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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dougjn who wrote (4646)	9/22/1998 12:15:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

QUESTION REMAINS: HOW DO WE PUNISH LITTLE BILLY FOR BEING SUCH A BAD BOY? By JACK NEWFIELD PRESIDENT CLINTON'S videotaped grand jury testimony was shocking - for not being shocking. Expectations for high drama, presidential tantrums, and a definitive conclusion failed to materialize. Dull is the best word to describe this anticipated High Noon confrontation. The prosecutors seemed inept, and Clinton was as slippery as ever, arguing oral sex is not sex, debating the meaning of the word is and saying, It depends on how you define the word "alone.' The videotape is an inkblot test: Anybody can see anything they want to project onto it, depending on their bias. You can see a president being harassed about his private life, or a president lying well but revealing himself as a cheat, sneak, cad, double-talker and user. In terms of evidence, it was a letdown. In terms of impeachment, it probably slowed the momentum. For me, it was mostly useful as a window into Clinton's nature. I looked at him more as a character in a trashy, middle-brow novel than a great figure in a high constitutional drama. He was like the bright student caught cheating on his final exam, being questioned by the slightly dim high school principal. Clinton, for all his seductive brilliance, is like a reckless, minimizing teen-ager who feels entitled to do whatever he can get away with. Even the sex is the selfish, furtive sex of a teen-ager without a car. In the entire four hours, Clinton never takes responsibility, never pays the bill. He is still trying to go from sin to atonement, without stopping to confess. He is the perpetual teen-ager in trouble. Everything Clinton said was within the legal strategy of not admitting he committed perjury in his deposition in the Paula Jones case last January. Clinton tried to thread the needle between not acknowledging perjury and not being truthful. He did it well enough to decrease the possibility of impeachment. But he did not do it well enough to make anybody trust him. Or respect him, or admire him. The day ended with the same conundrum it began with: What is the proper, proportionate punishment that fits his particular crime? There must be some severe consequence for Clinton, because all lying teens need some form of swift punishment. But a president can't be forced to accept a lower allowance or an earlier curfew. Impeachment seems an overreaction, based on the evidence against someone twice elected by the people. Benjamin Franklin compared impeachment to assassination. Impeachment would lower the bar too low for removing future presidents for such low crimes. Impeachment would embitter our politics for a generation with revenge, rancor, and snooping by the sex police into private lives. But there must be some form of public condemnation of Clinton that fits his offenses. He probably should resign. Resignation would spare his family humiliation, his party electoral debacle and his country paralysis. But Clinton, the stubborn teen-ager, is thinking only about clinging to office. Resignation would require a sense of honor and shame that his testimony revealed he does not possess. He has told friends he can't resign because it would leave him vulnerable to criminal prosecution by Kenneth Starr as a private citizen. He would want a pre-pardon deal with Congress. And Congress would want an admission of perjury and witness tampering, and he is afraid to do that legally. Congress is dominated by partisan hypocrites like Rep. Christopher Cox of California, a conservative Republican. Last year Cox was trying to ban all indecent material from the Internet, and last week he was leading the effort to dump all of Starr's indecent material onto the Internet. Only a very few people, like Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), seem to be trying sincerely to balance morality, truth and the Constitution. On one hand, we have a president who can't tell the whole truth in the English language, who is still minimizing, and who won't take responsibility for his actions. On the other hand we have a prosecutor who is overreaching, too political, and not very competent. Starr seems to want to impeach the whole decade of the 1960s, and repeal the entire sexual revolution. Censure-plus is probably the most likely endgame, although it is unsatisfactory at many levels. It is only the best option by default. It just gets us beyond the impasse. The plus would have to include a large fine that pays for the public cost of the nine extra months of the Starr investigation required by Clinton's lying and stonewalling. It should also include a more forthright admission of the facts than he gave to the grand jury. So yesterday did not really advance the story, or clarify the endgame. We are all still trapped in the combined quicksand of presidential pathology and prosecutorial prurience.