|
Timing is always a challenge
with this column. It runs Wednesday, my deadline is Friday, yet my time
available for writing comes largely on weekends. A piece that runs in the
middle of the week was probably begun at least ten days before.
I can usually make a few last
minute edits if needed, but once in a rare while I’ll gamble on a topic that
might be torpedoed by events altogether. Still, if the polls are right I’m
going to annoy 70% of readers with this one anyway so the extra hazard of
obsolescence seems bearable. I doubt anything will happen to alter my main
point; that horse is too long out of the barn.
The impeachment trial of
President Clinton may well be over when this prints, swept away not by history
or the turn of justice but by political sleight of hand I’d have not thought
possible a few months ago. By today’s standard Orwell was a piker and
“newspeak” was baby talk.
The conventional
wisdom now goes something like this: Sexual harassment is a private matter,
it’s OK to trample the victim’s civil rights if it avoids personal
embarrassment, and not all felonies are impeachable. Perjury does not corrupt
the legal process if it’s about harassment, sex crimes are no one’s business,
and besides, the president is under a lot of stress and needs the diversion.
Monica Lewinsky, a
morally befuddled young woman who is the first person I know of famous for her
particular talent since Linda Lovelace, is a stalker; the most powerful man on
earth her helpless victim. Paula Jones, “trailer trash” according to the party
that calls itself the champion of the little people, likewise preyed on him.
One attorney
murmurs that the president shouldn’t be convicted because she is a black woman,
while others tell us that he committed perjury because Ken Starr has a dirty
mind. “High crimes” aren’t really crimes by high officials as our Founders
mistakenly believed. Hearsay is evidence but witnesses aren’t. It doesn’t
matter what someone does if they’re on your side. Popular opinion supercedes
the law.
The public forgets
promises so there’s no point in keeping them; only the afterglow counts. A
Constitutional crisis results when you follow the Constitution, which doesn’t
mean what it says anyway. Partisanship is bad; we’d be better off if everyone
thought the same thing. Removing Bill Clinton from office would overturn an
election, even though I’m reasonably sure Bob Dole would not become president.
Forget Orwell. We
are deep into Lewis Carroll territory now.
A lifelong Democrat, I often
find that readers assume I am not. It took a while to figure it out and it
pains me now that I have, but in 1999 America anyone who believes in personal
accountability and moral absolutes is presumed be a Republican; those who make
up the rules as they go and see people as powerless victims are thought to be
Democrats. It isn’t true for the most part, yet it is how many react even if
they won’t admit it. The irony is that this perception has been nurtured not by
the GOP – which is getting a little weaselly on conviction itself – but by the
Democratic leadership, all in defense of William Jefferson Clinton. It has
worked quickly, completely, horribly.
Whether it happens before this
prints or after, I concede the fact that the president will walk. But before
the leaders of my party celebrate too loudly they should beware the old adage
about being careful of what one wishes for. Swords of this making tend to slice
both ways.
The stunning
success of our still-young country is due in no small part to the rule of law.
There are no coups here, no military takeovers, no warring factions (at least in
the literal sense). In their place is a blend of checks, balances, and process
that provides a safety valve like none other. To trash it all, for the sake of
one appealing if flawed and corrupt man, is a folly beyond that imagined by
Orwell, Carroll, or even Seuss.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
|
