In a September 30 New York Times article on presidential candidate and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) -- headlined “GOP Hopeful Took Own Path in the Senate” -- staff reporter Jo Becker wrote of Thompson's 1999 decision to vote against impeaching then-President Bill Clinton: "[I]t should have been an easy decision. The calls flooding Fred D. Thompson's Senate office in the winter of 1999 showed that his Tennessee constituents overwhelmingly favored removing President Bill Clinton from office." In fact, polls conducted in the state in late 1998 and early 1999 showed that Tennesseans largely disapproved of removing Clinton from office.

From the Times article:

From a political standpoint, it should have been an easy decision. The calls flooding Fred D. Thompson's Senate office in the winter of 1999 showed that his Tennessee constituents overwhelmingly favored removing President Bill Clinton from office. But as the historic impeachment trial neared, records show, Mr. Thompson agonized over what he saw as two “bad choices.”

[...]

On Feb. 12, 1999, Mr. Thompson voted to find Mr. Clinton guilty of obstructing justice. But he joined just 10 other Republicans, many of them moderates from more liberal states, in voting to acquit on the perjury charge, reasoning that while the president's conduct on that front was “sordid,” it did not justify removing him from office.

His Senate office phone lines immediately lit up with angry calls from Republican constituents. But Fred Ansell, on of his former senior aides, said Mr. Thompson shrugged off the potential political fallout by quoting the 18^th century Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

But while the article asserted that the “calls flooding” Thompson's Senate office purportedly “showed” that Tennesseans supported impeaching Clinton, polls at the time showed the opposite. Indeed, a survey conducted by a Democratic firm in January 1999 reportedly found that 61 percent of respondents said that Clinton should complete his second term in the White House, and that only 28 percent supported trying him on the impeachment charges. From a January 31, 1999, Nashville Tennessean article, headlined “In This State, No Push to Oust Clinton”:

Tennesseans are getting about as sick of the impeachment charade in Washington as the rest of the country, according to a professional poll taken in the state last week.

Two out of three voters here, or 67%, say the Senate should censure President Clinton and be done with it; only 28% want the trial to move forward. Voters also said, by a 61-35% margin, that Clinton should finish his term.

The Tennessee poll, taken by Democratic pollsters working for an undisclosed client, closely mirrors national sentiment on the impeachment. It was completed Monday after 500 interviews, with a 4% error margin.

Likewise, an October 16, 1998, article in the University of Tennessee's Tennessee Today reported that “the fall Tennessee Poll, conducted by the UT-Knoxville's Social Science Research Institute” found that among respondents only “12 percent call for impeachment proceedings.” Further, a Middle Tennessee State University poll of residents “from the 39 legally defined Middle Tennessee counties” found that 59.5 percent of respondents felt it would be “better for the country ... if Clinton were to remain in office until the end of his term.” The poll was conducted between September 28 and October 13, 1998.

The results of these three polls largely parallel nationwide public opinion at the time. Indeed, most national polls conducted in late 1998 and early 1999 found that a majority of respondents opposed both removing Clinton from office and continuing the impeachment inquiry.

In addition, Becker uncritically quoted Thompson saying that he was “surprised” when he studied “our founders[']” writings on impeachment and learned “that some things that are clearly wrong and even violations of the law were not impeachable offenses.” But despite repeatedly noting earlier in the article that Thompson had served as the Republican counsel during the Watergate proceedings, Becker did not indicate whether she had questioned Thompson regarding why -- given his previous experience with the issue of impeachment -- he would have been “surprised” by the founders' intent. From the article:

Years before, as Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate committee, Mr. Thompson had witnessed the proceedings that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. Now, he pored over legal tomes on precedent. He ordered up lengthy staff memorandums on what the founding fathers intended when they said a president could be removed for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” scribbling his thoughts on a yellow legal pad.

Did the president's cover-up of an affair with a White House intern justify deposing him “against the will of the people,” Mr. Thompson wondered, or should Mr. Clinton be protected by the very “baseness of his actions?” “His office is too high + the crimes too low,” he mused.

[...]

His first big break came as a 30-year-old small-town lawyer, when his mentor, former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., chose him over far more accomplished candidates as the Senate Watergate committee's Republican counsel.

[...]

“Politically it was a no-brainer - you know, guilty all the way,” Mr. Thompson recalled. But when he studied 'what our founders meant,' he said, he was 'surprised that some things that are clearly wrong and even violations of the law were not impeachable offenses."