It ain't Over, Till it's Over - 12 February 1999

There's an American - I don't know whether to call him a type, species - a man who becomes and remains famous for coining one line, one phrase, which expresses a thought that all of us have had and never expressed so simply or so well. So these phrases take on the force and the longevity of proverbs.

There was, for example, one Willie Sutton, a bank robber. And I suppose it's greatly to his credit that we know no more about him than the one phrase that has passed into the language. He robbed small banks and received short sentences. Then he got bold. Robbed a big bank - it was never anything else.

Finally he came before a judge who said: "Willie tell me something, why is it always banks?"

"Because," said Willie, "your honour, that's where the money is."

There's the memory of a man much better known, or perhaps only known at all to the old folks, name of Sam Goldwyn - the classic legend of an immigrant film producer - the incredibly melodramatic but true story.

A Polish boy, his family victims of a pogrom. He escapes from Warsaw and at the age of 11 walks alone, hitches his way across Europe to the English Channel and on a boat to England where he works for 18 months as a blacksmith's helper.

Blacksmith? We're in 1893. Then he shipped off - steerage - to New York and arrived here at 13 still alone and penniless. At 15 he was on the road selling gloves and after that all we need to say is that he became the most famous and, of course, one of the wealthiest of all film producers.

But apart from his great fame as a producer he had a separate reputation for his unique handling of the English language. Of a deal he wanted no part of: "include me out".

"A verbal agreement," he said, "isn't worth the paper it's written on." "Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."

Some Goldwynisms were so shrewd and only simple-seeming that the question was never settled whether or not he had a writer or writers to compose them.

But there's never been any question of any other author than the man who came to mind this week when we turned with infinite weariness to the closed doors of the final impeachment hearings of the Senate.

The man I'm thinking of has the folksy name of Yogi Berra - an old and famous baseball catcher who long after his retirement also acquired a reputation for salty sayings of an original sort, not simple-seeming as plain dumb sounding, but memorable.

Asked if his old team mates were still enjoying a favourite restaurant Yogi said: "Nah, the place is packed, nobody goes there anymore."

He gave voice to a line I think most of us might have tumbled into when we come in on a situation that's suddenly familiar. Said Yogi: "It's déjà vu all over again."

Yogi Berra maintained with great seriousness, later in life, that his homely philosophy came to him from his unique viewpoint in baseball - crouching behind the batter and seeing all the action from the first pitch on.

Hence his immortal and most quoted line: "It ain't over, till it's over."

So take Yogi Berra's word, the goings on in the Senate of the United States aren't over till they're over and the vote to acquit - which short of an act of God will have happened by the time you hear these words - is not, we all fear, the end. It's not difficult to say why.

Since the Special Prosecutor's vast report was delivered to the House and the Republicans in the House began to search it for likely articles of impeachment, the Republicans in the Senate - who would be the jury in a trial - the Republicans have been nagged, haunted, hounded, plagued, tormented, possessed and driven up the wall by a very visible prospect - the prospect of the verdict if and when they went through the impeachment trial they craved.

The dreadful unavoidable verdict was there in clear print from the beginning. From the first moment any congressman or congresswoman or senator looked up the Constitution.

Article One Section Three: "The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside." Now, here's the rub: "And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present."

That last phrase was enough to stop any Republican in the act of licking his lips. No way of denying or twisting the simple arithmetic. There are 55 Republicans in the Senate, there are 45 Democrats. So to get the two thirds necessary to convict the president - 67 votes - and throw him out of office - that's the sentence, the punishment - the Republicans would have to seduce, cajole or bribe 12 Democrats to move over and vote their way.

From the first whisper of impeachment way back in January there has never been a ghost of a chance that 12 Democrats would secede.

For months most of the Republican rhetoric has recited in blood curdling tones the fact that lying under oath before a grand jury is a crime, that the president so lied therefore he's guilty of a high crime - "high crimes and misdemeanours" are the qualifications for impeachment.

The other charge - obstruction of justice - has been maintained by saying that Mr Clinton tried to get Miss Lewinsky to give false testimony and his friend Mr Jordan got busy finding Miss Lewinsky a job outside the White House so they'd have no more trouble with her.

The public verdict, if you'd like to call it that, has been in for at least six months which is: 80 Americans in 100 think the president is not what you'd choose as a moral leader. Yes he did lie, maybe he obstructed justice, he's no great shakes as a man, still and all his degrading behaviour doesn't qualify for "high crimes and misdemeanours" which is what the Constitution says it must. So he ought not to be convicted - that's to say removed from office - which is the punishment the Constitution dictates.

Faced with these appalling figures - 80 per cent say morally reprehensible but 75 per cent say he must stay - the Republicans have spent months trying to find some legal dodge round the Constitution to leave the president, once he's acquitted, marked with a punishing stigma.

Some say being impeached in itself - only the second president in history - is stigma enough. But the Republicans have been afraid the Democrats would make a celebration of mere acquittal as they did when they assembled for a pep rally in the Rose Garden right after the articles of impeachment were voted by the House - as tasteless an act of party solidarity as you can dream up.

So knowing what the Constitutional outcome was bound to be the Republicans started talking about adding a motion of censure of the president - tough language to make him ashamed - and pass it by a majority vote.

And then a ludicrous proposal to regard this as a criminal trial, and go through the independent legal process of a finding of facts which would mean starting all over again, calling many witnesses and going on till doomsday. That collapsed and the censure doesn't seem to have much of a life ahead.

The big hurdle the Republicans can't vault over is the phrase I haven't seen anyone quote on the floor of the House or the Senate. It's the last sentence in the Constitution about impeachment and it bluntly says: "Judgement in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office."

In other words - that's all folks. Convict him or acquit him but then enough, don't try some other manoeuvre by way of punishment - that's the high hurdle the Senate faced even when it had finished the "impeachment process".

Now talking of the end of an era, which we most certainly were a week ago, what with the announcement of no more Morse Code and a recollection of the most bloodthirsty use of it in the case of Dr Crippen. The story this time is, you'll be happy to hear, all sweetness and light and is about two sisters. The recent death of the second one really taking the whole long century of their lives with them.

They were named Delany - Sarah and Elizabeth Delany. Elizabeth - the younger sister - a dental surgeon, died three years ago aged 104. Her elder sister, Sarah, died the other day up at their home - a small town up the Hudson River - at 109. Each of them, to the end, creatures of extraordinary grace and dignity.

Nobody had heard much about them until five years ago when they wrote and published a book with the bracing title, Having Our Say - The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years. It was made into a happy play with the two old sisters just sitting there preparing a meal and talking non stop about their family and their lives.

Their father was described as "born into slavery in 1858 - a gentle and scholarly man." A scholarly slave? Yes because the plantation owner took to him and became his teacher and friend. The result was that after the Civil War Mr Delany went on to become the first negro - as we said - bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The sisters were harried and exhausted in their youth by the strict segregation laws of the South and they moved up to New York City. Bessie went on into dentistry and Sarah got a masters degree and taught public school. They retired about 30-odd years ago. They never married. Lived together all their lives, finding each other just about as agreeable as two live-in partners could be.

When they both passed 100, needless to say reporters were on to them to learn - guess what? - their secret. They obliged by reporting what reporters always want to hear, namely: diet. Fresh fruit for breakfast. Spent the day preparing seven sorts of vegetables for their main midday meal.

In the evening they watched the news on public television and said their prayers - always an extra prayer for people they didn't like - and so to bed. Their supper was always the same - two glasses the size of great flower vases containing two chocolate milkshakes - not the watery impostor brewed in Europe, and the eastern states for that matter, but the genuine western article, really chocolate ice cream whisked up to the consistency of lather. About a gallon each.

A guarantee, they thought, of healthy longevity. I share their prejudice.

Oh and yes - they did not like to be called either black or the new compound 'African American'. "We are," said Sarah, "coloured women."

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