Andrew,
I don't know if this has already been posted.
My apologies if it has. A good read.
jim
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The Washington Times
January 8, 1999
Pruden on Politics
by Wesley Pruden
Ants in his pants on the eve of destruction
Let's see if we've got this straight:
In the interests of giving Bill Clinton a fair trial, the
Democrats (and maybe a few of the more credulous
Republicans) in the U.S. Senate insist it's important not to hear
any witnesses. Facts might confuse people.
The White House offered yesterday to "stipulate" that the
Starr report, which it has relentlessly scorned as the work of the
Antichrist, is factual and agree to its use as a compendium of
facts of the case if that's what it takes to prevent the Republican
managers from calling witnesses. Mr. Clinton particularly doesn't
want Monica Lewinsky called, though he could almost certainly
provide her telephone number.
Naturally it occurs to most normal people that stipulating to
something you think is inaccurate is an odd way to conduct a
defense, and some people might even conclude that Mr.
Clinton's regard for the truth -- something to fold, spindle and
mutilate as the occasion demands -- is now shared by his
lawyers.
Consider this exchange yesterday at the White House press
briefing, conducted by Joe Lockhart, the president's press agent:
Q: Joe, I still don't understand. When you say you'll stipulate
to the record, does that amount to saying you will stipulate that
Monica Lewinsky's testimony was truthful?
A: We'll stipulate that we are not going to challenge that she made that testimony.
Q: Of course nobody's going to challenge she made that testimony. That testimony is recorded in transcripts.
Some minutes later, Mr. Lockhart asked that his judgment be taken on faith: "I'm not -- I think -- not being a lawyer, I do understand this, from watching 'Perry Mason' and 'Law and Order.'"
Lawyers stipulate things they don't believe all the time, of course, if they think that's what will work. This is the difference between lawyers and the rest of us. The law, as Charles Dickens' Mr. Bumble observed, "is a ass." But what stipulation means, as the White House concedes, is that the Starr report would be the record the Senate uses to decide whether Mr. Clinton is guilty of perjury and obstructing justice.
This is the price that Mr. Clinton is willing to pay to keep witnesses out of the public ear. Monica and Bettie Currie on the witness stand, reciting how the president urged them to bear false witness in the interests of obstructing justice, might turn the impeachment trial into a real trial. He's counting on what the lawyers call "jury nullification," an O.J. verdict, where dishonest jurors render a verdict that has nothing to do with the evidence.
The fix is in, and he's desperate to keep it that way. If the Republicans in the Senate insist on hearing witnesses and considering the evidence, the White House insists, "all bets are off."
Those are the very words of Mr. Lockhart, and if that sounds like intimidation or attempted blackmail, a threat to break someone's knees or at least his reputation, well, that's the penitent Mr. Clinton's business as usual. James Carville warned everyone just the other night that he is returning to the sewer, where he feels most at home, to plot a defense of his patron. If blackmail and bare knuckles worked for those mafia guys in Hot Springs, blackmail and bare knuckles will work for Bill Clinton. (You could ask Sally Purdue, Elizabeth Ward, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey and some of the other Clinton women to whom persons unknown have applied certain powers of persuasion.)
If fear and intimidation works on women, it surely ought to work on senators. The founding fathers, having never anticipated the dawn of a Gelded Age in their lusty, rowdy America, could not have made allowances for such a Congress as we have today, where so many men want to be women and the women want to be girls.
The campaign to substitute therapy for the Constitution, meanwhile, roars on. Some of our preachers tried to horn in on the act yesterday, insisting everyone wants to avoid "an exhausting, debilitating trial that could drive [the president] from office." The signers of such a statement, easily debilitated and quickly exhausted liberal preachers noted mostly for their sermons to empty pews, repeated the canard that Americans are simpering weaklings and survive the agony of the Constitution at work.
Such a trial would "have deleterious international consequences" and divide the country, maybe even frightening Saddam Hussein. Besides, when wise men in the Bible failed "they were punished for their wrongdoings, but the people were not deprived of their leadership." At this several bystanders collapsed with shock, this being the first time in memory that these worthies had cited the Bible as a source of homiletic inspiration........ To be continued.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
Copyright © 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
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