Piling on the prez - inquiries into President Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct - Column

Reason, Dec, 1998 by Loren Lomasky

Let Clinton be Clinton!

September was hard on quarterbacks. During the very first week of the NFL season no fewer than seven were injured. And in Week 2 superstars John Elway and Troy Aikman went out in the same game. But no quarterback took more blows than the nation's commander-in-chief. Following a series of leaks that would have sunk Noah came the official release of the Starr report, then the citizenry's rush to Internet search engines to cut through the boring parts and jump to the good stuff, and finally the grand jury video. Commentators had a field day.

Some saw in Clinton's activities a train of impeachable offenses, while his "supporters" declared the president's conduct to be reprehensible but on the right side of what the Constitution characterizes as a high crime - or a misdemeanor. That his behavior had been disgraceful was conceded by all parties, nor was there any serious question concerning whether he had stretched the truth like a Spandex bodysuit on a Sumo wrestler. Republicans, of course, launched an all-out blitz, but even Democrat congressmen who could have been expected to take up the position of protective linemen instead eased gingerly off the field. Even if the president had not perpetrated an impeachable offense, suggested some, he had forfeited the moral authority to lead the nation.

I have no wish to plumb the fine points of impeachment law. I suspect there aren't any. This is a flivver that has not been taken out of the garage since the time of Andrew Johnson (although it might have been an appropriate vehicle for his namesake, Lyndon), so precedent can offer precious little clarification of the Constitution's terse provisions. All the players are making it up as they go. So too shall L But as a spectator with no stake in the game other than that shared by all American citizens, I should like to offer a muffled cheer for the chief executive.

President Clinton cannot have forfeited his leadership capacities because, although he is a man of formidable capacities, leadership has never been in his play book. To lead is to possess a conception of the destination to be sought and a concomitant willingness to bear whatever hardships are required to pursue that course. Under no plausible rendering is Clinton a leader in this sense. If he is spotted in any line of marchers, it is because he saw it forming and scurried to take a place at its head. Once its progress slows in the face of opposition, he nimbly repositions himself to where obstacles are fewer.

His whole career gives evidence of this protean propensity, not least the years of the presidency. The Bible on which he took his oath of office had barely cooled before he found it expedient to back away from his pledge to eliminate barriers to gays in the military. The middle-class tax cut disappeared almost as quickly, as did proposed appointees or cabinet members who ran into media flak. The Republicans stormed to a congressional majority, and he promptly announced that the era of big government is over. And so on.

Clinton's role model, we are told, is John F. Kennedy. It does not take a rocket scientist - or even a political scientist-to discover in the Starr revelations further Kennedy parallels, admittedly of a more prurient than presidential nature. However, the two men are separated by a gulf wider than the distance between Boston and Little Rock. Kennedy was a risk taker. He announced in his inaugural address a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Before his life was snuffed out, Kennedy manifested this resolution by going toe-to-toe with Khrushchev over missiles in Cuba, pledging an enduring commitment to the citizens of divided Berlin, and building up troop levels in that previously obscure map blip, Vietnam. Around this time Clinton was prepping for a political career and discovering in himself a new zeal for conscientious objection.

This president does not bear burdens; rather he professes to feel your pain. Taken literally, this is an absurdity. Pain is intrinsically private; any pain one feels is, definitionally, one's own. But the metaphor is wonderfully evocative. It conveys a willingness to be directed by the feelings of others rather than one's own conceptions. It is the antithesis of autonomy. Moreover, it bespeaks maximal inoffensiveness, for who would harm another if that person's resultant pain would be one's own?

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza held that common to all entities, from chunks of matter to chief executives, was conatus, an inherent drive to maintain their integrity. Absent this urge, things would disintegrate. But although everything possesses this drive, Clinton is unique as an instance of pure conation. He will do whatever is required to hold himself together. No principles or ideals or moral scruples are allowed to get in the way of this self-protective impulse. Not heroic, to be sure. If Clinton is found on a PT boat, one can be sure that it is securely docked.