The real problem that the Lewinsky case reveals -- the real reason that this can happen in America, and not France or Germany -- is the we are a country held together by legalism. The sex is secondary, believe it or not. It's a crucial addition because it keeps people's attention on the legal details, unlike, say, the Gingrinch book deal, the Clifford BCCI trial or the various S&L trials. Gingrinch is still paying off his $300,000 penalty after he was "convicted" by the ethics committee, but no one remembers because it was so boring.
Why was Clinton sued in office? Because that's the way we do things in this country. The decision to allow the Paula Jones case to go ahead was completely wrong. It was based on the Supreme Court's judgement that allowing this case to go forward would not hamper the performance of the president's duties. Within moments of the trial's proceeding, it was clear that this judgement was ludicrously wrong. And based on the its own reasoning, it should have been reversed. But because it was a court, rather than an executive or a legislature, they couldn't take it back even if they wanted to. And everything that went forward after that point was implacable, and legal, and wrong. So in the end the President can be guilty of perjury to questions that, even according to the Supreme Court's own decision, he never should have been asked. And for suborning witnesses in the same case.
It never should have happened, and yet somehow we couldn't stop it. That's the American tragicomedy: the implacable law, or better, the implacable lawsuit. We say we're full of contempt for law and lawyers, and yet in actual fact we treat the smallest law as sacred. Normal Americans will tell you Well, even if he didn't do anything wrong, if he lied about it under oath, that's very bad, and look very grave. Because there's nothing you can do about the law. Even if the law's wrong. Even if it was applied wrong. Still, you have to obey it. The idea that we could have somehow turned that process off, or that someone could be above it, strikes us as shudderingly unthinkable, as literal blasphemy.
But in most countries, of course, suits against all parliamentarians are forbidden while they are in office. Because if politicians want to throw each out, they have to do it by means of politics. They have to appeal to the people, the only court that should count.
But then, most countries have politics, and we don't. The tragicomedy of legalism was written (or rather, not written) into the constitution. There are no parties there; they have no legal standing. When the constitution was written, modern political parties didn't exist. In those day, "parties" meant the Bourbons and the Orleanists, factions of pretenders, a civil war in mufti. So we thought perfect government would exist without them. And when it became clear that modern, democratic politics is organized through a different kind of parties, we never changed our system. It's the political equivalent of being stuck with old rail gauge. But history and institutions have their effect on national ways of thinking. And deep down, this country still conceives of parties, and politics, as a necessary evil, and "non-partisanship" as an ideal. Only in America can you see a Democrat and an Republican on TV accusing each other of being political, as if that was a bad thing. As if that wasn't their essence. And of the impediments this system presents to a third or fourth party, there is no need to enumerate. But it is because of those impediments that the movements of the sixties became liberal lobbies instead of parties.
I'm sorry for having gone on so long. But if there is a lesson in all of this for the left, it's a revelation of just how little political life we have. People have often referred to this affair as a putsch of the punditocracy, which I believe has a lot of truth. The mediacracy are sweating with pleasure to find out that their moralistic opinions might actually affect things in the world. That August 24, 1998, might be the moment that Skynet became conscious.
But the real crime is that people, by contrast, can't even imagine what it would be like have an effect on the world. Here is what on the face of it seems like an epochal opportunity for alternative forces: a massive disgust with the entire political system. And not one of us can think of a way to make this a new beginning. We have no idea how to seize an opportunity. No political vehicle. And no idea how to design one.
A land without politics deserves its fate. But it's a peculiarly American tragedy. Even if that's hard to remember when the protagonist is a clown and the comic relief is top form.
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com