By William F. Buckley Jr.
Monday, March 24, 1997
We ought to be a little careful on the matter of the
popularity ratings of President Clinton. In almost any match between the people
and their intellectual leaders, it is wise to bet with the former. But the
temptation to make a rule out of this preference is dangerous, and something of
that order is happening when you hear it said (increasingly) that the approval
ratings of Mr. Clinton are dispositive: If the people don’t care — what
business do you have caring?
The majority, in democratic practice, are powerful enough
to tell us who will serve in the White House and in Congress. The Founders of
course recognized the dangers of impulsive democracy, which is why it takes a
lot of agitation to amend the Constitution. Now on the matter of the public
behavior of the president, two questions are asked. The first: Is the majority
certain that he is guilty? The second how grave is the offense with which he is
charged?
Under oath, Mr. Clinton contradicted his 1992 statement
affirming his innocence of an affair with Gennifer Flowers.
Yes, he now says, he did it: once. The popular assumption
is I think correct, namely that if a president is re-elected, something on the
order of a plenary indulgence is effected, which holds him harmless, as of the
day of the election, from responsibility for previous crimes and misdemeanors.
The Paula Jones lawsuit isn’t disturbed by this assumption inasmuch as hers is
a civil suit. What now happens becomes a matter of congressional concern only
if the jury finds for Jones, the result of which is a perjury count for
Clinton.
But here, surely, a reservation should be indulged. Peter
Galbraith, retiring ambassador to Croatia, shrewdly pointed out in January that
it is careless to distinguish between the offense of adultery and the offense
of lying about it, inasmuch as the second offense goes hand in hand with the
first. Anyone who commits adultery is expected to lie about it. Indeed, the
point can be made persuasively that it is dishonorable not to lie about it. By
that reasoning, Mr. Clinton has been absolved, by the sacrament of re-election,
from public punishment.
But what is happening around the president transcends one
(or 100) nights out with Gennifer or a wild bout of exhibitionism with Paula
Jones. The architecture of his defense betrays his weakness and demeans
democratic practice.
He refuses for weeks on end to explain his denial of his
entanglement with Monica Lewinsky — other than to deny it, and leave the world
wondering why she visited with him 37 times. Now he has pleaded executive
privilege to hide from the scrutiny of justice such testimony as members of his
staff might provide. The Supreme Court will overrule him, but the effort, in
the light of the precedent of Richard Nixon, is itself contumacious, a sign of
contempt for the law and its processes.
Now at what point do the people inform, or cease to
inform, the Congress in these matters? If the people, sending signals to their
representatives and to their senators, tell them: No matter what he does, don’t
impeach Mr. Clinton, they can send that signal. And the question becomes,
Should Congress be governed by it?
It is always relevant what the moral perspective is in
any situation. It is presumptuous to assume that we are keener moral spirits
than the men who wrote the Constitution because unlike them we would not
tolerate slavery. But the key is perspective: In a world in which slavery was
commonplace, it was the prophet who cried out against it, not the people or
their institutions. It required a civil war with a million dead to change those
perspectives, and even then what mostly changed was the law, not the moral
understanding of the obligations of equality, given that we are all creatures
of God.
It is not inconceivable, at some point ahead, that we
will be asking ourselves: What is the matter with the general public? Why does
it not understand the gravity of what is happening? W.B. Yeats wrote a letter,
back in the ’30s, to the Dublin daily that had published serial criticisms of
the mayor of Dublin, the most recent of which had asked, “What has the Lord
Mayor of Dublin recently done to commend himself to the people of Dublin?”
Yeats’ letter read, “What have the people of Dublin recently done to commend
themselves to the Lord Mayor?”
The impending situation is not to be compared with the
popular approval given in our time to such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron. But
we are properly reminded by those data that from time to time it is appropriate
to wonder about the judgment of the people.
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