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Jewish World Review /Feb. 25, 1999 / 8 Adar, 5759
Tony Snow
The birth of political wisdom
(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) THERE IS A GROWING CONVICTION among a band of conservatives
that American society has embarked upon a speedy expedition to hell. Paul
Weyrich expressed the prevailing gloom last week when, sizing up the
president’s acquittal in the Lewinsky case, he declared that left-wingers
had conquered right-wingers in the culture wars, and as far as he was
concerned, the American people deserved whatever grim fate might await them.
He wasn’t alone in his bitterness. One very senior player in the
impeachment drama confided to me that he was disturbed less by the verdict
than by the fact that he had begun to question the wisdom and decency of the
American people. If the polls were right, he said, average folks had given
thumbs up to the seedy romance of two cigar aficionados.
To hear many of my brethren tell it, the president’s latest escape is to
the Constitution and the Ten Commandments what the Alamo was to Davie
Crockett. But what they have experienced is not the death of decency so much
as the birth of political wisdom.
Politics is ill-suited for the business of distributing compassion or
virtue. Unlike men and women of the cloth, who merely can extol the wonders
of righteousness, lawmakers can decide which transgressions to punish, and
how. Religion relies on persuasion; government on coercion. Human nature
being what it is, people who possess the power to punish eventually will
abuse it.
To take some recent examples, Attorney General Janet Reno -- the woman who
ordered troops and tanks into Waco -- now is considering the possibility of
punishing Kenneth Starr for interrogating Monica Lewinsky in a
less-than-chivalrous manner. Meanwhile, one of her charges, Civil Rights
Division chief Bill Lann Lee, wants to prosecute a California high school
because he finds the names of its athletic teams -- the warriors and the
squaws -- offensive.
People rightly fear anybody who aspires to use government as an instrument
of universal salvation. Philosopher/scientist Karl Popper wrote a generation
ago that "our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable
as it is dangerous -- our impatience to better the lot of our fellows."
As much as Republicans hoped to cast the president’s trial as a moral
drama, it unfolded as a test of political wills. The White House and
disciplined Democrats maintained that Kenneth Starr was a partisan Peeping
Tom and that the scandal was "just about sex."
This profoundly silly argument prevailed, because in response, Republicans
said ... virtually nothing. Party elders periodically dispatched e-mails
arguing that the scandal was not about sex (!) but about grave matters of
law -- perjury, obstruction of justice and the like.
Of course, the entire controversy was indeed about sex. The perjury was
about sex. The obstruction was about sex. And, we’re all beginning to
suspect, this presidency is primarily about sex and only tangentially about
executing the oath of office.
Embedded in the pro-Clinton case was the insinuation that trust doesn’t
matter, and that assumption might have made interesting fodder for a
political set-to. But Democrats threw Republicans off-balance by making
sport of the GOP’s insecurities. They peppered conservatives with choice
epithets -- partisan, obsessed, extreme -- and each unrefuted calumny
quickly attained the status of revealed truth.
Weyrich et al. lost the impeachment battle because they mistook a political
scrum for a holy war. Republicans chose to plod down the path of
self-righteousness. They surrendered their majority powers in the name of an
illusory bipartisanship. House members primly decided not to publicize
testimony given by Juanita Broddrick -- perhaps because it was shaky and
questionable. Senate Republicans daintily decided to forego hearing from
witnesses.
As the GOP fretted about History, the White House conducted a daily
communications conference call that established messages and strategies of
the day. (Hence, the party argued against hearing from witnesses early in
the House proceedings, then rejected calls for testimony during the trial
because the House hadn’t called witnesses.) Republicans, in contrast, never
held a single meeting involving party officials and congressional leaders.
Democrats prevailed because they fought as a unit and stayed together.
Their victory was political, and so was its fruit. They got a bump in the
polls. But they did not lay bare a yawning moral chasm in America. To the
contrary, the president’s acquittal cleared the way for the ultimate
consideration of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Public apathy about the impeachment trial was an expression of marvelous
common sense. Why should anybody have taken an unserious proceeding
seriously? Now, as tempers cool and facts emerge, people can, in their
leisure, make up their minds. Contrary to a few nabobs of negativism, such
deliberation is far less likely to send us to hell than to pull us back.
Think of it this way: To whom would you entrust our nation's moral
inheritance, Congress -- or your
02/22/99: Children of optimism
02/18/99: Wake up, Republicans!
02/16/99: Why we feel so good
02/11/99: What exactly does George W. stand for?
02/08/99: Run, GOPers, run?
02/04/99: The languid sigh of waves lapping ashore
02/01/99: Verbal vortex
01/28/99: To be a ‘sell-out’ or an unelectable pol --- that is the question
01/25/99: The apogee of a trend
01/21/99:What my 3-year-old taught me
01/17/99:Don't be fooled, folks
01/14/99: Must a pol be ‘baaaad’ in order to get elected?
01/12/99: Jumpin’ Jack (Kemp)
01/08/99 : Hot air in the Windy City