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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cody andre who wrote (10273)	1/13/1999 9:17:00 PM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

How Democrats Define Deviancy Down Daily Oklahoman 01/13/1999 By Joseph Sobran Daily Oklahoman WASHINGTON -- One problem with the Senate trial of President Clinton isn't getting the discussion it deserves. In fact, it's being nervously avoided. That problem is the honor of the Senate Democrats. Will they vote impartially, as their oaths as jurors require, or will they vote as Bill Clinton's virtual accessories after the fact? Will their solemn oaths mean any more than Clinton's do? What has distinguished the Clinton scandals from Watergate, so far, is the behavior of congressional Democrats. During the House Judiciary Committee hearings, we saw a virulent display of bitter partisanship by House Democrats -- who accused the Republicans not only of "partisanship," but of everything from invading the president's "private life" to attempting an unconstitutional "coup d'etat." They did the same to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. They showed no interest in the massive evidence of criminality, and they didn't want to hear from key witnesses -- though they went on to accuse the Republicans of impeaching Clinton without having given his lawyers a chance to cross-examine witnesses. Their point men and "gentle ladies" were combative, rude, insulting, accusatory, sarcastic, and quick to pronounce themselves "offended" by imaginary slights. It was a circus of irrelevant nastiness. Like Stalinists of old, the Democrats adopted a party line. Since the facts were hardly in dispute, they minimized them by calling Clinton's conduct "reprehensible, but" -- even worthy of "censure, but." They intoned that his conduct didn't "rise to the level of impeachable offenses." They were far more indignant about the way the evidence was gathered than about what it showed. Starr and the Republicans were far more "reprehensible" than Clinton, whom many of them joined, and cheered, at his post-impeachment pep rally. The Democrats found reprehensibility only in Clinton's initial sexual gambols and public lies. They didn't find it in his long subsequent spin-and-slime campaign against Starr, including false charges of illegal leaks. They saw nothing amiss in Clinton's attempts to withhold documents, suppress information, and claim "privileges" for government-paid White House lawyers and Secret Service agents. Nor did they see anything unseemly in the contributions to Clinton's defense by James Carville, Terry Lenzner and Larry Flynt. In fact, it was hard to locate the border between the White House's efforts and the House Democrats' generous assistance to those efforts. Republicans behaved with all the civility one could expect in such a partisan contest. Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde bent over backward to be fair and genial, even when Maxine Waters launched personal attacks on him. Many "partisan" Republicans broke party lines to vote against individual articles of impeachment, while the Democrats voted almost unanimously against every article. The Watergate era seems by comparison a golden age of civility. The difference doesn't lie in the Republicans' conduct; then and now, they have been partisan, but within reason. It's Democrats who have changed. During the Watergate hearings, there was no Republican Barney Frank or Maxine Waters in the House. There was no Republican James Carville smearing special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. A Republican Larry Flynt, digging up dirt on Democratic congressmen, was not even imaginable. Nixonite "dirty tricks" were the subject of investigation; they weren't part of the process of investigation itself. Nixon's congressional defenders never became accessories to his crimes. There has been no Democratic Howard Baker setting aside partisan interests to pursue the facts, no Democratic Barry Goldwater scorching his own party's president for lying and urging him to resign. Just as we no longer expect Clinton to behave honorably, we no longer expect the Democrats to transcend the narrowly partisan. We already take for granted that the Senate Democrats will follow the lead of the House Democrats, though perhaps with a slightly loftier sense of decorum. Nobody assumes that they will convict their president even if the evidence shows that he has committed serious crimes. In the memorable phrase of New York's senior Democratic senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the congressional Democrats, like their president, have "defined deviancy down." freerepublic.com