As
sordid, distasteful, and small as the Clinton scandal is with respect to the details of
the President's personal life, it has nonetheless become politically momentous. What
depends on the outcome of the President's impeachment trial before the Senate is whether
or not the political nature of the presidency of the United States is to be changed from
that of an institution proper to a republic to one of imperial status, attributing to the
President the stature of a quasi-divinity.This question is not a new one. It has been
present at least since the time of Franklin Roosevelt. What is present now is whether or
not the decades-long movement toward an imperial presidency is to receive a new and
powerful impetus or a major setback.
The supporters of the President and, apparently, a majority of the American public,
believe that the President should be exempt from laws and sanctions to which ordinary
citizens are subject. Thus, while some citizens are in jail for the commission of perjury
and indeed, in a few cases, for its commission in almost exactly the same kind of
circumstances as the President, and while many others have been fired from their jobs for
such far lesser acts of deceit as having answered falsely a question on an employment
application, the President of the United States, we are told, must be allowed to remain in
office.
Different rules, we are told, apply to him than to ordinary citizens. Indeed, his
exemption from the legal and moral sanctions applicable to ordinary citizens, should, we
were told just a few months ago, extend to his being exempt from the reporting of possibly
criminal acts committed by him in the presence of the Secret Service agents assigned to
protect him.
What underlies this attempted elevation of the presidency to a level that its occupant
is deemed to be above the law and ordinary morality is the public's conviction that the
office bestows nothing less than god-like powers. Evidence of this belief practically
leaps from the public opinion polls so often cited in favor of the need to retain Mr.
Clinton in office: The United States is enjoying considerable prosperity, or at least the
appearance of such. (I use the word "appearance" because much of what today is
assumed to represent prosperity, namely, the great rise in the stock market, may turn out
in retrospect to have been nothing more than an inflationary bubble.) The leading cause of
this real or imagined prosperity is assumed to be what? The inventiveness and enterprising
spirit, the saving and investment, the labor and effort of America's tens of millions of
individual citizens, living under the still considerable freedoms bequeathed to them by
the country's founders? No! The leading cause is assumed to be the work of one,
indispensable man, whom we in this country still call President, but, who, given the way
in which he is apparently viewed by a majority of today's American people, might just as
well be called Caesar--or Pharaoh! It is to him that the prosperity is
attributed.
In fact, of course, the prosperity of the American people, or of any people anywhere,
at any time, does not come from a divine, or divinely inspired, leader. It comes from the
people themselves, acting separately and individually, in mutually
beneficial, voluntary cooperation in their ordinary day-to-day economic activities. The
only contribution that governments can ever make to prosperity is to provide protection
for individual rights, including property rights and the freedom of contract, and then to
stand aside as the individual citizens pursue their material prosperity and happiness. To
whatever extent Mr. Clinton may in some respects have improved the protection of
individual rights (by reducing government interference in the economic system), he
deserves credit. But any estimate of the actual contribution of Mr. Clinton to America's
prosperity cannot fail to include the enormous harm he has done to the practice of
medicine in the United States, through the unleashing of the HMO's on the American people.
Of course, in and of itself the economic harm that Mr. Clinton has done is no more
relevant to the question of his removal from office than any economic good he may have
helped to make possible. What is relevant is that his status before the law not be deemed
superior to that of any ordinary person and certainly that it not be deemed so on the
basis of any alleged possession of divine powers over the economic system of the United
States.
A Senate vote to acquit Mr. Clinton, despite his obvious guilt--a guilt publicly
acknowledged by all those in his own party who call for a congressional censure of him
rather than his removal from office--will signify that the President is, indeed, above the
law and morality applicable to ordinary citizens. It will thus substantially add to and
solidify the imperial trappings that have come to surround the office of the presidency.
Future occupants of the office will know that the principle has been clearly established
that they are above the law. Their prospective critics and congressional opponents will
know it too. The presidency and its powers will loom even larger than they do now. It will
be harder to prevail against the wishes of a president than it is now, for he will have
been more securely established than ever before as a virtually superhuman personage.
Ironically, at the same time that the presidency is raised in this way to imperial,
god-like status, the status of the United States as a country will be correspondingly
debased. Like a sleazy business that advertises "Poor credit? No credit? No
problem!," an acquittal of Mr. Clinton will be an advertisement that even if you are
a liar, a cheat, and a felon, you can still be the President of the United States. In the
future that too will be no problem, for it will have been established that such behavior
"does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense."
No one can reasonably believe that such an outcome is necessary for the good of the
United States and the American people and that to achieve it, the members of the Senate
must ignore the undeniable evidence.