Sep 28,1998
|
|
|
|
BILL CLINTON Beyond the Monica Mess President Bill Clinton's "inappropriate" relation with a young White House intern has implications that cut across boundaries. Beyond the salacious details lie fundamental questions about an impaired American presidency in a unipolar world. An on-the-spot report. By Swapan Dasgupta in Washington DC
If the prevailing mood "inside the beltway" -- Washington's euphemism for the most chattering of the chattering classes -- is anything to go by, Bill Clinton shouldn't even try. If the morally indignant had their way, he should fade away into the Little Rock sunset with the unfortunate Hillary Clinton -- or whoever else in a blue Gap dress that catches his fancy -- in tow. Alternately, he should utilise his talents documenting the epidemic of bad jokes that followed the publication of the best-selling Starr report, a document that the New York Times (NYT) believed "exposed the completeness of President Clinton's mendacity" and "tawdriness of his tastes". The explosion of black humour flows from grim reality. When the over-sanctimonious independent counsel kenneth Starr -- his 96-year-old mother claimed to have "started him from babyhood to know right from wrong" -- documented the president's phenomenal ability to combine pleasure with work, Clinton promptly discovered religion. "I have sinned," he announced publicly and quoted Psalm 51, the greatest Biblical expression of contrition.
It was an expedient diversion. Unfortunately for Clinton, sin is not at the heart of the furious controversy that has unsettled the world and given America the shivers. Of the 11 counts listed by Starr as possible grounds for impeachment of the president, the violation of one of the 10 Commandments is missing. Clinton is anxious to present his dalliance with the 25-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky as a Mills and Boon-type office fling that was daring, torrid, ended in tears and was bad enough for his career. he is even willing to admit to "moral failure". But he remains defiant in his unwillingness to utter the two words that Americans want to hear from their president: "I lied." Clinton is being far too clever for his own good. With one eye constantly on the opinion polls, that continue to show a staggering 58 per cent approval rating (for governance, not morals) -- the support is mainly from blacks, women and the lower middle class -- he is counting on a popular backlash against over-intrusiveness into the personal lives of public figures. he is playing for time, combining a sham repentance with delicious public hair-splitting over the exact meaning of sex. No wonder Maureen Dowd, the high priestess of political snobbery in the NYT, is so thoroughly outraged. "Clinton's greatest sin is not sex or dissembling about sex ... His greatest sin is swindling and perverting the American language. He is like the cursed girl in the fairy tale: every time he opens his mouth a toad jumps out."
The disgust is universal, not least among those who call themselves the DDD -- Deeply Distressed democrats. "It's disgusting," says the Washington Post's Stephen S. Rosenfeld. "I'm embarrassed for America," admits Governor George W. Bush of Texas, the man most likely to lead the Republican charge against Vice-President Al Gore in 2000. The world's most powerful country has reason to squirm. "De-facto, if not de jure, the president of the US is now a criminal and a felon," writes British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who has been doggedly pursuing Clinton's sleaze trail from Arkansas. "American Caligula" echoes the venerable Wall Street Journal. With the world's media taking up every available hotel room in Washington DC in anticipation of more "bimbo eruptions" and alarmed parents demanding professional guidance to explain phone sex to pesky kids, it is not merely the president's moral authority that has been compromised. America has been humiliated and, worse, cheapened. The ignominy was in full evidence last Thursday when a sullen Clinton fielded pointed questions on Monica in the presence of Czech President Vaclav Havel. "There are some things which I don't understand," said a suitably diplomatic Havel. Nor can the rest of the world come to terms with an America in moral turmoil, particularly when it involves tv documentaries -- complete with a resident shrink -- on Hillary's post-Starr body language. Equally baffling are the labyrinthine ways of the American Constitution. Impeachment for subverting justice and perjury may be what the independent prosecutor -- a Yankee Lokpal that was created by vengeful Democrats in 1978 in the aftermath of Watergate -- ordered. But Starr's recommendation has to be processed by the House of Representatives judiciary committee. To make up its mind, the committee doesn't merely look at the facts, it tracks every opinion poll with slavish dedication. Every American has become a juror. Which is why if Clinton's ratings register a dip, the issue will be sent to the full House. The House, in turn, has the option of recommending impeachment proceedings to the Senate -- the ultimate arbiter. But any final decision will be guided by the ubiquitous opinion poll. "If the American public," wrote a Philadelphia man to the washington Post, "could stop acting like lab rats for just one minute, maybe our political leaders would be compelled to do something they are plainly terrified of doing: speak their minds." Terrified or not, until the popular message is more categorical, the political action will resemble a halal killing -- a steady flow of blood culminating in a slow, excruciatingly painful death and wonderful gastronomy. "It is possible that washington may not think of anything else for the next 26 months," says David Shibman, bureau chief of The Boston Globe. "India was the seventh country to go nuclear. This is only the third time Americans are experiencing a possible impeachment. It's twice as novel."
The novelty also stems from a desire to explore a rarely visited clause of the US Constitution that centres on the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanours". The offence has no real parallel in ordinary criminal law. Hardly surprising because the "words of art" were directly borrowed from 14th century England when the King's Chancellor, the Earl of Suffolk, was impeached for the misappropriation of public funds. Some 400 years later, the conservative thinker and parliamentarian Edmund Burke attempted a definition during the trial of India's first governor-general Warren Hastings. Burke maintained that the abuses of power should be determined "not upon the niceties of narrow jurisprudence but upon the larger principles of morality". "The purpose of impeachment," writes conservative columnist George F. Will in the washington Post, "is not punishment. It is civic hygiene, the health of the Republic." Agrees Rosenfeld: "To assert equality before the law, we have to pay a price." |
|
|
Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication BUSINESS TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY © Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
Among the few post-retirement benefits a president of
the United States enjoys is the establishment of an archive dedicated to his White House
years. When William Jefferson Clinton takes his last bow from the White House -- either in
2001 or, like Richard Nixon, prematurely -- he will be forced to confront history. Should
he highlight his record as the leader who presided over America's most prosperous era this
century? Should he emphasise his achievement as the visionary who rescued American
liberalism from the stranglehold of the loony fringe and mounted a spirited assault on the
New Right? Alternately, should he bury individual achievement and celebrate his presidency
as a monument to the '60s generation? The generation that successfully coupled high
thinking with low living. 
No one has the
right to mix bedroom behaviour with politics.
fellow alone. If
he has committed perjury the system will deal with it.
cannot
lecture others. But that does not mean he cannot govern.
