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

To: Andrew Martin who wrote (11333)	2/7/1999 11:25:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

February 5, 1999 Potomac Watch Clinton Wins, If You Call This Winning By PAUL A. GIGOT Having debased his office, squandered much of his second term and joined Andrew Johnson on history's impeachment list, Bill Clinton is about to claim exoneration. There's a lesson here. Instead of moping in presumed defeat, the president's impeachers ought to recognize their own achievement. They took on the world's most powerful politician, a man without remorse or scruple, amid a stock market boom and against a hostile media, and came close to removing him for breaking the law. The news isn't that they failed but that they got this far. True to their natural pessimism, however, many conservatives seem ready to believe what liberals say about them: They're wacky moralists out of touch with our anything-goes, hip-hop nation. Even Bill Bennett says so, while icons of the religious right wash their hands of it all and some at the Weekly Standard need to be kept away from sharp objects. Cheer up, comrades, and savor the benefits of almost removing Bill: We've killed the independent-counsel law. I remember writing in the 1980s that liberals would repeal this unconstitutional cyborg terminator only after it was turned on them. Well, it was, and now they will! Anthony Lewis and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin suddenly sound like Antonin Scalia in their dislike for the monster they helped create. If the law isn't renewed this year, President Quayle will be grateful. The feminists have impaled themselves with their Clinton defense. Who can possibly take their next moral crusade seriously? Barbara Boxer has earned cult status in the annals of political hypocrisy. Sexual harassment law won't be reformed, alas, but the public now sees these cases as the political gambits that most of them are. The left is now long on Bill Clinton. Once their votes save him, Senate Democrats may want to hire a chaperone because the next scandal is on their credit card. They'll be the ones who kept him around to do it again. This means 21 months of nightmares and cold sweats. Had Mr. Clinton been removed, he would have been a martyr and Al Gore would have two years to act presidential. Now the veep must win the presidency in his own right, while carrying the heavy backpack of his boss's ethics. The polls that show him losing against some Republicans in 2000 may be an early public hint of what could become Vindication Remorse. From civil rights to Watergate, liberalism's trump was its moral high-mindedness. In covering for Bill Clinton, the left has shown that what it really cares about now is power. Democrats have excused campaign-finance violations because "everybody does it," perjury because "it's just about sex," and trashing an individual civil-rights plaintiff because Mr. Clinton is good on civil-rights in general. (The last was Cheryl Mills's defense). So much for moral authority. Conversely, Mr. Clinton is now in policy hock to the left. To repay liberals for their scandal support, the president has given up his New Democratic reform agenda. His State of the Union speech and new budget show him hedging on free trade, abandoning serious entitlement reform, handing Republicans back the tax issue and reviving the welfare state. No wonder Dick Gephardt isn't running against Al Gore; there's no room on his left to run. Republicans have a chance to reclaim the middle. Removal or no, the rule of law was defended. Even Judiciary Democrat William Delahunt noted in December the lesson of this impeachment to future political perjurors: "Don't do it." Voters may not want Mr. Clinton removed, but the polls show impeachment has convinced the public that the House charges are true. Mr. Clinton can blame this on partisanship until he dies, but impeachment will be much more than an asterisk on his legacy. Scandal is the core of his legacy. As with Richard Nixon, the Clinton words we remember will be about scandal: the definition of sex, the meaning of "alone." And because of scandal he will have achieved less than any two-term president since U.S. Grant. *** The larger point is that the political interpretation of impeachment will be as important as the outcome itself. Republicans in particular can learn from their very different reactions to their election loss in 1992 and the government shutdown of 1995. The first they interpreted rightly as a George Bush failure that could be overcome with more principled leadership. They quickly recovered their bearings and agenda, albeit with Bill Clinton's help, and won a majority in Congress. Contrast that with the shutdown's aftermath, when they internalized the Clinton critique of their own "extremism" and have been wandering aimless and fearful ever since. If Republicans buy that same line about impeachment, their defeat will be self-fulfilling. Their nominee in 2000 will run against Republicans in Congress and they will all go down together. The alternative is to recognize impeachment as a triumph of principle. In an age of political cynicism, Henry Hyde and House Republicans fought for the rule of law against the liberal establishment and despite a complacent public and cowering Senate. Our politics needs more such "defeats." wsj.com