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In the fall of 1998, Senator Joseph Lieberman became that rarest thing in
the Democratic party: a belated but loud and therefore noteworthy critic
of Bill Clinton's entanglement with Monica Lewinsky. Obviously, then, by
adding Lieberman to his ticket last week, Gore was attempting
"separation" from his controversial patron and mentor: implicitly
condemning the "misdeeds" that got Clinton impeached, rather than
dismissing those misdeeds as irrelevant to -- and therefore consistent
with -- the health of the presidency as an institution.
Or so last week's conventional thinking had it. Insofar as last week's
conventional thinkers weren't distracted (no doubt to the Gore campaign's
immense satisfaction) by Joseph Lieberman's religion.
Lieberman is Jewish, you see. But still Al Gore embraces him! Announcing
his veep pick in Carthage, Tennessee, last Tuesday, Gore allowed as how
"Joe and I come from different regions and different religious faiths."
But "we believe in a common set of ideals," the vice president generously
added. So Gore is prepared to "make history," to "tear down an old wall
of division" -- to bravely go where no goy has gone before. Lieberman
himself calls Gore's choice of a Jewish vice president a "miracle," a
testament to Gore's "courage and character and fairness."
Hark, ye woe-beset children of Abraham, ye long-oppressed doctors and
lawyers and brokers and business chieftains and U.S. senators and editors
of the New York Times. Break free the chains in your dark, exotic ghetto.
Al Gore will be your American Moses. He will part the waters of
intolerance and lead you at last to the promised pinnacles of our public
life.
All this is nonsense on stilts. And it almost speaks well of him that
Gore doesn't much bother to pretend he believes it. Lieberman's
Jewishness was inconsequential to Gore's calculations about a running
mate, Democratic campaign aides have since freely let on to the
newspapers. Bill Clinton, not Pharaoh, was the principal demon to be
exorcised, the biggest electoral liability Gore thought had to be
addressed. Lieberman was selected because he is a man of honesty and
probity. Not like Clinton. Lieberman has decried Clinton's dishonesty and
improbity. Not like Gore . . . but should not Gore now get credit here by
association with Lieberman? And cannot Gore's Clinton albatross thus be
removed?
No, actually. Not if the Clinton albatross is correctly conceived.
Joe Lieberman is a right fine fellow, on balance. And a much, much
better-than-average man by current political standards; we would never
suggest otherwise. He is genuinely civil and genuinely smart. And by
appearance and reputation he is large of spirit, too, unusually open to
unfamiliar ideas and uncomfortable truths. But it is precisely this last
quality -- if that's what it is -- that gives us pause about Lieberman as
a vice presidential candidate this year. At least the way Al Gore means
us to perceive Lieberman: as the embodiment of Gore's own, unspoken views
about the meaning of last year's impeachment drama.
It is a sad fact of life in modern Washington that a politician can earn
himself a name for principle not so much for what he winds up saying and
doing when crunch time comes, but merely for how much smoke of "stricken
conscience" he throws up beforehand. Joseph Lieberman is well known to
have flirted over the years with any number of policy innovations that
most other Democrats, Al Gore included, revile: private-market investment
of Social Security contributions, for one example, and private-school
voucher experiments, for another. Late last week, Lieberman cheerfully
and wholly abandoned both ideas -- because the Gore campaign demanded it
of him. Where Social Security is concerned, in fact, Gore's men appear to
have extracted a signed confession and apology from the senator,
evocatively titled "My Private Journey Away from Privatization." At the
end of the day, obedience to party will out. When Joe Lieberman wrestles
with his conscience, it seems, his conscience sometimes loses.
Which is what happened when Lieberman wrestled with the Lewinsky scandal.
There Lieberman went further than almost any other member of Congress to
prostrate himself before Bill Clinton's assault on the presidency. It
might not have looked that way at the time, and Al Gore may not want us
to remember it that way during the coming campaign. But it is true
nonetheless.
Consider, just for starters, Lieberman's much publicized chastisement of
Clinton from the Senate floor in early September 1998. It was a speech
entirely devoted to the president's sex life and attendant public lies.
Clinton's adulterous dalliance with Lewinsky was "immoral," Lieberman
announced. And Clinton's seven-month-long deception about that adultery
was "wrong" -- because it tended to undercut the lessons American parents
wish to teach their children about honesty. But had Clinton's deception
also involved multiple felonies, as the mountain of available evidence
clearly indicated? Had Clinton obstructed justice up and down the federal
court system, and perjured himself to boot? Was Clinton guilty of
something more than immorality, in other words, something that might
actually disqualify him from further service in the Oval Office? That,
Joe Lieberman was unprepared to say: "We do not know enough in fact" to
reach such a conclusion.
This was already a laughable claim when Lieberman made it, and it would
grow all the more laughable as Clinton's impeachment and trial proceeded.
But it was the rhetorical lifeline the president's defenders stuck to
like glue, just the same. If they could not bring themselves to declare
Clinton altogether innocent, they insisted, at minimum, that his alleged
crimes were "not proven." Not proven -- and on that basis every
Democratic senator, and a handful of Republicans, eventually decided that
Bill Clinton was fit to finish his presidential term. No senator who
voted to acquit has ever explicitly revealed what all must privately have
known: that Clinton was as guilty as the sun is bright, and that they
simply did not want or dare to do anything about it.
No senator ever went so far, that is . . . except Joseph Lieberman. After
the impeachment trial was concluded, many senators quietly published in
the Congressional Record lengthy explanations of why they'd voted as they
had. Lieberman's explanation was unique. He had wrestled with the matter,
don't you know -- wrestle, wrestle, wrestle. And after much tribulation,
he had acted to preserve Clinton in office, Lieberman wrote, not because
the impeachment charges against the president were less than proved, but
despite the fact that both those charges were very probably true. Clinton
"made false or misleading statements . . . to a federal grand jury,"
according to Joseph Lieberman. Clinton's actions likely "had the effect
of impeding the discovery of evidence in judicial proceedings." Bill
Clinton, in other words, was a felon. And still Lieberman voted to
acquit.
So a man may be a criminal -- a criminal, no less -- and remain
president. There, then: That ugly "principle" is what Joseph Lieberman
truly stood for during the Clinton scandal that engulfed the nation. And
where Lieberman stood . . . well, Al Gore now earnestly wants us to see
that he stood there, too. This alone, it seems to us, is reason enough to
vote against him.
But, alas, Gore's GOP opponents seem unwilling to call attention to the
thing. Having already declared himself, at the Republican National
Convention, to have no stake in the partisan battles of recent years,
George W. Bush last week went on to declare himself specifically
uninterested in any battles we might have had over you know who. When he
and his campaign promise to "restore honor and dignity to the White
House," Bush told reporters in Schoolcraft, Michigan, on August 5, they
do not have Bill Clinton in mind. Bush was quickly seconded in this
denial by his press secretary, by his principal political strategist, and
by his own vice presidential nominee, Dick Cheney.
Impeachment? The Republican party now holds up its hands in astonished
wonderment: What impeachment? "Amnesia with a purpose," we called it last
week. We also call it irresponsible. For it is to avoid what should be
unavoidable, the gravest question the country should be forced to resolve
in this fall's campaign: What exactly is the nature of the presidency in
Bill Clinton's dreadful wake? |
