My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #31, March 1, 1999

IT HAS HAPPENED HERE

In the long tradition of apocalyptic literature, democracies and civilizations commonly have fallen to overwhelming physical force, whether in the form of jackbooted thugs or nuclear holocaust. That may explain why hardly anybody has noticed democracy being overthrown here and now--the process has been too insidious.

Before January 20, 1993, we had a quaint tradition in this country. When we had an election, the losers would say graciously, "The people have spoken (damn them)." They would then graciously pledge to support the winner when possible, and serve as loyal opposition otherwise. That's the spirit in which many of us put up with that amiable dunce, Ronald Reagan.

When Clinton was elected, however, this tradition changed, perhaps forever. His enemies immediately began the process of overruling the election. SInce in their eyes Clinton was manifestly unfit to be president, they reasoned that voters must have been grossly deceived, and therefore our votes didn't count.

How do you go about overruling an election? The first trick is to deny the winner's legitimacy. Dick Armey, in a discussion with Democratic representatives, described Clinton as "YOUR president." (Democrats had to remind him that the President is OUR president, whether or not we personally voted for him.)

The next step is to start a steady stream of accusations going. It doesn't matter if any of them are true--by the time one has been shown to be false, other accusations have replaced them. The constant charges-- "TravelGate," "Filegate," the supposed murder of Vince Foster, the harassment of Paula Jones, obstruction of justice, and now the charge of a rape supposedly committed 21 years ago--even though unproved, leave behind an indelible sense that the man is a sleazebag. The result is that even Clinton's supporters have little affection or respect for him.

Of course the stream of accusers (all supplied for free with expensive legal assistance) also means that Clinton has had to divert both time and money to defending himself in one House and Senate hearing after another, and against a succession of justice department inquiries and special prosecutors' investigations. Clinton owns no house, no property, and no substantial investments. On his presidential salary of $225,000 a year, he has racked up legal bills amounting to about ten million dollars.

If a President is to accomplish his agenda, he needs to be able to appoint reliable agents--cabinet officials, judges, ambassadors--to carry out his goals. Senate approval of presidential appointments used to be routine. While we remember the ugly, partisan hearings of Bork and Clarence Thomas, it has been far more common for the president's choices to be approved without comment.

But the Senate has stalled many of Clinton's appointments--according to the National Journal, in March, 1997, a fourth of the appointments requiring Senate approval had still not been filled. Although the federal courts have been short of judges for years, many of Clinton's lower court nominees have been stuck in the Judiciary Committee, because Orrin Hatch suspected they were liberal. Jesse Helms killed William Weld's nomination as ambassador to Mexico because he thought Weld too permissive about drugs. Helms also squelched the appointment of a respected philanthropist as ambassador to Luxembourg because the man was gay. Republican senators have been tying up Richard Holbrooke's appointment as UN ambassador even though this has left us without UN representation for several months. Disgusted by the process, some would-be cabinet members have simply said the hell with it, and withdrawn their names from consideration.

There is also the damage inflicted by constant harrassment of Clinton's cabinet members. Congress and special prosecutors have spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours investigating Bruce Babbitt, Henry Cisneros, Ron Brown, Federico Pena and Mike Espy (found guilty of accepting plane rides and Super Bowl tickets, and acting like a Congressman).

A President can't succeed without funding for his programs, either. The Republicans in 1995 added to appropriation bills amendments they knew Clinton hated, hoping to force him into signing them. He didn't, so they shut down the government rather than compromise. It cost them, too, since the public blamed them, not Clinton.

In spite of all this, Clinton kept plugging away at his agenda, and astonished the Republicans by winning yet again in 1996. Enraged, they went after him and Al Gore for fundraising violations, managing quite remarkably not to notice their own. Yet more rounds of hearings were held, though to no point--neither Democrats nor Republicans had any intention of changing campaign finance laws that work so splendidly to their advantage.

During this past year, of course, virtually nothing has gotten done. Congress again refrained from passing appropriations bills, (or any other legislation), and Clinton was preoccupied with lawyers and with Saddam Hussein. The only reason the government continued to function is that three weeks after the new fiscal year began, Congress finally passed a huge overall spending bill that not a one of them had had a chance to read--and God knows how many goodies were handed out to the fat cats in the process. Clinton signed it, social security checks continued to be mailed, courts and prisons continued to operate, and the military continued to be paid.

Meanwhile, Kenneth Starr steadily stripped from Clinton every citizen's normal constitutional protections. He demanded testimony from Clinton's secret service agents, private aides, and even his lawyers (attorney-client privilege? What's that?). He demanded testimony from Clinton himself, knowing it would be politically impossible for him to assert his fifth amendment privileges. Then Starr illegally leaked all that privileged, unexamined, uncontested testimony to the press, and handed the President's private videotaped testimony to Congress, which offered it to the networks for broadcast.

The final effort was an overt putsch--the Republicans decided at last to overrule us formally and legally by impeachment. Refusing to settle for anything less, they wouldn't even let a censure resolution come to the floor. The American public signaled in the only available way--opinion polls--that they did not want impeachment but the Republicans were unmoved. Their putsch failed by virtue of an embarrassing lack of evidence and a circumstantial case that could not persuade even 51 Republican senators that Clinton's offenses had been either proved or worthy of impeachment.

And where was the press while all this was going on? We can, after all, count on the press to defend democracy, right?

In point of fact, the press has been carrying water full-time for the Clinton-haters, who brilliantly exploited the media's weaknesses. Richard Scaife Mellon and his ilk had unlimited money and unlimited time to dig up hints of scandals and unearth people with grievances against Clinton. They filled news organizations' fax machines with innuendos about his past.

They took advantage of reporters' visceral contempt for Clinton, who they saw as a hick on the make, a liar, and a chronic womanizer. Worst of all, Clinton deeply disliked reporters, and refused to cater to their outsized egos.

The Clinton haters took advantage of reporters' conviction that they too could become Woodward and Bernstein, fearless defenders of truth against evildoers in high places. Post-Watergate, reporters have been unwilling to credit any politician with honorable intentions. Post-Watergate, most news reports of presidential actions have been framed between two sneers: "The president today, attempting to avoid discussion of ________, presided over a peace agreement in Ireland." (A joke circulating among Clinton's staff had Clinton walking on water, in front of a crowd of reporters; the resulting news stories were headlined "Clinton Can't Swim.")

In the post-Watergate world, the mere fact that questions had been raised was enough for reporters, even if the questions never panned out. Time and again, questions about Whitewater were answered, and reporters would ignore those answers and raise new questions--the alleged offenses were always a moving target. An ungenerous press, like Kenneth Starr, even failed to report on repeated exonerations of the Clintons, let alone apologize for incorrect accusations. The prevailing journalistic ethic has been: with all that smoke there must be fire somewhere.

And when the Clintons pointed out that all that smoke came from smudge pots stoked by wealthy Clinton-haters, reporters laughed at their paranoia. "Vast right-wing conspiracy" indeed. Seeing themselves as baying hounds hot on the trail of a nasty, evasive little fox, they never understood that they were really slobbering lapdogs, chasing mindlessly after every single stick the Clinton-haters threw them.

In spite of all this, the President has survived, though in a greatly diminished state. The agenda we voted for, his hopes for our future, have not. It HAS happened here, though not as Sinclair Lewis envisioned it. The thugs may have come dressed in pinstripe suits, and done their work with money instead of guns, but nevertheless their coup has succeeded. They have effectively overruled two elections.

You don't have to like Clinton or despise rich right-wingers to find this depressing. All it takes to worry about the end of democracy is a last desperate belief that in America, the majority is supposed to rule, and what we think is supposed to matter. Even to Sam Donaldson.