Thinking the Unthinkable
By Robert H. Bork
Bill Clinton's political crisis is also, and more important, an American moral crisis. When a plurality first elected him in 1992, we knew, not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Clinton to be a liar, an adulterer and a draft dodger. Only a few years before, that would have been disqualifying. His elevation struck many of us as profoundly disheartening. A foreign observer wrote: "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a large part of the American people have turned their backs on that old-fashioned quality: virtue -- private and public virtues." Some of his defenders argue that his electoral triumphs in 1992 and 1996 disposed of the virtue issue, granting Mr. Clinton a permanent easement across traditional morality. We must now adopt or reject that deplorable proposition.
This is the subject of Ann Coulter's readable and informative book, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Regnery, 358 pages, $24.95).
Its sprightly style is a welcome relief from the lugubrious, Teutonic language in which Clinton defenders describe the unthinkable disaster of impeachment. But it should not be unthinkable. The framers of the Constitution did not see impeachment as a doomsday scenario; they thought it necessary to remove bad men from offices they were subverting. Mr. Clinton is a poster boy for what they had in mind.
The president's defenders, experts at changing the subject, prefer to debate whether Mr. Clinton committed a felony. Though it is clear that the president repeatedly lied under oath in Paula Jones's lawsuit, they offer arcane disputes about whether that was technically perjury. I think it was perjury, but that is not the point. As Ms. Coulter reminds us, the Rodino Committee staff, gearing up for Richard Nixon, concluded, correctly, that "high crimes and misdemeanors" are not limited to actions that are crimes under federal law. (It is a minor irony of history that Bernard Nussbaum, later Clinton's White House counsel, and Hillary Rodham collaborated on a report that makes these points.)
When the man charged by the Constitution to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" lies under oath in a federal case and knowingly watches Monica Lewinsky lie in the same case, he has clearly subverted a central constitutional duty.
That alone is amply sufficient for impeachment. While impeachment is not to be undertaken lightly, it is also not to be avoided at the cost of sanctioning such behavior. Ms. Coulter tellingly relies on James Madison: "The `first aim´ of the Constitution," she writes, quoting him, "was to ensure that men with the `most virtue´ would become the nation´s rulers. The Constitution´s impeachment power was for `keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.´"
The constitutional framework concisely laid out, the book applies the standards for impeachment to various of Mr. Clinton's political and personal sins. It becomes clear that the White House has never before been occupied by such a reckless and narcissistic adventurer. Sociopath is not too strong a word. Much of what Ms. Coulter recounts will be known to avid followers of the Clinton scandals but is only vaguely apprehended by the majority of Americans. She takes us from Paula Jones, whose story can hardly be doubted now, to the Travel Office firings, the White House's receipt of about 900 raw FBI files on persons considered enemies (mostly Republicans), Whitewater, the removal of documents from Vince Foster's office after his suicide, the refusal of Webb Hubbell to give promised cooperation to Ken Starr after receiving more than a half million dollars in "consulting fees" on his way to prison, and Janet Reno's inexplicable (or all too explicable) delay of over a year in seeking an independent counsel to look into Chinese government donations to Mr. Clinton's 1996 election campaign. The list of scandals and cover-ups goes on.
Ms. Coulter makes a persuasive case that the IRS, headed by a Clinton crony, conducted politically motivated audits of taxpayers. Of the audit of Billy Dale, the fired head of the Travel Office, she says: "The reason was simple: Dale was an enemy of the administration. He had made them look bad by not having engaged in criminal conduct when they said he had."
Paula Jones was audited a few months after the Supreme Court allowed her suit against Mr. Clinton to go forward, and days after settlement negotiations had collapsed because she demanded an apology. These and many other examples lead Ms. Coulter to conclude: "Either President Clinton has abused the most fear-inspiring arm of the federal government, or there has been a mathematically improbable series of coincidences involving IRS audits."
We are regularly lectured about a constitutional crisis if the House goes forward with hearings and ultimately votes a bill of impeachment for trial in the Senate. Consider the alternative. Perhaps American presidents, by and large, have not been a distinguished lot. But if we ratify Bill Clinton's behavior in office, we may expect not merely lack of distinction in the future but aggressively dishonest, even criminal, conduct. The real calamity will not be that we removed a president from office but that we did not.
Mr. Bork, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline" (HarperCollins, 1996).