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Impeach

By MARK HELPRIN

Here we stand in a clearing of the most difficult century of human history, wanting our deserved rest, and standing with us may be the most corrupt, fraudulent and dishonest president we ever have known.

At the very least the president, before he became president, was at the heart of criminal financial dealings and bribery involving his wife and various felons who were his close associates. Upon his elevation to office, he worked hard to suppress and obfuscate the details of what he had done, while continuing in the same pattern as both he and the same and a new set of dishonest associates hid, withheld and destroyed records, purloined FBI files, used the IRS to intimidate opponents, plotted to cage government business, met with drug dealers, arms traders and mobsters, raised illegal campaign money, sold influence and shook down the Chinese.

If we tolerate crime and corruption in the belief that they are but a small challenge to our great stores of virtue and probity, when next we look those great stores will be gone. Although it has its own price in damage and pain, holding the president to account would mean that future presidents would be, if not uncorrupt, less corrupt. Anyone aspiring to the presidency, from senators and governors to young state legislators and attorneys general, would have great incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.

Class of Manipulators

The consequences of letting it all pass would expand through generations to come, altering the fundamental equations of government and the relations of the governed and the governing. It would legitimate the most disturbing myths and prove the most cynical accusations. If it is left to stand it will shift power insufferably toward a class of manipulators and cheats. We have moved in that direction before, but have always pulled back. Now we are in danger of not pulling back.

Perhaps most frightening to the politicians in whose hands rests the ability to remove him is the president's popularity. But the machinery of impeachment is structured in a constitutionally miraculous fashion to burn away the many layers of deliberate confusion laid on by the arrogant hand of power. It can, in clarifying the facts and stating bluntly the truth, transform the protective angels of presidential popularity into devils of the most relentless pursuit. Those who are reluctant to hold the president to account because he enjoys a 65% approval rating seem not to understand that he enjoys a 65% approval rating because they are reluctant to hold him to account.

The president's supporters who willfully sleepwalk through the stream of charges against him feel that an attack on him is an attack on their beliefs. They are mistaken. If he is removed from office, a president and vice president of the same political party and persuasion will remain. The near-impeachment and subsequent resignation of Richard Nixon did not, except for the strange interlude of Jimmy Carter, compromise a 24-year GOP presidential sweep. Besides, in so promiscuously adopting his opponents' positions, this president of muddy waters has removed a great deal of meaning from political battle and made opposition to him no longer a matter of politics or policy but mainly a matter of decency.

As for his allies in Congress, they float on the wind like birds and will fly with the president only as long as he travels in buoyant air. Do not imagine that after counting the bodies thrown from the presidential sled the likes of Ron Dellums or Sen. Bob "Miracle Baby" Torricelli would stand by their captain even through a light drizzle.

The president shifts blame. The sad faces that have been paraded before the camera before they quit or go to prison are the faces of people taking a rap, voluntarily or otherwise. But a president is responsible for what his minions do, especially when he directs them.

He shifts arguments. His adventures in fund raising become his passion for campaign reform and then are transformed into indignation that his political rivals have prevented him from leading the American people into the cathedral of virtuous politics. He manages this because he may actually believe it.

He and his apologists shift focus. They are astounded at the temerity of critics who compare him to Richard Nixon, and they love to make their contempt and astonishment clear. But there is an answer for them, which is that it is indeed possible to compare the two, and that in the daily exercise of comparison Mr. Nixon is animated in a ghostly walk toward Mount Rushmore. At least he had shame. At least he resigned. At least Republicans, broken-hearted though they may have been, finally stopped defending him.

This president shifts out of the way, like a bullfighter. Of his many capes the vice president and Mrs. Clinton are the most waved in the wind. The president's wife is, of course, inextricably tied to the mass of escalating lies, but no matter what her crimes, sins or pretensions, she holds no office, and is therefore unremovable from office. She is a distraction, a diversion no less than the moon-faced underlings about to take a rap.

The vice president is even more so, having by virtue of his office and his character great distractive potential. But though one of the distinct pleasures of modern political life, indeed of life in general, is to observe him as he simultaneously wounds and baffles himself,to bring the great cannon of a Senate trial to bear upon him would be like using an elephant gun to shoot an apple pip.

The person in question here, as from the beginning, is not Al Gore. It is not Janet Reno. It is not Webster Hubbell, or Craig Livingstone, or Dan Lasater. And it is not Hillary Clinton. It is no one of these or anyone else but the president of the United States himself, in all his power and despite all his power.

Each time a new infraction is unearthed, the president sits back, crosses his arms, and trumpets through his surrogates, "Where's the proof, the notarized film footage of me doing wrong? Don't you know? You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man." He defines the rules of the game and controls the initiative, which is another way of saying that what we have here is a bunch of lawyers throwing out a lot of smoke and chaff. But the time has come to cut through that smoke and chaff with a resolute move that will leave all the maneuvering and obstruction in its wake.

President Nixon did not himself break into the Watergate. Nor were any direct orders uncovered implicating him. But a nation led by a worrying press made the appropriate connections even without judicial proof, and the president was driven from office. A quarter of a century ago, however, America had a general expectation of law and propriety, a press in implacable opposition, and a president who knew the difference between right and wrong even if he did not always observe it.

Though these are now remarkable mainly for their absence, one thing is the same: The key congressional processes are controlled by the nonpresidential party. Because the press is languid and the public largely indifferent, responsibility falls on Congress. If justice is to prevail someone in Congress will have to step out in front and take some fire. Otherwise, nothing moves. A quarter of a century ago, the Democrats acted with anger for having lost the presidency and surety for having won Congress. Now the Republicans act with timidity for having lost the presidency and lack of certainty for having won Congress. They seem to be ignorant of Nelson's Trafalgar memorandum: "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy." That is, to fight.

Why is Congress so pale in tooth and claw? Along with a great deal else in American life, much of what goes on in Washington is treated as a game. Only the clever get to rise, and they are proud of doing what it takes to win, whatever that may be. To paraphrase Maynard Keynes, when people like this are alone in a room, there is nobody there. But the difference between life and a game is that whereas the logic of a game demands doing what will succeed, the logic of life demands doing what is right. This may at times be an indiscretion, but indiscretions rightly motivated are the way history moves. Half of statesmanship is taking the somewhat blind step that carries no assurance of success but which has about it all the qualities of what is just.

The Republican Party and its intellectuals have been searching hard for theme and direction. Futurism, the Contract With America, national greatness, capital gains: These have fallen flat not only because they are bereft of urgency but because they are as well an evasion of duty. Politically, there can be only one visceral theme, one battle, one task. If the party embraces it, the party will solidify. If it rejects it, it will drift.

Subject to the Law

The task is to address the question of President William Jefferson Clinton's fitness for office in light of the many crimes, petty and otherwise, that surround, imbue and color his tenure. The president must be made subject to the law.

When that moment arrives it will signify the rejection of flattery, the rejection of intimidation, the rejection of lies, the rejection of manipulation, the rejection of disingenuous pretense, and a revulsion for the sordid crimes and infractions the president has brought to his office. It will come, if it does, in one word. One word that will lift the fog to show a field of battle clearly laid down. One word that will break the spell. One word that will clarify and cleanse. One word that will confound the dishonest. One word that will do justice. One word. Impeach.