Kenneth Starr's Page in the History Books nytimes.com
Since you bring up history, Bob, I thought you might enjoy this. On your broader argument, I've always found the "decline of the West due to Clinton" argument amusing, except for this short period between the time I read Andrew Sullivan's NYT Magazine article pointing out that line was mainstream neoconservatism and the November elections. I was more scared than amused then.
To me, at least, the most distinctive characteristic of the Starr investigation is the way it has transformed an arm of the Federal Government into a powerful force committed to destroying a single man: in this case, the President of the United States. For that, there seems to be only one recent historical analogy -- and it is an uncomfortable one for many of Mr. Starr's opponents.
In the early 1960's, Attorney General Robert Kennedy set the Justice Department on a similarly ruthless crusade against Jimmy Hoffa, unleashing the F.B.I. and other investigators to uncover anything that would allow the Government to "get" the controversial teamster leader. Hoffa was finally convicted on relatively minor charges of jury tampering and fraud.
Mr. Starr's investigation, like Kennedy's, has been unconstrained by the normal standards of criminal prosecution. The Office of Independent Counsel was created as a (theoretically) disinterested body, intended to absolve officials of wrongdoing as often as to convict them. Mr. Starr has transformed it into the equivalent of a Federal racketeering investigation against a mob leader -- the kind of investigation that the crusade against Hoffa helped legitimize. Even admirers of Kennedy, of whom I am one, have found his relentless assault on a single man troubling, even frightening.
In the end, however, Mr. Starr's place in history will largely depend on the results of his efforts. To justify his critics' placement of him on the roster of great and largely reviled inquisitors -- from Torquemada to the Salem witch trial judges to McCarthy -- Mr. Starr would have to succeed in driving Mr. Clinton from office, and in making his kind of crusade at least a temporary norm of American life.
But it is now all but certain that Mr. Clinton will survive Mr. Starr's assault. Moreover, it seems probable that Mr. Starr's unpopularity will doom the independent counsel statute to extinction.
Indeed, the Starr investigation's principal result may well be to persuade the nation to shun such heavyhanded uses of official power in the future. In that case, Kenneth Starr will be remembered by history -- to the limited degree he is remembered at all -- as a strange, aberrant and ultimately ineffectual figure, most notable for his repudiation by the American public.
In (mild) defense of Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa was arguably close enough to a Mafia boss to justify the kind of prosecutorial tactics used against organized crime and drug lords. Clinton? Well, if you believe he's the antichrist, I guess it all makes sense. If you believe he's just this guy, who didn't make up the rules of politics as a blood sport, but who has some skill in the area, you wonder. At any rate, I think Toynbee's sort of out of favor in historical circles, and the west will do just fine regardless. |
