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To: StockMan who wrote (64591)	9/12/1998 4:50:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Today's NY Times lead Editorial: nytimes.com September 12, 1998 Shame at the White House Until it was measured by Kenneth Starr, no citizen -- indeed, perhaps no member of his own family -- could have grasped the completeness of President Clinton's mendacity or the magnitude of his recklessness. Whatever the outcome of the resignation and impeachment debates, the independent counsel report by Mr. Starr is devastating in one respect, and its historic mark will be permanent. A President who had hoped to be remembered for the grandeur of his social legislation will instead be remembered for the tawdriness of his tastes and conduct and for the disrespect with which he treated a dwelling that is a revered symbol of Presidential dignity. By using that great house for sad little trysts with a desperately star-struck employee, by skulking around within sight of nervous Secret Service agents, by conducting erotic telephone games while traveling without his wife, Mr. Clinton has produced a crisis of surreal complexity. The crisis will have to be resolved at the imprecise point where legal and constitutional principles intersect with controlling political reality. A President without public respect or Congressional support cannot last. The question of whether Bill Clinton will last will be settled according to two processes. One will play out in the collective judgment of the American people, as the astonishing details of Mr. Clinton's inventive style of adultery ripple through the public consciousness. The other will play out in Congress, where Mr. Starr's strict theory of what constitutes perjury will collide with the implausibly permissive interpretations of Mr. Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall. The essence of Mr. Starr's case is that lying under oath is an impeachable offense even if the false testimony begins in a civil suit that was later dismissed or took place in a grand jury as an attempt to hide an embarrassing indiscretion. Mr. Starr's view holds that in a society founded on the rule of law, false swearing or witness tampering, abuse of office or obstruction of justice by the person vested with the highest legal powers is impermissible no matter how petty the subject. This page has long held a similar view of the sanctity of law, but we grant that the magnitude, complexity and, yes, the oddness of this case require deep deliberation. The allegations of the Starr report, even though intricately documented and even though Mr. Clinton has admitted to some of the main points, must be tested thoroughly. Moreover, Congress must reach a judgment about Mr. Starr's argument that Presidential perjury or obstruction of justice in any context rises to the level of constitutional punishment. The White House argues that Mr. Clinton's "private mistake does not amount to an impeachable action" and that in referring to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that could remove a President, the framers of the Constitution "meant wrongs committed against our system of government." Mr. Kendall does this argument no service, however, when he insults the nation's intelligence by insisting that the President did not lie when he denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky during his deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones suit and, more seriously, repeated that denial before the grand jury itself on Aug. 17. In framing the question in the Jones case, Mr. Clinton's interrogators specified exactly the kinds of intimate activity that Ms. Lewinsky described under oath. By relying on this kind of destructive legal counsel from Mr. Kendall for so long, Mr. Clinton has managed to create one of the most disastrous personal situations in the history of the Presidency. He attempted to repair the damage yesterday at the White House prayer breakfast with his most aggressive speech of contrition. With its unmitigated confession, its declaration of repentance, its forthright apology to Ms. Lewinsky, this was a striking speech. But its most striking feature was its lateness. The same words delivered in January, when he lied, or on Aug. 17, when he equivocated and hurled blame, might have lifted Mr. Clinton on to a road of guaranteed survival. He has no such guarantee today. He and we must await not only the adjudication of Congress, but the even more potent process of public deliberation. The determinative public opinion will coalesce over the next few days, and it will probably catapult ahead of and drive Congressional action. As if to gird himself to endure this process, Mr. Clinton told the prayer breakfast that he had achieved the "broken spirit" cited in Psalms as a prerequisite of redemption. The phrase occurs in Proverbs 17:22, as well, in a way that fits the capital's mood. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones." Merriness has long been in short supply in Bill Clinton's Washington, largely because that most sovereign of political medicines, the truth, has been so rare for so long. Truth is on the loose now, spinning rampantly, and where it will lead is beyond the arts of prediction.