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Let me make it clear that this by no means intended as a criticism of Whitewater Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr or anyone on his staff, and further, I have received no leaks or other communications from anyone in the White House.
I retain full confidence that, any millennium now, Starr will issue a complete and sensible explanation of how an investigation into a land development 15 years ago in Arkansas requires hauling executive-branch appointees before a grand jury to explain what public records they might have pointed out to reporters, or forcing parents to testify as to what their children might have told them.
So, please don't issue a subpoena to me, or anyone I know. We are not critics of the special prosecutor. We think he is just dandy. There must be a connection between Starr's current inquiries and the long-ago and faraway lending policies of a savings-and-loan, and if we can't see it at the moment, well, we have faith.
Now that the disclaimer is settled, we need to take a broader look at the whole process. It appears that the job of the special prosecutor, if he succeeds, is to put politicians in jail.
For bleeding hearts who often proclaim that America needs some prison reform, this should be a blessing.
As it is, we put people in office. They run the risk of failing re-election, losing a bid for higher office, or getting ousted by term limits (self-imposed term limits don't count, though, at least if you ask my congressman, the Honorable Scott McInnis).
Once out of office, they will need gainful employment, usually as a lobbyist or consultant. While in office, they wisely plan for the future, and thus are quite kind to the lobbyists and consultants whom they might be approaching for a job interview someday.
However, if this special-prosecutor mania remains in vogue, then our politicians will not be looking ahead to cushy consulting contracts, but to prison. It will be in their interest to insure that American prisons are safe, healthful and uncrowded.
Thus we should see prison reform, and the more zealous the special prosecutors, the sooner it will arrive.
But if we really wanted to improve government and get a better class of leader in this country, perhaps we should reverse this process. Instead of office and then jail, let's try jail and then office.
At the moment, we have a ridiculous bias against electing people who have served time. In many states, you can't even vote, let alone hold office, if you've been convicted of a felony. (In Colorado, you regain your voting rights at the expiration of your sentence).
Now, look around the world. South Korea faces an extreme economic crisis. Where did the nation turn for a leader? To some sanitized politico who's never received so much as a parking ticket? No, to Kim Dae Jung, whose rap sheet outweighs his resume, a man whom previous regimes exiled, imprisoned and threatened to execute.
South Africa has been making an impressive and generally peaceful transition from apartheid to a multi-racial commonwealth. Has this occurred under the leadership of a law-abiding citizen, or under Nelson Mandela, who spent 26 years -- most of his adult life -- in a maximum-security prison?
Consider the Czech Republic, successfully recovering from years of Soviet misrule. And doing it under the leadership of Vaclav Havel, whose writings were long banned because they might corrupt the impressionable youth of Czechoslovakia. Further, his resume is besmirched with no three prison sentences, when even one would keep him out of office in this country.
There is Lech Walesa, elected president of Poland in 1990, who spent about nine months in prison in 1981-82.
Even in this country, we manage to have leaders with jail records -- the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eugene Debs come to mind -- although we won't elect them to anything, and their contributions to American society are thereby diminished.
All this suggests that the current approach with special prosecutors is not productive. Instead of engaging investigators after someone attains office, we should empower a special prosecutor to identify promising young people with leadership potential, then imprison them. Sentences could vary from Havel's few months to Kim's death warrant -- apparently, it takes all kinds.
And then, if all went well, the prison sentence would be a badge of honor. Candidates would accuse each other of overstating their offenses and jail time, campaigns would get more interesting than the current family-values diversions, and we'd get a better class of people in office.
Keep Starr on the job -- but get him to start putting interns in jail. The nation's future demands it.
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