Sen. Moynihan On Impeachment
By George F. Will
Thursday, September 10, 1998; Page A21
The dynamic of the Clintons' scandals is driving Democrats to draw
swords against Bill Clinton and to throw away the scabbards. He is a
president of their making who has become deeply injurious to their country
and potentially ruinous to their party. So last Sunday, the Democrat who
has -- by virtue of political seniority, constitutional thoughtfulness and
national security experience -- the most standing to speak, crisply spoke.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said "get on with it." The antecedent of the
pronoun was "an impeachment proceeding."
Impeachment, which receives six mentions in the Constitution, is not, as is
carelessly said in the hyperbole of journalistic melodrama, a "constitutional
crisis." It is, like elections themselves, a procedure put in the Constitution
because the Framers thought it would be needed. Impeachment of a
president is what Moynihan calls a "crisis of the regime," not a crisis of the
constitutional order that provides for impeachments.
Moynihan said impeachments are not limited to "legal issues," meaning
infractions of the law. (He did say perjury in a civil case, as well as to a
grand jury, by the chief executive, is ground for impeachment.) Beyond
legalities, he said, "there are moral issues which are also relevant."
The articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon included the charge that he
had made "false or misleading public statements for the purpose of
deceiving the people of the United States." Such behavior, Moynihan said
Sunday, "is an impeachable offense."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman's flaying of the first pornographic president was
particularly stinging because it was a seamless extension of Lieberman's
excoriations of Hollywood, the music industry and other polluters of
popular culture. As a coarsener of the culture, Clinton's presidency matters
more than the scabrousness of 2 Live Crew.
Lieberman cast Clinton as injurious to children. Clinton (like his wife, who
believes "it takes a village," the government and herself to raise our
children) constantly invokes the vulnerabilities of children to justify
paternalistic government (e.g., the tobacco bill) that infantilizes the nation.
Thus Clinton's, and liberalism's, calculating sentimentality about "kids"
comes back to bite him.
Clinton relishes the peculiar intimacy of the modern presidency. A
technology (television) and an idea (that therapeutic government requires a
Therapist-in-Chief) have given rise to a watery Caesarism, the notion that
presidents are our pals. They are in our living rooms nightly, feeling our
pain and confessing their preferences in underwear styles. In this context,
presidents can be incompetent or wicked, but they dare not become
embarrassments, wearing out their welcomes, as Clinton has done, in the
nation's living rooms.
Lieberman says that presidential duties include "the stewardship of our
values." As that crusty realist, John Adams, said, "There never was yet a
people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity
of the state -- a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a
syndic." This may represent the protracted infancy of mankind, something
that will eventually be outgrown, but it is fateful for Clinton.
Thus Moynihan, asked if there is an implicit moral turpitude clause in the
contract presidents have with the people, said "that implicit contract has
evolved over the life of the presidency. The president was not meant to be
the preeminent person that the 20th century has produced, but he is."
The fate of a party is tethered to an incumbent president, and Clinton is
undoing the Democrats' arduous 30-year climb back from the perception
of strangeness. Remember the turmoil of the 1968 convention, "acid,
amnesty and abortion," "San Francisco Democrats," support for furloughs
for murderers and opposition to the Pledge of Allegiance? Now
Democrats are represented by a man who represents the doctrine of
permissible perjuries, innocuous lies and oral sex in the workplace.
No wonder Clinton is so crippled he no longer can do that which he does
with most zest and skill -- raise money. Maryland's Democratic governor,
Parris Glendening, running for reelection, has canceled a Clinton
fund-raiser. Furthermore, Clinton is, in a sense, being protected by his
scandals, which distract attention from the disintegration of U.S. interests
-- from Russia to Kosovo to Iraq to North Korea -- as a result of feckless
policies that periodically leaven his inattention.
Moynihan was asked if Clinton might be saved by some ceremony of
contrition akin to Henry II's scourging after he instigated the murder of
Becket, or Emperor Henry IV kneeling in the snow outside the residence
of Pope Gregory VII. Moynihan replied, "That's another age of the
absolute monarchies. We have a Constitution. Let's live by it."
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