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In various high-minded organs of public enlightenment, I have read that the current presidential scandal is not about sex. It's about the rule of law, or about perjury, or maintaining respect for the presidency as an institution, I am informed, but not about anything so sordid and mundane as sex.
Which is poppycock, of course. If Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, had discovered, say, an improperly notarized collateral agreement concerning some land-development loan somewhere in Arkansas, would it be on the front pages?
Not even during the August silly season.
That said, I'm trying to figure out how this all happened. It started, I think, with an article by David Brock in The American Spectator, based on an interview with a couple of Arkansas state troopers who were once assigned to the governor's mansion and said they were sometimes put to work procuring for the governor.
Among the names that came up was a Paula,
which
inspired Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state
employee, to sue for sexual harassment because she said she
wanted her good name back.
Now, you or I never would have heard of Paula Jones if she hadn't filed the suit, so her reputation would not have suffered if she hadn't gone to court. Other motives were obviously at work, and maybe she'll be the next stop for the perjury police.
She files the suit -- which was eventually dismissed by the judge -- and in the process, her attorneys try to establish a pattern of serial sexual harassment on Bill Clinton's part.
They hear from Linda Tripp, who says she knows this woman who worked at the White House who was getting it on with Clinton. And they arrange with her to break Maryland law by taping conversations with this woman, Monica Lewinsky.
(In Colorado, it's legal to tape a telephone conversation if at least one party knows it's being recorded, but in some other states, like Maryland, all parties must be informed.)
During the depositions for the Jones case, both Lewinsky and Clinton deny they had sex of any sort, but that's contradicted by what Lewinsky told Tripp when she was gossiping over the phone.
And hey, an independent counsel, spending millions of dollars after putting together a staff, has got to come up with something, and here it is -- alleged perjury in a case that was thrown out of court because, even if everything the plaintiff said was true, there still wasn't a case.
By the time this appears in print, Clinton will no doubt
have put some sort of legalistic spin on whatever he told
the grand jury yesterday. He might point out that perjury
has to be material,
which means that whatever he
swore to before wasn't perjury because the case was
dismissed and thus all parts of it were immaterial, or he
might explain that definitions of sexual intercourse vary,
or he might conjure up something new.
But it won't matter, and it shouldn't.
Presidents are elected to make decisions, which means they need a modicum of good judgment. Last winter, when the Lewinsky affair allegedly occurred, Clinton had to know that his every act was under close scrutiny by people who hate him and would use any indiscretion to bring about his destruction.
To then put himself in a position where such allegations would be credible -- whether or not they actually occurred -- represents an appalling lapse in judgment, or maybe even sanity.
As a citizen, I hope he resigns posthaste. He's a lame duck with the credibility of a telemarketer and nothing substantial remains for him to fail at -- national health insurance, reversing the march toward a police state, a decent standard of living for working people, etc.
Further, the most sensible political course for a president with domestic problems is to contrive a foreign-policy crisis somewhere so that the country can rally round the Leader of the Free World. These things can turn into real shooting wars, so the sooner Clinton is out of office, the less chance of armed conflict somewhere.
But as a spectator, I sort of wish he hangs in there. His best strategy, in dealing with impeachment proceedings, will be to dig up every sexual escapade of every Republican in the House and Senate, as well as Starr's entire staff.
His operatives will go to work, and we'll be treated to months of lurid leaks about the peccadilloes of Traditional Family Values people who had previously appeared rather staid and boring.
That should be interesting and entertaining, anyway, and that's about the best we can reasonably expect from Washington these days.
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