The following are excerpted statements by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins outlining their decisions for acquittal Friday on the two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

By Olympia J. Snowe

Impeachment was designed by the framers to be a circuit breaker to protect the republic, when “checks and balances” would not contain the darker vagaries of human nature. Impeachment empowers the Senate — under the most extraordinary of circumstances — to step outside its legislative role, reach into the executive branch and remove a popularly elected president.

Impeachment was not, however, devised as an adjunct or independent arm of prosecution. It is not for the United States Senate to find solely whether the president committed statutory violations. Rather, senators have a larger question — whether there is evidence, in my view beyond a reasonable doubt, that the president’s offenses constitute high crimes and misdemeanors that require his removal.

Here was the precise point of my challenge — to give particular meaning to the elusive phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors.” This task was critical, because impeachment is not so much a definition as it is a judgment in a particular case — a judgment based not upon an exact or universal moral standard — but upon a contemporary and historical assessment of interest and need.

“High crimes and misdemeanors” speak to offenses that go to the

heart of matters of governance, social authority and institutional power — offenses that, in Hamilton’s words, “relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” And these crimes must be of such magnitude that the American people need protection not by the traditional means of civil or criminal law — but by the extraordinary act of removing their duly elected president.

The allegations in Article One do not paint a pretty picture. Indeed, I have struggled with having to reconcile the president’s lowly conduct with the Constitution’s high standards. I am concerned with the minimal threshold that this president has set, and the poor example he has created for leadership in this country. The president himself admits he gave evasive and incomplete testimony. He admits he worked hard to evade the truth. He admits he misled friends, advisers, Congress and the nation. And he looked all of America in the eye — wagging his finger in mock moral indignation when he did it.

As I worked my way through my distaste, my dismay, and my disappointment, I returned to the discipline that the Constitution imposes upon senators as triers of fact. In that light, my job was to review the evidence, and to measure that evidence against my standard of proof and the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.

In examining the evidence, Article One did not go to perjury about the underlying relationship — that charge was dismissed by the House. Instead, Article One alleged perjury based on statements about statements about conduct. Unfortunately, what that came down to was a case of “perjury once removed” — an inherently tenuous charge.

As triers of fact, senators have been asked under Article One not to find whether the president lied, but whether he committed the specifically defined act of perjury. Here, the law is clear that there must be proof that an untruth was told; that it was told willfully; and that it was told about a subject matter material to the case. These are the hard rules of the statute.

In this instance, Article One alleges perjury in statements the president made explaining the nature and details of the relationship. Significantly, the underlying subject matter of most of these statements was ruled irrelevant and inadmissable in the underlying civil case that was itself dismissed and settled. To me, these facts undermined the materiality of these statements.

Article One also alleges perjury in the president’s statements explaining his concealment of that relationship. Here, I have found insufficient evidence of the requisite untruth and the requisite intent. Given, again, that we are talking here about “perjury once removed,” I cannot conclude that the president was guilty on Article One. Therefore, I will vote against the article.

I had similar concerns and conflicts as I considered Article Two. Who could look at the disturbing pattern laid out and not be deeply troubled? After all, the president may have influenced the filing of an affidavit. The president may have initiated the concealment of potential evidence. And the president may have accelerated a job search in hopes of influencing a witness.

But for all of this, there was only circumstantial evidence. Despite a 64,000-page record and countless hours of argument and testimony, there was no direct evidence supporting any of these allegations. To the contrary, where there was direct evidence, the testimony was against the allegations. Indeed, not one witness with firsthand knowledge came forward from the beginning of the process to corroborate the charges. So, while I could draw inferences from the evidence, I could not draw conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt.

Make no mistake about it, I find the president’s behavior deplorable and indefensible. If I were a supporter, I would abandon him. If I were a newspaper editor, I would denounce him. If I were an historian, I would condemn him. If I were a criminal prosecutor, I would charge him. If I were a grand juror, I would indict him. And if I were a juror in a standard criminal case, I would convict him of attempting to unlawfully influence a potential witness under title 18 of the United States Code.

However, as a United States senator, in an impeachment trial, I have but one decision — does the president’s misconduct, even if deplorable, represent such an egregious and immediate threat to the very structure of our government that the Constitution requires his removal? To answer this broad question, I have asked myself these finer questions:

Do the people believe that their liberties are so threatened that he should not serve his remaining 23 months? Is the president’s violation on par with treason and bribery? What are the inescapable and unprecedented effects of removing a duly elected president? And can the president’s wrongdoing be effectively remedied by criminal prosecution, in a standard court of law, after he leaves office?

The president’s behavior has damaged the office of the presidency, the nation and everyone involved in this matter. There are only two potential victims left — the Senate and the Constitution — and I am firmly resolved to allow neither to join the ranks of the aggrieved. From the day I swore my oath of impartiality, I determined that the only way I could approach this case was to ask myself, “If I were the deciding vote, could I remove this president under these circumstances?” The answer, I conclude, is no — and therefore, I will vote against both articles of impeachment.

By Susan M. Collins

Our Founders designed impeachment to protect our system of government against officials who lose their moorings in the law or who endanger our most basic institutions. They designed it neither as a popular referendum nor as a mechanism by which — as in parliamentary systems — the legislature can remove the head of government based on nothing more than a policy difference. Instead, this process is a check upon rogue chief executives, designed equally to remove the politically popular malefactor and to protect the innocent, but unpopular, official. It is a vital, but extraordinary, remedy that should neither be shunned out of political expediency nor invoked for political gain.

The question before us is not whether President Clinton’s conduct was contemptible or utterly unworthy of the great office he holds. It was. The question before us is whether the president has committed an impeachable offense for which he should be removed from that office.

The Framers thought carefully about where to vest the ultimate power to remove a president. They chose the United States Senate. This was not an obvious choice. The power to convict and remove could as easily have been assigned to a court of law, where a jury would apply the law to the facts in the ordinary way.

But the Framers gave the power to try impeachments to the Senate. They did so because they recognized that an impeachment trial should not be an ordinary trial, requiring an ordinary application of law to fact. The Framers wanted the Senate to make not only a determination of guilt, but also a judgment about what is best for our nation and its institutions.

As this case has been argued in this chamber, I have become convinced that the perjury charges of Article I are not fully substantiated by the record. The president’s grand jury testimony is replete with lies, half-truths, and evasions. But significantly, not all evasion is lying, and not all lying is perjury. Even blatantly misleading testimony that all fair-minded people would consider dishonest may not actually constitute perjury, as the law defines it.

Time and time again, the attorneys questioning President Clinton before the grand jury — perhaps out of a misguided sense of deference — neglected to pin him down as he gave nonresponsive, evasive, confusing, or simply absurd responses. The only remedy for imprecise answers is more precise questioning. Unfortunately, this did not occur, and consequently, the record is too murky to require the president’s removal based on Article I.

The evidence supporting Article II is more convincing. Indeed, the case presented by the House Managers proves to my satisfaction that the president did, in fact, obstruct justice in Paula Jones’ civil rights case. While the circumstances surrounding Monica Lewinsky’s filing of a false affidavit are unclear, there is no doubt in my mind that the frantic efforts to find Ms. Lewinsky a job, the retrieval and concealment of gifts under the bed of the President’s secretary, and, most egregious, the president’s blatant coaching of Betty Currie — not once, but twice — were clear attempts to tamper with witnesses and obstruct justice. Indeed, if I were a juror in an ordinary criminal case, I might very well vote to convict faced with these facts.

Nevertheless, I do not think that the president’s actions constitute a “high crime” or “misdemeanor” as contemplated by Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. This is, I readily acknowledge, a judgment that can neither be made nor explained with anything approaching scientific precision. But I can point to two factors that influence my conclusion.

First, obstruction of justice is generally more serious in a criminal case, as opposed to a civil case, as it interferes with the effective enforcement of our nation’s laws and not solely with the adjudication of private disputes. Consistent with this conclusion, the vast majority of obstruction prosecutions involve underlying criminal actions, and the statutory penalties are more severe in the context of criminal trials. This is not to suggest for a moment that we should tolerate obstruction of justice in civil cases, but only to observe that our legal system treats it as a less serious offense.

Second, I believe that for impeachment purposes, obstruction of justice has more ominous implications when the conduct concealed, or the method used to conceal it, poses a threat to our governmental institutions. Neither occurred in this case.

Therefore, I will cast my vote not for the current president, but for the presidency. I believe that in order to convict, we must conclude from the evidence presented to us with no room for doubt that our Constitution will be injured and our democracy suffer should the president remain in office one moment more.

In this instance, the claims against the president fail to reach this very high standard. Therefore, albeit reluctantly, I will vote to acquit William Jefferson Clinton on both counts.

President Clinton has written a shameful and permanent chapter of American history. He alone is responsible for this year of agony that the American people have endured. I do not, however, take solace in the prospect of a censure, nor do I take comfort in the possibility that the president may be prosecuted for his wrongdoing after he leaves office. Rather, I look to the verdict of history to provide the ultimate punishment for this president, a verdict that no public relations gloss nor smear campaign can obscure. As Maine’s great poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in 1874, “Whatever hath been written shall remain, nor be erased, nor written o’er again.”

When the history of the Clinton presidency is written, every book will begin with the fact that William Jefferson Clinton was impeached, and that will be not only the ultimate censure but also the final verdict on this sad chapter in our nation’s history.