Yes, thanks you very much for bringing that to my, and all of our, attention. It very much is worth reading.
I was very, very excited until I got about halfway through it. It makes some points extremely well. The analogy of a lie detector test, and its "control" question, which is asked because virtually everyone will lie in response to it, is brilliant. As is the author's further walking us through the notion that the lie to that question predicts nothing about whether the subject will lie to a question that is a fair one, and which should be asked. Such as did he pass government secrets. Did he steal in a certain instance, etc. Brilliant.
It refutes some of the hypocrisies and pieties of the moral absolutists with a bit of empirical science. I.e., yes we would probably all lie about SOME things under oath if it seemed improbable enough that we would be caught, the questions seemed irrelevant enough to any legitimate legal inquiry, and the impact on us of answering fully truthfully was bad enough.
And the articles main conclusions, that most do, and we should give the President a pass as a legal and Constitutional matter on this, but that there is still a major job ahead for him to regain our trust -- agree fully with all of that.
But there are two main weaknesses that he waltzes by. One, he does a poor job of explaining why these were questions the President shouldn't have been asked.
And he also says that we, the American people are deeply hurt and feel betrayed because he also lied to us, who were not the investigators who wrongly cornered him by asking the improper questions.
To handle the last first -- we DID also utterly corner him. Not you or me, perhaps, but our agents, THE PRESS. Do we all forget what that incredible frenzy was like in mid January when this story broke. When the President was absolutely besieged in the White House and not allowed asked one single question upon another subject until the Press felt it had answers to the same cornering questions that had been improperly asked in the Lewinsky deposition by the Jones lawyers? And even after the President gave the same sort of misleading partial answers (that phrase "sexual relations"), the Press kept trying for months to ask a full array of follow up questions. Like the most persistent hostile attorneys imaginable.
We all feel soiled but it is by no means all the President's fault. It's a system gone amuck.
Now as to why, legally, those questions about his legal (though somewhat immoral and highly embarrassing) sex life should not have been asked. The answer is one that very few seem to want to really explore. They don't want to explore it because the very people who would ordinarily be most motivated to do so, the President's defenders, also tend to be the most unreservedly in favor of pursuing sexual harassment claims without restraint.
To cut to the chase, as I have said many times before, there should be rules analogous to the rape shield laws, to restrain investigation into all aspects of the accussed's sex life. Just as painting a woman claiming rape as loose, and liable to have asked for it, may improve the other side chances though the enormously prejudicial effects of bringing up all prior consensual sex she may have had, so also rummaging through an harassment defendant's consensual sexual past may sometimes help an harassment plaintiff. Though it shouldn't. The effect can be highly prejudicial. But having a consensual affair is a poor predictor that the defendant tried to or did coerce sex from someone else. And is a question that shouldn't be asked. Evidence of prior coercive harassing behavior is another matter entirely.
Now those who think that helping win harassment suits at any costs trumps all considerations of fairness, and limitation of damage to the accused, cannot be expected to be very open to this balanced approach. No will those be who are convinced that women never, ever, make such complaints unless they are absolutely true. (Why bother with the trial one wonders. I guess it looks better.)
The way it works now is very much up to this discretion of the judge. Almost entirely. Some judges would exclude nothing. In Clinton's case the judge decided to wait to decide the relevance of the Lewinsky testimony to the coercive behavior which Jones alleged until after if was given (and leaked). She then threw it out as "not necessary" to the fair determination of the truth of Jones's allegations. (Tragically too late.)
I hope I've demonstrated how our instinct that these questions should not be asked can be squared with legal requirements. People are right. They shouldn't be asked in lawsuits or in court, except under the most extraordinary and unusual circumstances. Sexual harassment cases don't qualify as enough reason to conduct free ranging inquiry under oath into all manner of consensual sexual misdeeds. I venture to say that most men would lie in response to those questions, if they thought there wasn't absolute proof to the contrary. So like the control questions in a lie detector test, they shouldn't be used to hang the person trapped into answering what we shouldn't be asked. Either by going after him for perjury, or by causing the jury to be shocked, shocked I tell you, into prejudice against the truthful respondent.
Now to return in closing to the President. He didn't face merely the usual concerns about his wife and daughter discovering his answers if he answered fully forthrightly. He faced the prospect of the whole world's knowledge, and of great political damage at the hands of his enemies. And also the prospect of the media hounding him and others forever for more information, it having been made "fair game" by having come out in a court process. Of course the way it turned out has been far worse.
Doug
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