Having promised to make his government "look like America," President Clinton promptly produced a cabinet whose 18 members included 14 lawyers. Our president, vice-president and first lady are lawyers; lawyers make up 40 per cent of Congress; and Washington's elite is dominated by lawyers. If you wonder who Clinton thinks he is kidding when he insists that receiving oral sex is not sex, think about that first cabinet of his. In lawyer-land, Clinton is doing the smart thing.
Ritual disclaimer: some of my best friends are lawyers. Lawyers do many good things. Well, they do some good things. But, inspecting the wreckage made by Clinton's mendacious legalisms and Kenneth Starr's obsessive legalism and Congress's unbalanced laws (independent counsel laws and sexual harassment laws), it is hard not to feel that lawyers might be part of the problem. Clinton has disgraced himself, Starr has discredited his office, and the law has behaved rashly and boorishly from the day the Supreme Court allowed Paula Jones to proceed with her sexual harassment suit.
But there is one revelation worth celebrating. From this scandal we have learned a lot about how lawyers think, which is the bad news. The good news is that we have also learned that the American public does not think like lawyers. Lawyerthink is not peoplethink.
Lawyers say: Lying under oath to impede the law is a felony, therefore it cannot be tolerated.
To which the public replies: It depends on what you lie about. Perjury is bad, yes, but perjury about consensual sex is not the same as perjury about criminal or harmful behaviour. It should not be condoned, but often it should be ignored. Covering up an affair is a universal impulse, and if the lie turns out to be basically harmless, then the proper response is disapproval, not prosecution.
But letting Clinton lie with impunity invites everybody else to engage in the same evasive mendacious conduct. This is "impunity?" Clinton has been flogged through the streets and speared by every newspaper in the country. His sexual habits are public knowledge, his lies are exposed, his reputation ruined. Disgrace, ridicule, humiliation-these things are punishments. Enough.
Besides, a nation that views its citizens as conniving law-breakers is a legal despotism. If you really believe that defending the law means punishing arrant flouters, then you had better go and arrest the few million open homosexuals who violate the laws of 21 states. You want people to respect the law? Then the law should behave respectably.
No man, not even the president, should be above the law. Right, but no man, not even the president, should be below the law, either. No ordinary citizen would be prosecuted for perjury about a consensual sexual affair that was tangential to a civil suit that was dismissed. Why treat a president differently?
Because the president (says the Starr report) is "an inspiring symbol of all that is highest in American purpose and ideals" with a sworn duty to heed the law.
Oh, grow up. Anybody who looks to politicians for moral leadership will be disappointed. This country's founding premise is that politicians are no better than the people they govern, and often are worse. That is why the Founders took such trouble to protect us from them.
Clinton's job approval ratings are high, but his personal ratings are low. Strong majorities say that he does not share their own moral values, but equally large majorities say that he is a strong leader. The people in front of the television sets view elite opinion with the exasperation they usually reserve for animal-rights activists and the French. The profoundly republican sort of coherence implicit in public opinion springs from this understanding: competent, seasoned presidents are not easy to come by. With Russia in turmoil, Asia in depression and Serbia on the boil, who can blame the voters for not wanting to switch horses?
It is always easy to pound the table and say, "What? You believe it's all right to disobey the law?" But voters, unlike lawyers, need to concern themselves with keeping the country adequately governed. So they maturely consider the three awful choices available. One is to view the president as the perjurer that he probably is, and remove him from office by impeachment. But impeachment is a 20-year national trauma. Lawyerthink says: "We have no choice, let the process unfold." Peoplethink says: "It's not worth it; adults always have choices." Less awful is a presidential resignation. But Clinton won't resign, and even if he does, resignation is a 10-year trauma. Least awful is the choice the public prefers: cover the whole episode with a fig leaf (Congressional censure), then try to pretend it never happened. Given the damage done already (about a five-year trauma), this course adds the fewest bodies to the pile.
