Off Topic: Three Cheers for Gigot!

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

>From the Wall Street Journal, 5 Feb 99...

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 toget  
her.

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."