The Two Realities nytimes.com
Were the House Republican prosecutors talking about the President or about a mafia don? Their language was sometimes so extreme -- "conspiracy," "infamy" -- that it was hard to tell.
The very shrillness of the attack signaled the dual nature of this impeachment trial. It has the trappings of a trial: a great and solemn one, as the commentators keep saying. But it is also the culmination of years of political effort by a passionate minority to destroy this President.
Consider how we got to where we are. At every stage the hand of the extreme right is evident.
It began five years ago, when a far-right magazine, The American Spectator, printed an article by David Brock about the Arkansas troopers who guarded Bill Clinton when he was Governor. The article quoted one trooper as saying a woman named Paula was willing to be the Governor's "regular girlfriend." Mr. Brock has since said that he regrets throwing in that name.
There are hundreds of women named Paula in Arkansas, and none were identified. But six weeks later Paula Jones came forward and demanded that President Clinton apologize for the slur on her reputation. Where did she do that? At a Washington conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee.
Her lawsuit, when it followed, was supported -- indeed, made possible -- by hundreds of thousands of dollars from conservative sources.
Later in the same year as the Brock article, 1994, Congress renewed the Independent Counsel Act. The act sets up a special court to appoint the counsels. The practice had been to pick a judge of seniority to head the panel. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist chose a junior member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, David Sentelle, a deeply conservative Republican and friend of the two far-right Republican Senators from his state, North Carolina: Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth.
A moderate Republican, Robert Fiske, had been investigating President Clinton's role in the Whitewater land deal. But after Judge Sentelle had lunch with Senators Helms and Faircloth, the judicial panel replaced him with Kenneth Starr.
Having found nothing to use against the President in more than three years of investigation, Mr. Starr a year ago threw his immense resources into the Monica Lewinsky matter. No detached, professional prosecutor would have undertaken such a case. Robert Morgenthau of New York, perhaps the most respected
prosecutor in the country, said last week that Mr. Starr had violated "every rule in the book."
Mr. Starr acted as an agent of the House of Representatives: a profoundly anti-constitutional politicization of the law. One of the most strident conservatives in the House, Tom DeLay of Texas, the Republican whip, led the cry for impeachment.
Many of the key players in this history come from the new conservative Republican heartland, the South and Southwest: Helms, Faircloth, Sentelle, Starr, DeLay and now Trent Lott: the Senate majority leader. Senator Lott's talk of bipartisanship is just that, talk -- occasioned by his concern that 13 Republican senators are up for re-election next year in states that President Clinton carried in 1996. He is doing all he can to convict.
Of course not all the Republicans involved in the campaign against the President, or sitting in judgment now, are on the far right. Political interests push others to join. Exactly that happened with Joe McCarthy; many Republicans sought political advantage in his demagoguery.
But the essence here is an attempted coup by ultra-conservatives. I do not doubt their sincerity. That is what makes it terrifying. When Tom DeLay says this is "about relativism versus absolute truth," he speaks the language of totalitarianism.
I think this country is better than the scene being played out in the hothouse of Washington. Americans are more diverse, less strident, more understanding about human nature.
In his closing speech for the House prosecutors, Henry Hyde said he hoped that "a hundred years from today, people will look back at what we have done and say, 'They kept the faith.' " I think it will take much less than 100 years for historians to see this for what it is: a vengeful attempt to twist the Constitution into a partisan tool.
One new bit in this column. That paragon of integrity, William Rehnquist, appointed Sentelle, who appointed Starr, with a little prodding by Helms and Faircloth. A good bit to go with Rehnquist lying (under oath, of course) in his confirmation hearings. Of course, all the conservative cast and crew, in the Senate and here, is in favor of a higher form of integrity. All's fair in the war against Clinton the Antichrist. Somebody's got to straighten out Jerry Falwell on that one. |
