Date: Fri 30-Jan-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Powell-Clinton-sex-scandal

Full Text:

COMMENTARY: Pursuing Clinton For His Sex Life Risks Trivializing All

Government

BY CHRIS POWELL

Whom the gods would destroy in politics, they first make ridiculous, and the

only thing more ridiculous than President Clinton's denying his latest

philandering the other day was his Cabinet members' lining up so quickly to

say they believed him. Clinton might have salvaged some respect here only by

asserting that he had never used and never would use his official position for

personal gain and that he would stop discussing his personal life.

But this aspect of Clinton's character was on display in both the 1992 and

1996 campaigns and the electorate decided that it wasn't crucial. The business

with Paula Jones, an issue in the 1996 campaign, may be analogous to the

business with Monica Lewinsky now, insofar as both were government employees

when they had their encounters with Clinton as chief executive. There is no

suggestion that Clinton coerced or tried to take vengeance on either. So why

should the Lewinsky business be definitive politically when the Jones business

was not?

Of course some say that the Lewinsky business shows that Clinton has learned

nothing in this regard. But maybe he has learned everything. If his inability

to restrain his appetites did not prevent his election, it may be hard to

recognize it as an impeachable offense.

And while the Lewinsky business has raised the question of perjury, of whether

Clinton lied under oath about their relationship when he was deposed in Jones'

lawsuit the other day and whether he asked Lewinsky to lie under oath about it

too, it's unlikely that anything approaching obstruction of justice could be

proved here even if their affair itself could be proved, unlikely that this

ever could be more than a matter of his word against hers.

So what would be the point of seizing on this bit of lying about personal

lives amid all the lying, dissembling, corruption, and betrayal of the public

interest that engulf government on matters of public policy and whose cost is

infinitely higher?

Richard Nixon could be threatened with impeachment because he was waging a

pointless war the country was sick of, burglarizing his political foes and

otherwise using the government to crush dissent, and covering it up. People

were dying and liberty was in jeopardy while power remained in the hands of an

evil man who, the archives now show, was worse than even his enemies thought.

Ronald Reagan escaped the threat of impeachment by implausibly denying

knowledge that his closest assistants violated federal law to raise money for

the Nicaraguan insurgents. George Bush had convenient lapses of memory about

his involvement in what could have been considered impeachable conduct too.

John F. Kennedy of heroic memory cavorted more in the White House than Clinton

seems to have done yet, and the greatest president of this century, Franklin

D. Roosevelt, died in the arms of a mistress, as did a former vice president,

Nelson Rockefeller, and if they ever had been asked about their private

relationships, they surely would have lied and encouraged lying too.

In those days most people would have wanted an important reason of state,

involving public policy and the national interest, before even asking such

personal questions. These days it seems that so little dignity attaches to the

presidential office and to the country itself that there can be open

speculation about Clinton's bodily fluids.

While he can be venal, Clinton is not evil and he is not going to be impeached

unless there are two-thirds majorities in Congress to do so, and there will be

no such majorities unless the country wants him out. Polls long have suggested

that the country is happy with his official performance, and the polls of the

last few days suggest that the country doesn't think that the Lewinsky

business is worth getting obsessed with as a matter of justice or as a matter

of state -- probably because it isn't a matter of either.

Clinton long has had no credibility on the matter of girlfriends, but, after

all, how much more credible than the president is special prosecutor Kenneth

Starr? Having been commissioned four years ago to inquire into Clinton's

personal financial dealings in Arkansas and having spent millions of dollars

to produce nothing, Starr now has sunk to trafficking in the tape recordings

of a guileless young woman tortured by jealousy and to swarming her with FBI

agents for eight hours without counsel in a hotel room as if she was an atomic

spy.

Starr, a former tobacco company lawyer, piously insists that he is not out to

get the president, but someone should put the special prosecutor himself under

oath and ask the question again. Surely a look at the intrigues and leaks in

the special prosecutor's office would be as fascinating as Clinton's sexual

escapades, and more relevant to the condition of government.

Without a confession by the president or tape recordings or other witnesses

proving that he advocated perjury about his sex life, would putting him on

trial in court or before the Senate be worth the humiliation to the country

and the distraction from serious issues, as it was with Nixon? Would leaving

Clinton in office imperil the nation, the Constitution, or liberty?

Only the worst of the Clinton haters and the most partisan of Republicans

could think so. Indeed, some Republicans who are patriotic as well as partisan

figure that their party will be better positioned for the next election if a

discredited Democrat serves out the remainder of the presidential term.

In any case this is the man the country elected twice, and surely few voters

were terribly fooled the second time. Pursuing his old character flaw would

just discredit and trivialize all government and make the whole country

ridiculous when the public is already dangerously alienated from its

responsibility to democracy. Indeed, maybe that is the point of pursuing it.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)