http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/Demo_disappears.html
Democracy Disappears
By Eric Alterman
The Nation magazine, January 11/18, 1999
To hell with Bill Clinton. He is no longer the issue. What is at stake in
this impeachment fight is the ability of an extremist minority to debase the
Constitution and destroy its protections. Through their complicity in this
travesty, the Republican leadership, the mainstream media, the Washington
establishment and their self-deluded apologists on the left-in the face of
the consistently voiced opposition of a massive majority of American
citizens-demonstrate contempt for the fundamental precepts of both
democratic and republican rule.
Spare me the sanctimonious invocation of 'principle." Republicans, with
their popularity at its lowest ebb in fourteen years, may be committing
political seppuku, but this is hardly because "they have pledged allegiance
to the republican principle," as George Will idiotically pretends. The
impeachment of the President was ordered and executed in the office of
majority whip Tom DeLay, where the GOP's money men and Christian soldiers
converge to form an implacable bloc. Those Republicans who dare to buck "The
Hammer"-a man who compares EPA regulators to Gestapo agents-risk inviting a
right-wing primary challenge with no help from the national party. Without
countervailing power, the moderates have no means to defend themselves.
(This explains the cowardly flip-flop of the four who voted for impeachment
only to call for censure barely forty-eight hours later.)
The Republican right-wingers are so busy fighting their holy war against the
sixties they never noticed their putative enemy's capitulation. What was
Bill Clinton's eulogy of Richard Nixon but a sellout of every antiwar
protester he was said to represent? What was Hillary's career as a corporate
lawyer and commodities trader but an endorsement of the very values that
"the sixties" were supposed to question? The Clintons long ago jettisoned
whatever principles survived their tenure in the Arkansas governor's
mansion. Clinton may be a man of generous instincts and frequent political
genius, but his fealty to the constitutional strictures of his office is
considerably less than one would hope. He began the air war against Iraq on
December 16 without even the pretense of Congressional consultation, much
less national dialogue or debate. The public supports the war, of course:
Once the bombs begin to fall, Americans support every war, believing it
unpatriotic to do otherwise.
That does not change the fact that no one in the Administration can explain,
in plain English, exactly what good this extensive and expensive attack
ultimately will achieve. Iraq's ability to deploy "weapons of mass
destruction" is indeed scary. But its hateful regime will be no less capable
of doing so following the bombings. US generals do not even pretend to know
how to locate the most dangerous parts of Iraq's arsenal and wisely refrain
from targeting chemical weapons factories because a successful hit could
release their deadly compounds into the atmosphere. Yes, we are being
"diddled" by a dictator. But the only people likely to suffer from our
response are the people he has already victimized. Predictably, the Arab
world is incensed,
Saddam Hussein's prestige increased and the West and Russia profoundly
split. The last time the Administration tried to restart this war it was
humiliated by a tough-minded audience at Ohio State University. This time
they knew better than to give real people a chance to ask unscripted
questions.
Where is the democracy in our democracy? A Democratic President commits an
act of war without the pretense of democratic debate. A lame-duck Republican
majority, refusing to allow even a vote on the one alternative that
Americans insist they want-censure-attempts to remove a popular President
without even a fig leaf of bipartisan support. This occurs in the wake of a
midterm election in which the pro-impeachment side is roundly defeated and
while the President in question enjoys an approval rating of more than 70
percent.
Where are the media in this pathetic spectacle? Where they have been since
day one: cheering the military and stoking the scandal's most hysterical
elements. Aware that they do not have the votes to win a trial in the
Senate, Republicans used the impeachment debate (and Bob Livingston's
resignation as Speaker-elect to create the illusion of a groundswell for the
President's resignation. Network pundits, absent a scintilla of evidence,
played Nostradamus. Cokie Roberts predicted hopefully that the cries for
Clinton's resignation would soon become "deafening." Her ABC News
colleagues, William Bennett and William Kristol, seconded her anti-Clinton
emotion. Robert Bork repeated it on NBC, as did David Gergen on PBS. In
between touchdowns on CBS, Dan Rather reported that resignation calls were
coming from "Republicans and others." Since Roberts and Gergen are probably
registered independent, this statement is technically true, but
substantively meaningless.
The President's antidemocratic act of war is consistent with the behavior of
all postwar Presidents. Bringing democratic control to the conduct of
foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public
agenda (see my book Who Speaks for America?). This is not true, obviously,
of the Republicans' constitutional coup. While they are unlikely to oust
Clinton from power, they have already succeeded in crippling our political
system. The discourse has been denuded of discussions of healthcare, Social
Security, the environment and education. All we have seen and heard about
for the past year has been semen-stained dresses and back-room blowjobs, the
trivia of sexual inquisition.
Clinton's resignation followed by Al Gore's ascension to the presidency
might rupture this dynamic, but the price is far too high. Our political
institutions are on the brink of combustion. Elections are ignored and
potentially overturned. The right to privacy is eviscerated. The
Constitution is shredded. The media amplify and applaud the mad dogs bent on
political annihilation.
Whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, his opponents must be thwarted. They
are the enemies of democracy and of the Constitution that insures its
possibility. We long ago lost the luxury of choosing our allies. This is
war.
