When the House impeaches a president for perjury and obstruction of justice arising from a private affair — the 1998 Clinton impeachment — what do religious traditions and the Constitution say about the standard for removing a president and the role of truthfulness in office?
The 1998 impeachment sits at a hard intersection: perjury under oath is a serious federal crime that religious traditions treat as one of the most demanding failures of truthfulness, and a private affair — even a badly-handled one — is the kind of failure the same traditions have consistently distinguished from unfitness for office. The country divided almost evenly, and the constitutional standard the founders wrote does not close the question: reasonable readers can hold that lying under oath was itself a "high Crime," and reasonable readers can hold that the offenses were not the political ones the standard was written to catch. What the site can say honestly is that the impeachment established two patterns that have shaped the country ever since: that the House and Senate can reach different conclusions on the same facts, and that impeachment has become a tool nearly every president will now face rather than a check reserved for the rare emergency the founders envisioned. Whether the tool still works as a check is the question every impeachment since has raised.
Religious perspectives
Religious traditions treat truthfulness under oath as one of the most demanding moral obligations, and they also distinguish carefully between private failure and public unfitness — which are, in this case, the two things at issue at once.
Judaism: The Ninth Commandment — "You shall not bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16) — is treated by the rabbinic tradition as reaching its most serious application in judicial and testimonial settings. Perjury is not simply a lie; it is the corruption of the process by which justice is administered. At the same time, the Jewish tradition insists on the possibility of teshuvah — return, repentance — for the most serious wrongs, and does not treat one failure, however grave, as permanent character.
Christianity: Jesus' teaching on truthfulness is unusually strict: "Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything more comes from the evil one" (Matthew 5:37). The Christian tradition has treated deliberate false swearing as a serious moral wrong. At the same time, the tradition's emphasis on the possibility of forgiveness, on judgment reserved for God, and on the distinction between sin and unfitness for office is deep — the New Testament's repeated refusal to identify moral perfection as a qualification for public leadership (from David's adultery to Peter's denial) has been part of the tradition's political thinking for centuries.
Islam: Truthfulness (sidq) is among the most emphasized virtues in Islamic ethics, and false testimony (shahadat al-zur) is treated as one of the most serious sins. The Islamic tradition's treatment of the leader's private life is more integrated with public duty than the modern Western distinction assumes, but the tradition also emphasizes the difference between a specific failure and general unfitness.
The honest situation: The 1998 impeachment sat at the intersection of two things religious traditions take seriously and treat differently — the strict obligation of truthfulness under oath (which perjury violates directly) and the question of whether every private failure disqualifies from public office (which the traditions have generally answered no). The country's divided response — the House impeached, the Senate acquitted, public support for the president remained high — reflected the same tension the traditions themselves hold in view.
Constitutional & legal framework
The 1998 impeachment is the country's clearest modern working-through of what "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" means — and the answer it produced was, in effect, one both parties have inherited without ever quite resolving.
What happened: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation, initially focused on the Whitewater land deals, expanded to include allegations that President Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and had made false statements about it in a deposition in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit and to a federal grand jury. Starr's September 1998 report to Congress detailed the affair and identified potential grounds for impeachment. On December 19, 1998, the House impeached President Clinton on two articles: perjury before the grand jury (228-206) and obstruction of justice (221-212). Two other articles (perjury in the Jones case, abuse of power) failed. On February 12, 1999, the Senate voted to acquit — 55-45 against conviction on perjury (below the 51-vote majority threshold), and 50-50 on obstruction (well below the 67-vote supermajority required for removal).
The constitutional text: Article II, §4 provides that "The President... shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" language was contested throughout the process. One reading — pressed by many Democrats — held that the offenses required must be political offenses against the state, of a kind that undermines the constitutional order. Another — pressed by many Republicans — held that any serious criminal violation by a president reaches the constitutional standard, especially when it involves perjury under oath (an offense that goes to the integrity of the legal system the president is sworn to defend).
The vote and the acquittal: The Senate's failure to reach a majority on either article, let alone the required two-thirds, has been read in three ways: (1) that the offenses, however serious, did not rise to the constitutional standard; (2) that partisanship prevented what the standard would otherwise have required; or (3) that the country had already, through the November 1998 midterm elections in which Democrats gained seats despite the scandal, expressed its own answer. All three readings have serious defenders.
The precedent: The 1998 impeachment established that a president could be impeached without being removed — that the House and Senate could reach different conclusions about whether misconduct crossed the constitutional line. This precedent shaped the 2019 and 2021 impeachments that followed, in which the Senate again acquitted after the House had impeached. Whether that pattern has stabilized impeachment as a check on presidents, or has hollowed it out as a purely political process, is a question both parties have opinions about.
The honest other side: Perjury before a federal grand jury is a serious federal crime, and the argument that it is the kind of offense that reaches "high Crimes" is a real constitutional argument, not partisan cover. The reciprocal argument — that a private affair, however lied about, is not the kind of political offense the founders had in mind — is also a real argument. The impeachment sat at exactly the point where the constitutional standard is genuinely contested.
See: Article II, §4 (Impeachment) → | Senate history: Clinton impeachment →
Sources cited:BibleConstitution