"T'was the nightmare before Christmas and all through the House... "
we saw rise to the mike the men of moral grouse. One was Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) who was for a long time undecided, considered to be one of the moderates who might elude the "hammer," the "breaking of legs," the "night of long knives" of virtual Speaker Tom DeLay.

He didn't.

Mr. Leach was the man who in 1994 spoke of "the moral crisis in the nation" brought about by the Clintons' supposed perfidy in the Whitewater land deal, "not because it was big but because it was small." After four solid years, the small suspected Whitewater perfidy was quietly dismissed by Mr. Starr in his HJC testimony November 19 as a "no wrongdoing" footnote of history.

Mr. Leach tried again when he spoke up during the Gingrich ethics scandal to say "the Speaker no longer commands the moral authority to lead the House." He was right that time, speaking of a Speaker and not of a President, but he was swamped by lesser minds intent upon saving the face of the House by crafting a plea bargain in which the word "knew" was subtracted from the phrase "knew or should have known" in exchange for Mr. Gingrich's gallant acceptance of a reprimand and a $350,000 fine. Leach must have hated that deal.

There may be many forms of "coup" going on in the current situation in Congress but whatever type it is, the process that made the impeachment crisis possible was a "propaganda coup." We identify here but three elements of misinformation that carried us to where we stand on the brink of Constitutional disaster: 1) "the rule of law"; 2) the meaning of "high" in the phrase "high crimes"; and 3) "conscience."

Back in 1994 Jim Leach was one of those who spawned the propaganda coup when he orated about "the ethics of our time" in reference to the Clintons' Whitewater investment. In the slightly more theocratic year of 1998, this moralism was resurrected with a religious twist as "the sanctity of the rule of law." Demagogically playing to the masses and erroneously equating the office of the President with "every man," Mr. Leach voted for impeachment with intent to remove the President on the basis that "no man is above the law." Was he really "undecided" on the impeachment question, or was he pretending that his moral propaganda was something other than a seamless, uninterrupted line?

Perceived to be "above DeLay," many listened more intently to Leach than they might have to Rep. Bob Barr, the friend of white supremacists who began impeaching Clinton years before there were any allegations made. Leach gave Barr's vendetta against Clinton an appearance of substance. Leach was wrong, of course, but he sounded right. That's the magic of well-performed moralizing, that sense of gravitas from an elder of the party.

Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA), Leach's junior twin, came to the mike, followed the same path, did the same thing--and many more listened than might have because he was considered a "fair-minded moderate."

Standing before the cameras on Dec. 16, 1998, Mr. Campbell's cherubic face was reddened with emotion. His eyes glistened as he spoke of "how difficult it was to make this decision." Campbell, too, had challenged the ethics of Newt Gingrich and was thought to be an "independent thinker," meaning he wasn't part of Armey's army. His thinking on impeachment of the President, like that of Mr. Leach, turned out to be deeply dependent upon a misplaced moralism that warped his view of the Constitution.

There were others akin to them but these two were the champions of chump as they stirred the propaganda soup that made this attempted impeachment coup possible. No hammers or knives or broken legs were needed to force them to this vote. They were fortified inwardly by a rigid purity as absolute as the monolith in "2001," something shining and seemingly made of titanium.

For the Constitution, it was made of plutonium.

These men blew the impeachment clause to smithereens by lowering its threshold to include what they considered "moral offenses against the rule of law," forgetting or deliberately putting aside the reasoning in the Framers' minds when they set the bar so high, higher than "the rule of law" alone or "moral offenses" or "bad behavior." Thousands of judges serve for as long as a lifetime on "good behavior," removable on "bad behavior." Not so the single presiding officer of the entire Executive Branch who serves limited four-year terms at the will of the national electorate. . For him--or her, as the case will someday be--a higher bar than "bad behavior" is set for removal. For the President, they must be crimes against the state involving abuse of official powers.

Leach and Campbell pretended this Constitutional distinction did not exist.

These men were considered "moderate" because they seemed to have minds of their own. They were untouchable. They were listened to by other moderates and even some Democrats. They helped the propaganda coup gain momentum from Henry Hyde's "worry" about the "sanctity of the oath." They legitimitized Hyde's sanctimonious display of snide partisanship over the course of the HJC hearings. DeLay could run around through the back rooms breaking legs but nothing was so powerful as the emotion in the glistening eyes of Leach and Campbell.

The world watched these two men and listened to their perceived wisdom, little realizing they were stripping the Constitution of its intent to separate the Executive Branch from the other branches by allowing a gap of sub-impeachable offenses, moral and legal, to assure a balance of powers and avoid parliamentary "no confidence" votes by the Congress. No one says such lesser offenses are not serious. If perjury and obstruction to hide a sexual relationship are proven, they are serious. They are simply not impeachable and do not require the immediate yanking of the President in mid-term to protect the nation.

The war between two worlds we are witnessing now hinges in part upon the refusal of many conservatives and the religious right to abide flexibility and relativism of any sort, in ethics and in the Constitution. When they came upon the impeachment clause which deliberately set a special "relative" standard for removing a President, they had to overcome it in any way possible.

Republican consultant Ed Gillespie shared the view that "Americans don't really understand impeachment." How true. Most people, including those in the supposedly well-informed newsmedia, misinterpreted the term "high" in the phrase "high crimes" as implying a scale of seriousness, as in high crime, medium crime, low crime. In this misconception--and in the context of the "rule of law" and the "sacred oath"--lying under oath was discussed as a very serious crime and perjury even worse, indeed such a "high" and serious crime that it was said to be impeachable. In fact, in traditional English law the term "high" refers to the "crown" or the state itself, as in "crimes against the state." Perjury or obstruction to hide a sexual relationship were not "crimes against the state." But never mind that. Bob Barr, Charles Canady, Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde--and then Jim Leach and Tom Campbell--took breathtaking advantage of that glitch of ignorance. To make sure the ignorance was maintained, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee stripped out the phrase "against the state," saying this was done "for clarity." In fact, it was done to ensure lack of clarity so they could keep the issue muddy and rewrite the impeachment clause with moralistic oratory.

Between "high crimes" and more ordinary crimes not "against the state" was left a gap of sub-impeachable offenses. This gap, this relativism, this exception to an absolute was something the moralists could not tolerate. The propaganda coup worked its way into the "sub-impeachable gap" where the ballot box or civil court Judge Wright or a criminal prosecutor at the end of Clinton's term might otherwise deal with any nefariousness not rising to "treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors" against the state involving abuse of Presidential powers. The sub-impeachable gap opened and in rushed Hyde and DeLay and Barr and Canady and McCullom and finally Leach and Campbell to fill the void with an emotional invocation of "the rule of law."

They were careful not to mention that "the rule of law" is best protected in civil and criminal courts, not the political court of Congress. They withheld these vital educational facts from the public as all successful propaganda coups must do. In so doing, they did the greatest disservice anyone could do to the American rule of law: they subjected it to a future of political processes--without due process of law. This is the ultimate goal of a theocratic system such as exists in Teheran. History may look back upon this Presidential impeachment spectacle as a gigantic metaphor for a mindset that here began to permeate our legal system all the way down to its roots.

The newsmedia, ever the gaurdians of our Constutition, slinked off and entertained themselves on sidelines, not ones to upset a coup on a roll and a ratings coup of their own.

Another key piece of propaganda (ideas put forth with intent to deceive or distort, this one put forth by Tom DeLay) involved the notion of "conscience." To a man and woman, nearly everyone pronounced the word somewhere in their press statements, most with utter sincerity, not realizing what they set in motion.

They followed their conscience instead of the Constitution.

To use the term "conscience" was to put the issue on the plane of "right vs. wrong" in relation to "the rule of law," whereas the Constitution is on the plane of "Is it or is it not an impeachable wrong?" Leach and Campbell helplessly elevated "conscience" through their natural moralism. Just as helplessly, they became wolves in sheep's clothing. Forget the pipsqueak extremists like Barr and DeLay: the men in the middle, Leach and Campbell, became the most insidious of Constitutional terrorists.

Helplessly, they abused their Congressional power. Helplessly, they committed a crime against the Constitution.

Without moderates like Leach and Campbell, the propaganda coup might have fallen apart at the extremes. They were not really "above DeLay" at all. They followed his suit. Their legs were not broken, their minds were broken. They were suckered at their own moralistic game. They sealed the coup's success. They seemed to be reasonable and have minds of their own. But, really, all they had was their own vindictive self-righteousness, no different from Jerry Falwell, dressed up in "moderation." Campbell and Leach are not of the mode of the Christian Coalition per se, but an additional effect of their rhetoric was to soften the mind for easier entry of the CC's theocratic agenda. This is, after all, where all of this is going as history rapidly moves along. Leaders who would never have aligned themselves directly with the Christian Coalition have been rhetorically seduced into their cause.

Four moderate House Republicans have since had a "change of conscience" and said, oh by the way, they didn't really mean the President should be removed from office when they voted to impeach. Suddenly "conscience" was out, the Constitution was in. The impeachment article on obstruction of justice passed by only 9 votes. If the two absent Demos had attended and voted Nay (one from a wedding, the other on a stretcher from hip surgery) and these 4 Republicans had voted Nay, that article would not have passed. The fact that they could slip and slide hints at the deliberate misinformation foisted by DeLay, who wanted history to record impeachment at any cost, saying, "It's OK, impeachment is just a way of punishing the President. Don't worry, it doesn't really mean removal." Their constituents were no doubt not happy either. DeLay's propaganda line backfired on these four moderates and they'll regret it for the rest of their lives.

Some believe the Senate can right the balance, although members of the Senate are just as open to constitutional error as those in the House, and they can be just as self-righteous. If anything, their elevated stature as the "upper" house may encourage it. And remember, too, that the "prosecution team" will be headed by Mr. Hyde and his pit bulls from the House Judiciary Committee, plus that narrator of sordid beach novels, Hyde's brother in the Papal Knights, David Schippers.

The propaganda coup will continue in the Senate, orchestrated by its original House conductors, joined by Sen. Don Nickles and others. Speaking of propaganda, Nickles has loaned his top aide Barbara Olson to the talk news circuit for the last year to promote Ken Starr's investigation. That's Mrs. Ted Olson. Ted Olson oversaw the Scaife-funded anti-Clinton smear machine known as the Arkansas Project. Cozy bunch.

Tom DeLay, our Joe McCarthy, Jr., is still pulling the strings back in his "war room" in the House. On Christmas eve he loomed forth the specter of "additional evidence" in a final desperate effort to smear the President out of office. The delayed timing appears aimed at forcing Clinton's resignation just as a Senate trial begins to worry the American public. This is salacious material that even Starr did not include in his Referral or attached documents, much of it dredged up by the handsomely Scaife-funded Larry Klayman. DeLay led 47 "moderate" Republicans privately into what he calls "the evidence room" (notice the reference to police jargon) to read this spurious junk (no Demos were invited, of course). If any of these "moderates" were seriously swayed by what they read, it was only because it corroborated their pre-existing hatred of Clinton and tipped them toward an emotional decision, not one based upon the impeachment clause.

As DeLay seeks to poison the Senate with cockamamie innunedo, we are getting mighty close to Stalin and Kafka. Faced with such tactics, the honorable thing for President Clinton to do, for the sake not of himself but the Presidency, is to never resign. Indeed, he might be wise to refuse a censure deal and go straight to trial to fight this battle all the way.

The Constitution still sits there in its airless chamber, misinterpreted but remaining for a future of wiser accountings. Still, the wound has been struck, not only to the Constitution but to our fantasy that "independent minds" can be correct and steady. Not so when they secretly harbor a knife-edged moral self-righteousness that cuts them away from the well-designed architecture of the Constitution as it governs the fate of this President and future Republican Presidents.

The propaganda coup would never have progressed this far without the assistance of those avid stenographers who call themselves "reporters." They jotted down every word of Leach and Campbell as though they came from Mount Sinai, without challenge, without question as to the three (of many other) elements of misinformation outlined above, transmitting in toto a mountain of stunning wrong-headedness from these moderate--read "mediocre"--men. The media betrayed America in many ways in the last year, few more seriously than by letting these teary-eyed demagogues loose upon the land.

"Freedom of the press," as we have noted in a previous column, was bestowed not for the benefit of media corporations but for the benefit of the people so that we might keep ourselves free from tyrannical government by gaining information to counter propaganda manufactured by the government. Several major reporters collaborated with Ken Starr, a personification of tyrannical government, thus reducing rather than enhancing our freedom.

Congress is also part of government. By swallowing whole the sermonistic judgment of the Leaches and Campbells ("Because no man is above the law I must vote to impeach"), many in the newsmedia collaborated with those who would, with misguided rectitude, destroy the balance of powers, again directly threatening our freedom.

Let us never forget what we are learning here.

-- Jane Prettyman