Bill Clinton’s impeachment two decades ago set the modern template for President Donald Trump’s upcoming trial in the Senate. But the process may be even more contentious this time given sharper tribal divisions in Washington.

Clinton’s four-week proceeding in 1999 riveted the nation. Thirteen Republican House managers marched across the Capitol to present articles of impeachment, led by the silver-maned chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde. An old-school grand orator, he cast Clinton’s impeachment as a matter of national honour and invoked the sacrifices of war dead.

Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with the Democratic president, gave video testimony. And Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers rebutted with a folksy drawl the managers’ argument that the case was about principle rather than merely a titillating scandal: “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about sex,’ it’s about sex.”

Partisan strife threatens to engulf the Senate once again as the chamber prepares a trial for two articles of impeachment against Trump, accusing him of abusing his power and blocking Congress’s investigation into that abuse.

The rancor in 1999 eventually subsided as leaders from both parties moved to contain the damage. But they were navigating political cross-currents that produced very different incentives than their counterparts face today.