to wondering if he would have been so influenced by Kennedy had the late president's sexual liaisons been as deeply investigated and widely reported by the media as many politicians' are today.

The impact of the media's quest for scandal, according to Lieberman, has been "to drive good people out of politics and to discourage good people from getting into politics." While cautioning that the members of Congress should "practice what we preach," Lieberman said he believes "we all need to work to reestablish reasonable lines between public life and private life" in order to reverse this trend and restore Americans' "interest and faith" in political participation. "The call to public service is a noble call, an enormously satisfying call," the Senator remarked.

"It is imperative that all of us work together to bridge the rifts that the impeachment process exposed," said Lieberman, adding that "a good place to start is with our founding values ... The ideals that we share and value and hold in common can be the basis for moving forward."

-- By LuAnn Bishop

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