Another superlative Will:
Condign punishment is under way--public mortification, domestic
torture (life on the White House's second floor must now be gothic) and
political emasculation. Yet to come, the ridicule of history.
The object so sublime, to make the punishment fit the crime, is already being
achieved.
Will Clinton's punishment fit the crime?
By George Will
(Published August 6, 1998)
WASHINGTON--Neither good taste nor public-spiritedness mars
the nearly perfect seaminess to which President Clinton's
self-indulgence and self-absorption have reduced the national
conversation. However, this is almost sublime: His grand jury testimony is
scheduled for Aug. 17, fifty years to the day after a riveting moment in
another perjury drama.
In 1948 Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, accused Alger Hiss of
espionage while both were serving the Soviet Union. On Aug. 17 Hiss was
invited by Congressman Richard Nixon to Room 1400 in New York's
Commodore Hotel, where Chambers awaited. After a pantomime of
uncertainty, Hiss said he had known Chambers slightly, under another name.
Thus Hiss continued to weave the tangled web that destroyed him.
The Hiss case involved large themes--dangerous international conflict,
clashing understandings of man and justice. Clinton's crisis partakes of his
defining attribute: smallness. Which might save him.
When Kenneth Starr's report puts Monica Lewinsky in the context of the
seamless corruption of Clinton's career--a chronological report 500 pages
long might not deal with her until Page 400--the very multiplicity of episodes
may make all seem as small as the Clintons. So the country may say: Let him
limp across the finish line. The great constitutional
remedy--impeachment--should be reserved for weightier objects.
Has Clinton committed perjury? Only his word--that is, nothing
serious--suggests otherwise. Would a perjurer suborn perjury? Please. Can
obstruction of justice be proved? Perhaps not. Clinton may not have told
Lewinsky to lie--just as Henry II perhaps did not "tell" servile underlings to
murder Beckett. Henry just wondered aloud, in the presence of people
eager to ingratiate themselves, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"
Watergate occasioned important reappraisals (often misguided) of campaign
regulations, presidential powers and the supervision of national security
institutions. But no large lessons will flow from the Clintons' misadventures,
only a truism: It is tremendous folly to put trashy people in positions of trust
and conspicuousness.
The artful dodger looks increasingly cornered, but Aug. 17 could have much
drama drained from it by a pre-emptive presidential address of contrition.
But be warned: Political apologies often turn out to be self-testimonials by
the apologizer, who confesses that he erred because he loved the people too
much or expediency too little. Clinton's might be a hackneyed reprise,
replete with serial lip-bites, of his synthetic sincerity that is by now banal:
"Compassion made me less than completely candid because I could not bear
to hurt ..."
That would be (in Mark Twain's words) not merely food for laughter but an
entire banquet. (Clinton's supposed brilliance as a rhetorician is refuted by an
axiom: A sculptor wants to be seen to be a sculptor, and a painter seen to be
a painter, but an orator does not want to be seen as an orator.) However,
what is Clinton's choice?
If he commits perjury before the grand jury, a catalyzing few Democrats of
distinction probably will grease the skids beneath him. Starr's indifference to
polls is a facet of the probity that makes him unintelligible to Clinton, and
surely there are Democrats of probity who are unwilling to ratify by passivity
any more of his defining political deviancy down.
Still, if that blue cocktail dress yields no physical evidence, Clinton might roll
the dice and stick with his story. Doing so, he would risk everything on the
gamble--he should assume that Starr has heard from witnesses Clinton
knows nothing of--that Starr has not accumulated convincing corroborative
evidence of Lewinsky's story.
Clinton's presidency, an inconsequential skiff even before waves of scandal
began pouring over the gunnels, has now been whittled nearly to nothingness
by the public's intuitive wielding of "Ockham's razor," also called the
principle of parsimony. The principle is: When seeking to explain
phenomena, start with the simplest theory.
The public understands that Clinton's behavior for six months-- silence, when
not minting implausible privilege claims and directing calumny against
Starr--has been rational if, but only if, he is guilty. Polls--snapshots of a
flowing river--will change radically if he commits perjury before the grand
jury.
There is no look as baleful as that which contorts the faces of some Clinton
despisers when they think he might "get away with it." Have they not
noticed? Condign punishment is under way--public mortification, domestic
torture (life on the White House's second floor must now be gothic) and
political emasculation. Yet to come, the ridicule of history.
The object so sublime, to make the punishment fit the crime, is already being
achieved.
sacbee.com
|
