This section cites the many times during the impeachment battle when Dan Rather displayed his desire for President Clinton to stay in office. Sometimes he defended Clinton outright, and other times he defended him through the use of euphemisms, questions, choosing only one side of a controversy to tell viewers about, and by insisting that the president's crisis was merely about Clinton's sex life, and not about whether or not perjury and obstruction of justice occurred. Still other times he would defend him by regularly presenting polls favorable to the President and negative to then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

A fitting cartoon: Dan Rather's Impeachment.

Rather showed a poll in the midst of the impeachment inquiry:
"There's a gap tonight between Congress's view and what the public wants next."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 15, 1998.

"Senator, when you talk to other Senators, particularly older Senators -- those who've been around for a bit -- is or is there not some concern of the public, concern in some quarters, not all of them Democratic, that this is in fact a kind of effort at a quote 'coup,' that is you have a twice elected, popularly elected President of the United States and so those that you mentioned in the Republican Party who dislike him and what he stands for, having been unable to beat him at the polls, have found another way to get him out of office?"
--Dan Rather to former Senator Warren Rudman during CBS coverage of the impeachment trial swearing in, January 7, 1999.

"With President Clinton, only the most virulent Clinton-haters now want him to leave office."
--Dan Rather in his syndicated column, August 12, 1998.

"Questions such as what to do about Social Security, improving the nation's schools, and the drug menace among America's youth basically are on hold. So is what to do about threats to health of the U.S. economy by what is happening in Asia and Brazil; the threats to U.S. security posed by Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; and the peril represented by a collapsing Russia and an emerging China -- all important parts of the people's business -- all remain pretty much on hold, while the trial drags on."
--Dan Rather in Rather's Notebook at the CBS Web site, January 25, 1999.

"In a CBS News poll out tonight just 29 percent believe Starr is conducting an impartial investigation of President Clinton. And 57 percent want Starr to drop his investigation of the President's personal life."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, May 8, 1998.

"On Capitol Hill the Republican-dominated House now plans to vote Thursday to approve an official impeachment investigation into [Clinton's] sex life and lies he told to hide it."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, October 6, 1998.

"Bob, is there or is there not any sense among the Senators...that there's other very important business that needs to be attended to? Saddam Hussein has his aircraft in the air threatening U.S. fighting men and women in the military. There are questions about Social Security, what to do about health care. There's a long line of the people's business that seems to have been put aside and apparently is going to be put aside for weeks if not months now."
--Dan Rather to Bob Schieffer during the signing of the oath book by Senators to start the impeachment trial, January 7, 1999.

"In an atmosphere of fierce partisan politics, a trial that could remove President Clinton from office is now scheduled to start Thursday in the U.S. Senate,"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, January 5, 1999.

"[Y]oung GOP firebrands in the House may fulminate about Vince Foster, missing files and moral turpitude in the oval office."
--Dan Rather in an Rather's Notebook at the CBS News Web site, May 4, 2000.

"For his part President Clinton's public reaction was to criticize the Republican majority for running a do-nothing Congress. [During the impeachment inquiry] The President accused Republicans of ignoring the U.S. Federal budget and allied problems and the global economy, health care and Social Security."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, October 5, 1998.

"On Capitol Hill not only did the Republican-led majority reject any punishment deal, they're even talking now of a wider, deeper, longer investigation of the President."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 23, 1998.

"Ken Starr relentlessly pursues Bill Clinton and his presidency,"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, August 19, 1998.

"Results are in tonight from a CBS News poll taken since Monica Lewinsky's testimony to the Ken Starr grand jury: 63 percent of those polled said even if there was wrongdoing by the President, it would have been better for the country if the Starr investigation into Mr. Clinton's personal life and whether he lied about it had never started."
--Dan Rather's on the CBS Evening News, August 7, 1998.

"Future historians may wonder how and why so many Americans chose to be so unconcerned. In the eyes of history, Bill Clinton is not the only one on trial. So are his accusers [pause] So are his judges. And so are all of us."
--Dan Rather speaking during CBS's live coverage of the Senate Impeachment trial, January 14, 1999.

The House impeached Clinton and the Senate had just voted against removal:
RATHER: "Beyond reconciliation, the issue for Republicans now is repair and repositioning. As CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, party leaders have to deal with an impeachment legacy all their own."
ATTKISSON: "Republicans are desperately regrouping after a difficult year pursuing the president's impeachment. Many worry they're now at serious risk of losing their congressional majority." "The party's right wing will continue to apply pressure on social issues like abortion. They may be in the minority, but they're powerful fund-raisers, and that gives them the influence to shape policy and dominate the Republican agenda."
--Dan Rather and Sharyl Attkisson on the CBS Evening News, February 16, 1999.

"Good evening. It's the incredible shrinking impeachment inquiry tonight, just days after the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee expanded it. The President's camp and others call the committee highly partisan, unfair, out of bounds and out of control. That was then, this is now. CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer has the latest on the fast-breaking, Republican backtracking and retreat."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, December 3, 1998.
Note: To whom does others refer? If Rather had said, "Democrats call the committee...," the criticism would not seem as justified.

"President Clinton's spokesman is calling it a rush to pre-judgment. Others in the Clinton administration call it, quote, 'a lynch mob mentality.'"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 18, 1998.
Note: Rather relayed only to viewers what those on the Left had to say in reaction to the House Judiciary Committee vote to release the videotape of Clinton's grand jury testimony.

"[T]he Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted to release, at 9 am eastern time Monday, President Clinton's videotaped testimony to the Starr grand jury. Also being released then: sexually explicit material in thousands more pages of transcripts. The deeply partisan attempts at pre-spin control are already under way."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 18, 1998.

"Today marks the end of four years of the Ken Starr investigation, and still counting. Cost to taxpayers so far: 40 million dollars, and counting."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News August 5, 1998.

RATHER: "In Washington, Republicans on Capitol Hill added new fuel today to keep the White House under fire. They voted millions more dollars to keep investigating the Clinton camp in many directions including possible impeachment proceedings."
JONES: "Dan, the cost of investigating Washington scandals went up by more than 3 million today."
--Dan Rather and Phil Jones on the CBS Evening News, March 25, 1998.

"President Clinton today said little and shrugged off any similarity between a federal court rejecting his assertions of executive privilege in the Ken Starr investigation of his personal life, and the Richard Nixon executive privilege claims during the crimes of Watergate."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, May 6.

"The President did so [speak at a press conference] at his first news conference since Ken Starr's accusations of sex and crimes were made public." "The President also did so as the Republican majority in the House prepared to release what was widely thought to be the President's secret videotaped testimony to the Ken Starr grand jury."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 16, 1998.

"What happened to the long established practice that testimony before a grand jury is and remains secret. So what's going on here?"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 17, 1998 commenting on the release of President Clinton's grand-jury testimony regarding the Lewinsky question.
Note: There was no law-breaking involved in the release of the testimony. Congress has the right to do this and a majority of House Democrats voted for the release.

"Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr has increased the pressure even further on President Clinton today in what some call the nastiest and most personal clash yet. The Clintons have accused Starr of illegal, false and self-serving leaks of grand jury testimony in a campaign to get the Clintons at all costs, as they see it."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 24, 1998.
Note: Despite this negative view of leaks Rather presents here, during the Clarence Thomas hearings, he had a different view.

"Good evening. A bombshell inside the Ken Starr camp today. The prosecutor's own chief ethics adviser quit in protest. The widely respected, independent Sam Dash said Starr quote, 'unlawfully went from fact presenter to impeachment advocate' in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, November 20, 1998.
Note: Contrary to how Rather portrays him, the Scripps-Howard news service noted that Dash's "reputation for partisanship was relatively well-demonstrated" during his time as Majority Counsel during the Watergate hearings: he edited out unfavorable mentions of Democratic presidents in Nixon White House memos and allowed his probers to leak material damaging to Nixon, including the existence of a White House taping system. NBC's Lisa Myers reported shortly after Dash's resignation that he had been under heavy pressure from the White House and congressional Democrats to quit.

"The Senate impeachment court votes no live witnesses. Monica Lewinsky will not be called to the Senate floor and the end to the Republican drive to remove the President appears to be finally in sight."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 4, 1999.

"The President's spokesman flatly accused congressional Republicans of trying to prolong the impeachment trial now simply to inflict maximum humiliation and damage on the President. CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer shows you the picture that prompted this kind of talk."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, January 29, 1999.

Bill Clinton apologized for his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky at a prayer breakfast of religious leaders:
"The President of United States has given a solemn apology."
--Dan Rather on CBS's live coverage of a White House prayer breakfast, September 11, 1998.

"At an extraordinary White House prayer breakfast this morning the President went beyond his recent round of apologies. He went to acknowledging sin and expressing remorse and repentance."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, later that day, September 11, 1998.

"Several poll questions also indicate the American public wants an end to the investigation of the President's private life, including the Ken Starr investigation of the Monica Lewinsky case. But as CBS's chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer reports, Kenneth Starr made it clear today by word and deed that he couldn't disagree more."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, April 2, 1998.

"Federal auditors report special prosecutor Ken Starr's investigation of the Clintons has now cost at least $29 million and still counting."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, March 31, 1998.

"I have hated it [the Lewinsky scandal] from the very beginning and I have hated right the way through...I have no apology. I hate it. I have hated it all the way through."
--Dan Rather on Larry King Live, December 3, 1998.

"By more than two to one, the public says special prosecutor Ken Starr is politically motivated to damage the Clintons."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 1998.

"Some, not all, but some of the Republicans -- I'd have to say a majority, if you disagree say so -- have continually said, 'Look, this is not about sex, it's about the law.'" "...when you boil it down, there obviously was some lying by someone. There obviously was some lying by the President. It was all part of a cover story at base to cover up a sexual relation. Is that the view or not?"
--Dan Rather during live coverage of Clinton's Senate impeachment trial, February 6, 1999.

"[B]y 60 to 28 percent Americans think the Senate trial is politically motivated by Republicans to hurt Bill Clinton,"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 2, 1999.

"The Republican-led House schedules key votes on an impeachment inquiry as the latest CBS poll indicates more than half of the public would be satisfied with no punishment for the President at all." "All tolled, more than half [53 percent] now say they'd be satisfied with no punishment and just drop the whole matter. But as CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer reports tonight, Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican-led House made it clear today it won't do anything of the sort."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 24, 1998.
Note: Usually, a number so close to 50 percent as 53 percent is rounded to "half," not "more than half," unless there is a reason to do so. In fact, Dan Rather usually does round. George W. Bush barely led Al Gore in a poll asking who could be trusted more on guns. 37% for Bush, 35% for Gore. Rather said they were "tied."

"For his part, what President Clinton did today included trying to re-focus public attention on the economy, on America's own social problems and on a very important international problem. Not on his problems."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 24, 1998.

"The latest CBS News/New York Times poll indicates the public favors censure and move on, nothing more. But that's not Option A in Congress where some support of the President is eroding."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 15, 1998.

"President Clinton concentrated on a policy strong point [today] with the public: the economy. A CBS News poll tonight indicates still solid approval on his job performance. Against this backdrop Congress talked about how or whether to consider impeachment, censure or keeping the pressure on for resignation."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, September 14, 1998.

"Good evening. It is unprecedented. For the first time a sitting President of the United States will give grand jury testimony in a criminal investigation and one in which he himself may be a target. Faced with a subpoena from Republican special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the President agreed today to testify in the Monica Lewinsky case next month, on videotape, in the White House."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, July 29, 1998.
Note: Lawrence Walsh, Independent Counsel in the Iran-contra affair, who was investigating the Reagan administration, was rarely labeled as a Democrat by Rather.

"In Washington a federal judge today bluntly described special prosecutor Ken Starr's tactics as, and I quote, 'really scary.'"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, June 26, 1999.
Note: This is an example of selective judicial labeling by Rather.

"A new CBS News poll out tonight finds President Clinton's job approval rating still riding high at 61 percent, little changed from the week before [when it was 64 percent]."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, July 30, 1998.

"Some analysts say forcing Monica Lewinsky's mother to testify about intimate mother-daughter talk fuels the view that Kenneth Starr is politically motivated to damage the Clintons at all costs, and/or he's tone deaf to public distaste with squeezing a mother and daughter this way."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 12, 1998.

"When the Republicans had their peak victory in recent history, President Clinton said that after that, after 1994, that if you left them alone...they would burn themselves out. Now is or is not what we have now a race sort of between when the Republicans burn themselves out or burn the President up?"
--Dan Rather to former Clinton speech writer Donald Baer during live CBS News impeachment coverage, December 1998.

"President Clinton's effort to re-focus public attention on his agenda, instead of the Ken Starr investigation, ran into new and rougher resistance today. The President took his health campaign against cigarettes to a convention of American Medical Association doctors, but the Republican response was, 'Not so fast.'"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, March 9, 1998.

"The Republican independent counsel is casting far and wide and digging deep, investigating the alleged affair between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 19, 1998.

President Clinton had just given his State of the Union Address followed by the Republicans' response:
And so tonight, with this State of the Union address--not only two views of the state of the union, but a rare side-by-side convergence of American politics at its loftiest and its down and dirtiest--the president and the loyal opposition tonight articulated their visions for America. At the same time, tawdry and serious criminal accusations against the president are playing out. Overseas and even in this country, some people question what the fuss is all about. What they can't question is this: The American public's passion for fairness, justice and truth and a Constitution that guarantees the public good but not at the expense of individual rights, any individual's rights, from the lowliest to the highest, to a presumption of innocence until the facts are in.
--Dan Rather during a CBS News Special Report, January 27, 1998.

"Well, special prosecutor Ken Starr showed again today how far he'll go to find out more,"
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 18, 1998.

Hillary Clinton "believes there is and has been for a long time a wide and deep political conspiracy to get the President and that Ken Starr is the point man for that."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, January 27, 1998.

The House Judiciary Committee decided to expand its investigation, to include topics other than Lewinsky. The Judiciary Committee decided to subpoena memos from FBI Director Louis Freeh and Justice Department investigator Charles LaBella on possible illegal fund-raising by President Clinton:
"As for the reaction in the President's camp tonight,...the President's legal team is furious about what it calls this quote, 'unfairness,' saying that the expansion of the impeachment investigation makes it impossible to mount a defense for the President because it is, quote, 'a fishing expedition,' and in their view there's no telling what the charges will be now."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, December 1, 1998.
Note: Rather used 39 words to relay the Clinton lawyers' opinion of the expansion, but didn't relay any words from the Republicans on why they did it.

A CBS News poll "about public reaction to the alleged Clinton-Monica Lewinsky connection." "74 percent say they personally don't want to know more."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, February 18, 1998.
Note: Rather also would not like to know more. "I have hated it [the Lewinsky scandal] from the very beginning and I have hated right the way through..."

"Almost overnight, even some usually sane prognosticators went from predicting a Democratic takeover, to visions of a 30- to 40-seat Democratic loss in the House and a filibuster-proof Republican majority in the Senate.
   "But then a funny thing happened. We the People began to be heard. Poll results started piling up. Candidates went back to their districts and discovered that not nearly everyone was fixated on the Other Woman. Most folks back home cared mainly about Social Security, schools, the world economy, Medicare and HMOs. Congresspeople, senators and the press were obsessed with the sex-and-lies story, but an awful lot of rank-and-file Americans were flat-out sick of the whole sordid mess."
--Dan Rather, in his syndicated column, October 28, 1998.

"[T]he parallels between President Clinton's errors (allegedly criminal) and President Nixon's crimes are few."
--Dan Rather in Deadlines and Datelines, 1999.

"So he slogs on."
--Dan Rather, speaking of Ken Starr, in his syndicated column, April 22, 1998. print_file('footer'); ?>