IMPARTIALITY LIKELY TO VANISH IN SENATE.

Byline: Robert E. Thompson

``BIPARTISAN'' is the word senators are using as they stride before television cameras to describe how the Senate is conducting the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.

Each senator, having been sworn to impartiality by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, promises to weigh the evidence as it is presented and then, without consideration for party politics, to vote for or against the two articles of impeachment passed by the House.

But the routine often is nothing more than a charade to please the folks back home who want their elected representatives to work together for the good of the country.

Most senators know how they will vote on impeachment. But they desperately want to avoid the appearance of narrow partisanship that tarnished the House proceedings in which debate exploded with ideological rhetoric and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against Clinton while Democrats voted for him.

Some senators undoubtedly hope that, when they get down to a final judgment on Clinton's fate, polarization really will give way to bipartisanship. That is what happened a quarter century ago when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.

Several Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach the president. But that is where the process ended because Nixon, having been informed by congressional leaders that he would be found guilty in the Senate, resigned rather than suffer the ordeal of a trial.

It was the quest for an aura of bipartisanship that led the Senate to vote 100-0 on Jan. 8 for the compromise on trial procedures proposed by conservative Republican Phil Gramm of Texas and liberal Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. That remarkable unanimity permitted the Senate to draw a sharp contrast between itself and the House.

But bipartisanship is an elusive commodity in an institution such as the Senate, made up of members elected on party platforms.

That is why many observers contend that Clinton's Republican prosecutors cannot garner the 67 votes - two thirds of the Senate - required by the Constitution to convict the president. That is why a number of senators in both parties have suggested that, in the final analysis, Congress should censure the president rather than let him off without even an official congressional reprimand.

In the end, that may be the most important feat of bipartisanship in the tragedy of the Clinton presidency.

Although bipartisanship often is difficult to attain on Capitol Hill, it can be crucial in determining the course of the republic.

When George Bush prepared to dispatch American combat forces to turn back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, he sought a congressional resolution of support from a Democratic-controlled Congress. Many senators, especially Democrats, were wary, fearing America could become mired in another Vietnam. Some compared Bush's proposal to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which passed Congress and granted Lyndon Johnson authority to project America into the deadly morass in Southeast Asia.

But in the end, Bush got his bipartisan resolution. By a vote of 52 to 42, the Senate approved the declaration. It fared even better in the House, where the vote was 250 to 83. Bush already had authority as commander-in-chief to send troops into combat, but he felt more secure doing so with support from Congress.

When the building blocks of America's enlightened post-World War II foreign policy were put in place during Harry Truman's presidency, their acceptance and approval in Congress depended on the bipartisan leadership exerted by Michigan Republican Arthur Vandenberg, who headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the Republican-dominated 80th Congress.

Vandenberg, who had been a leading isolationist before the war, became an invaluable partner in the initiatives taken by Truman to help establish the United Nations, win congressional support for the Marshall Plan, for aid to Greece and Turkey, and for breaking the Soviet Union's blockade of occupied Berlin.

Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois played a somewhat similar role in helping Lyndon Johnson push the 1964 Civil Rights Act through the Senate. Johnson desperately needed GOP votes to break the filibuster by senators from the South, who were preventing passage of the measure that opened public accommodations to blacks.

In the decades immediately before that struggle, Republican conservatives had joined their southern colleagues consistently to bottle up civil rights legislation. So Johnson knew that the only way he could break the filibuster, masterminded by Georgia's astute Sen. Richard Russell, was to win the support of Dirksen, the Senate Republican leader.

With the help of such Senate Democratic leaders as Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Mike Mansfield of Montana, Johnson finally persuaded Dirksen to join the civil rights battle. When that happened, the pending civil rights bill, which had originated in the House, passed the Senate and became law.

During the 1950s, when Johnson was Senate majority leader and his mentor, Sam Rayburn of Texas, was speaker of the House, they provided immeasurable support to Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower on important legislative issues, especially those involving America's commitments abroad.

In the impeachment trial of Clinton, we can only hope that the Senate will return to the bipartisanship it exhibited on Jan. 8 rather than emulate the narrow partisanship demonstrated by the House.