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

To: JBL who wrote (42280)	4/14/1999 7:42:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

April 14, 1999 Someone Has to Do It The consensus around Washington seems to be that after Ken Starr, there won't be another Independent Counsel law. So we guess that means we were right to oppose its creation in 1978, as was Justice Scalia's lone dissent against the law in 1988, as indeed was Ken Starr, who opposed it then and does so now. Having both opposed the law then and defended Mr. Starr from his critics, we feel entitled to the benefit of perspective on 20 years' experience with this statute. We recall taking Ray Donovan's side when he asked: "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" We continued to express concern throughout the investigations of Ed Meese, Alexia Morrison's chase after Ted Olson and of course Lawrence Walsh's never-surpassed Inspector Javert performance in Iran-Contra. Back then we had the IC critic's chair pretty much to ourselves. So it may come as no surprise that we're bemused by the Beltway mob suddenly trying to drive the Independent Counsel into the wilderness. If the Clinton years have taught the American body politic anything at all it is that keeping the Presidency accountable is dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Our fear is that when Congress lets the law lapse, it is going to simply walk away from the subject and the Beltway will acquiesce. The same, hard question will stand: Who should police the Presidency? It's generally conceded that without an Independent Counsel, this oversight function will largely revert to the Justice Department. We're going to say some harsh things here about Justice, but not without a necessary preface: Bill Clinton is sui generis, unique. Few serious observers, especially among the active judiciary, doubt that Bill Clinton's abuse of the nation's governing institutions has been relentless and unprecedented. Chief Justice Rehnquist essentially told the President's lawyers not to bother appealing their several losses on feckless privilege claims. The language of Judge Susan Webber Wright's contempt citation this week is agog with incredulity: "It appears that the President is asserting that Ms. Lewinsky could be having sex with him while, at the same time, he was not having sex with her." What Bill Clinton taught us is that the Presidency's implied powers and authority are greater even than most had imagined. A determined President can get away with a lot. This is not always a bad thing. Even the Founders conceded implied powers, acknowledging the realities of national leadership. FDR's leadership in war comes to mind. But the Clinton Presidency, with no evident interest in leadership, has made its legacy the obvious need for accountability. But where among our institutions should that accountability reside? There is no hope of arriving at an answer until there is some broad admission of the ruin Mr. Clinton has brought to the Department of Justice. Absent a Justice you can trust, no oversight is possible under our system. The Clinton assault on Justice began on day one, when he appointed Webster Hubbell, a crook, as Associate Attorney General. Though he fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys at one swipe, the best and brightest Democratic lawyers of Mr. Clinton's generation never had a chance to serve Justice in his Presidency. They were passed over for cronies and compliant affirmative action appointees like Janet Reno. The record since is appalling. Most famously, Ms. Reno refused to appoint an Independent Counsel to look into 1996 campaign violations involving the President and Vice President, rejecting the counsel of not only FBI Director Louis Freeh but Charles La Bella, her own handpicked Public Integrity investigator on campaign finance. The whole episode has made a mockery of the notion of independence and brings us squarely against the inherent conflict of interest in letting Justice police the Presidency. The vaunted Public Integrity Section? The National Law Journal reported last month that Public Integrity hasn't filed a report to Congress as required by law since 1996. Justice's violations of the Vacancy Act enraged even Senator Robert Byrd. Its investigation into the illegal involvement of the Teamsters and other unions in the 1996 election is inexplicably stalled. The "unproven" Filegate scandal tainted the FBI's integrity. All this said, we are perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of Justice serving at least as the clearinghouse for accusations of Executive misconduct. Among other things, the highly successful and thoroughly unfair assault on Mr. Starr shows that a prosecutor standing alone cannot really defend himself in the public arena. And if the buck can be passed to an Independent Counsel, other institutions will tend to shirk their duty. This does not merely concern the "professionals" at Justice. Duty also means that the relevant oversight committees of Congress do their jobs -- when it matters, not after Justice is overrun by a praetorian guard. The media, more powerful than ever, needs to distinguish between dogged pursuit of malfeasance and the spectacle of simply seeing if someone can survive the media bonfire, which now burns past midnight. Finally, there are our two political parties. As Madison envisioned, these factions police each other. But party politics in a civilized nation isn't a blind Faustian bargain, either. When the Nixon Presidency began to fall outside the acceptable historical boundaries, Republicans of stature said so, avoiding dangerous stresses on the system. This did not happen during the Clinton years. Historians will have to sort the reasons for the Democratic phalanx around this Presidency, with not a single of their Senators voting disapproval. If this precedent holds, if political survival is now the trump value in our government -- a "permanent campaign" above all else -- then we strongly doubt that anything will be solved by merely ringing down the curtain on the last Independent Counsel. In this the electorate has a responsibility. Beyond some point, we all have to recognize that as well as the Founders' system has served us, they knew that its success ultimately depends on the basic instincts of civic responsibility of the individuals who voters choose to govern them. interactive.wsj.com