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The Washington Post
Fit for Clinton
By George F. Will
Sunday, December 20, 1998; Page C07
The times may seem out of joint, but suddenly at least some names fit.
Republicans are acting like republicans, Democrats like democrats.
Republicans have chosen a steep path strewn with hazards. However, by
their choice they have pledged allegiance to the republican principle. They
are trying to spike "the silent artillery of time."
For democrats, "responsive" is the highest encomium for government. They
favor maximum feasible directness in the translation of public opinion into
government policy. They want opinion to be only minimally mediated. They
believe that in polities larger than city-states, representatives are necessary,
but a representative's duty is deference -- faithful, immediate, emphatic
replication of opinion into action.
The Founders and subsequent republicans believe public opinion is the
starting point of popular government, but opinion should be refined by
deliberative processes. The "republican principle . . . does not require an
unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every
transient impulse." When "the interests of the people are at variance with
their inclinations," it is the representatives' duty "to give them time and
opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection" (Hamilton, Federalist 71).
By leaning against the wind of opinion regarding impeachment, the reflective
Republicans are exercising leadership. That is perilous in a democratic age
because leadership suggests, if not a defect, at least an insufficiency on the
part of the people. Although people clamor for leadership, when it occurs
they are apt to regard it as an act of lese-majeste because it implies that
deliberative processes of representative institutions are required to "refine
and enlarge" their opinions (Madison, Federalist 10). The Founders and
subsequent republicans, not being sentimentalists, have worried more than
democrats have about the importance of, possible scarcity of and provision
for virtue, absent which popular government will fail.
In his most famous utterance, the first Republican president and most
profound president wondered whether a nation like America "can long
endure." A quarter-century earlier, in his extraordinary speech to the Young
Men's Lyceum of Springfield, he worried about the damage done to nations
by "the silent artillery of time." In this Lincoln echoed Edward Gibbon's last
volume of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," where the first answer
Gibbon gave to the question of why Rome fell was "the injuries of time."
Gibbon's last volume was published in 1788, as the ratification of the U.S.
Constitution was being debated. Benjamin Franklin, asked as he left the
Constitutional Convention what it had wrought, replied, "A republic, if you
can keep it." America's Founders were haunted by history's record of the
failure of republics. In his Farewell Address, President Washington pondered
what could "prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto
marked the destiny of nations."
The Founders knew the ancients' assumption that virtue tends to be a
wasting asset, that morals tend to deteriorate, and therefore that fatalism is
wisdom: Nations rise and fall by natural cycles. The boldness -- audacity,
even -- of America's Founders was in their belief that history could be
beaten by reflection that results in institutions: our constitutional order.
Republicans flying in the face of today's political ethic -- its categorical
imperative: to thy polls be true -- should take comfort from the fact that their
resistance to Clinton's lawlessness has a pedigree that runs back to the
Founders' thoughts about the perils that make republics perishable. Clinton's
calculated, sustained lying has involved an extraordinarily corrupting assault
on language, which is the uniquely human capacity that makes persuasion,
and hence popular government, possible. Hence the obtuseness of those who
say Clinton's behavior is compatible with constitutional principles, presidential
duties and republican ethics.
It is axiomatic: Worse than a society with no law is one with only law. As
law metastasizes in America, codes of personal behavior wither.
Increasingly, our leaders -- disproportionately lawyers -- behave as though
the silence of the law confers permission: What is not proscribed is
permitted.
One manifestation of the degeneration of private judgment is the president's
evident incapacity even to imagine that honor might require his resignation.
For 11 months the nation has lived with a paradox: If he had the moral sense
to resign, he would not be in the position to need to.
The Founders provided impeachment to cope with the likes of Clinton, a
president who, by recidivist lying without remorse, has fallen below the
threshold of minimal truthfulness and has traduced political discourse. He
cannot speak credibly on grave matters, such as war. He should go, for the
public good. Public opinion is neither sufficient nor necessary to justify that.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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