December 30, 1998

Do the Hustle

Hooray for Larry Flynt. He has convinced me that I am all for the "politics of personal destruction," as the shocked, outraged and prissy wags of Washington have dubbed the practice of outing hypocrites. (Perhaps we should call it "truthing" someone.) The GOP has long tried to exploit the values game. Richard Nixon campaigned on law-and order, then organized his own personal break-in squad to target his enemies. Ronald Reagan pushed a greeting card religiosity and didn't bother to attend church. In the 1980s, Henry Hyde and other new-righters tried to position the Republican Party as the sole custodian of morality. Newt Gingrich rose to power by decrying Democrats and liberals as immoral deviants. On choice and gay rights, the Republicans, cheered on by Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer and other religious rightist, have waged a holy war. It's not unreasonable to expect holy warriors to be...well, holy. If they are not, they deserve to have their wings plunked and their swift swords yanked. It's long past due someone tore the Republican Party a new backdoor. And it's even more delicious that the avenger is a pornographer.

Privacy ought to be respected -- even the privacy of politicians. But lawmakers and leaders who preach abstinence for the flock and then hit the speakeasy deserve no respect. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay referred to Bill Clinton as a "sexual predator." Now what if it turns out DeLay, when he served in the Texas state legislature -- which was renowned for its atmosphere of licentiousness with lobbyists ladling out booze and broads -- indulged in the carnal perks of the post? Wouldn't that take the sting out of his rebukes of Clinton? Representative Charles Canady supported the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. What if it turns out he's gay or an extramarital tryster? How sincere then can his position be on protecting heterosexual marriage? Representative Bob Barr attended the meeting of a white supremacist outfit and cheered on cretins who oppose racial mixing. What if it turns out Barr has some African blood in his veins?

This is about truth in marketing. Technically, the Republican case for impeachment is based on lies, not sexual activity. But the GOP attack on Clinton's untrustworthiness (which is not to be denied) does tap into moral indignation over his reprehensible personal behavior. When Clinton's critics whine that the President has inflicted pain on the youth of America, it is not because Clinton lied -- for we heard no such gripes about Reagan's Iran-contra lies -- it is because he lied about sex. And if the question is a politician's honesty, can Clinton's pursuers claim that only lies before a grand jury -- not lies before family or voters -- are fair game?

The commentators and legislators bemoaning the "politics of personal destruction" forget one thing. You can only be destroyed if you set yourself up by trying to impose upon others rules you refuse to live by. Flynt says outright that he is only after the hypocrites. A pol's private decisions, he asserts, are relevant only if they illuminate what the politician says and does in public life. In fact, Flynt has thrown a number of small fish -- legislators not known as podium-pounding moralists who have sinned -- back into the drink. He has received tips on politicians who are not finger-wagging crusaders, and he has let those fortunate souls off the hook. The point is not to embarrass just anyone, but to show that the poorly named family-values movement has too many fakers in its midst. Flynt's logic makes sense: if you wish to throw a standard on others, you at least ought to live by that standard.

"Truthing" someone, of course, is a judgment call, and it ought not replace all other means of politics or be conducted recklessly. In September I wrote a long column in this magazine explaining why I had not rushed to print the story of Hyde's thirty-year-old affair. At a time I had the chance to be the first to air his dirty secret, I was still researching Hyde's past. If he had been a self-righteous moralizer in the 1960s -- as he was in the 1980s and 1990s -- then there would have been compelling reason to reveal the long-ago dalliance, for that would show that his career began with a lie. But events overtook my historical digging, and I had to take a pass on the story. Since then, I have interviewed colleagues of Hyde's from that era, and they report that when Hyde was in the Illinois state legislature in the late 1960s and early 1970s his number-one issue was fervent opposition to abortion rights. So the public Hyde of that period was much like the public Hyde of more recent decades, the Hyde who has waged war on abortion rights and who has cast himself as a defender of marriage (hetero, only) and family. Thus, the old Hyde might have warranted retroactive "truthing," for Hyde rose to power trying to dictate the personal life of others, while leading a free-wheeling sex life of his own. Is that not a trenchant fact for any magazine profile that attempts to explain fully the man?

Flynt has made one mistake: he's milking it. After his million-dollar-crusade de-Speakerized Bob Livingston, Flynt, a well-practiced publicity-hog, could not resist the urge to accept every television interview he was offered, and he teasingly hinted at what was to come. But Flynt is best taken in small doses.

A better strategy would have been for him to keep quiet, while he proceeds with his investigations and negotiations. (His lawyers have been tough when it comes to paying would-be tattlers.) Then, on January 5, the day before the new Congress begins -- and the day before the Senate starts to deal officially with the impeachment -- let it rip. Dump the sleaze (as long as it is accurate), and destroy the legislative career of whatever I-just-talk-family- values-on-TV Republicans he finds. Only those politicians who sail under a false flag need worry about the torpedoes of the "politics of personal destruction."

Stepford Dems

One of the more enraging moments of the past fortnight was when the Democratic members of Congress trooped over to the White House after the impeachment vote and became props for Bill Clinton in the Rose Garden. A pumped-up Dick Gephardt voiced support for Clinton, as the President appeared to be fighting back tears. Here was the party, including liberals and progressives, acting not as opponents of impeachment but as champions of Clinton, who then happened to be waging an unconstitutional mini-war on Iraq (and bombing in the name of the U.N., without obtaining U.N. Security Council approval). Clinton has repeatedly turned his back on his party, and most Democratic legislators have rightfully criticized his actions in Monicagate. So why the rush to his side? This was more proof that few in politics are able to break out of the box of bipolarization: there can only be two sides, and you have to be on one of them. In this case, Clinton or Hyde and Company. The line for the Democrats could easily have been, we oppose this impeachment for it unduly elevates a low crime to an election-nullifying matter, but that this fight is not about Bill Clinton. Battle like hell on the floor against Hyde, and then leave the President to his own emptiness.

But, as I noted in this space last week, in the face of the assault from the right, too many Democrats and progressives have permitted their anti- impeachment fervor to slide into Clinton boosterism. Yet some on the left are trying to hold the line. In last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Marc Cooper, a contributing editor of The Nation magazine, and Patrick Caddell, a former pollster and political consultant, slapped liberal defenders of Clinton for having "sheared off their principles in order to squeeze into that little black box that is Mr. Clinton's moral universe." (Yes, another box.) They noted that the from-the-left howls of protest over the impeachment and the invasion of the President's privacy have far surpassed complaints over Clinton's own attacks on civil liberties and due process. Where were the liberal screams of anguish, they ask, when then-Governor Bill Clinton in 1992 flew back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of Rickie Ray Rector, a mentally incompetent convicted murderer? (A subsequent New Yorker piece showed how Clinton's decision was motivated, not surprisingly, by political considerations.) Maxine Waters, Alan Dershowitz, Arthur Schlessinger Jr. -- the libs were mute. Not a tear for Rector. But, now, sobs for Clinton. Bravo, Cooper and Caddell.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich has also endeavored to place impeachment in its proper context. In a piece written after the impeachment vote, Ehrenreich, while dismissing the thong-initiated impeachment drive, observed, "But for at least a year now, a perfectly impeachable 'high crime and misdemeanor' has been staring us in the face: Clinton's capricious use of U.S. military power to upgrade his image from molester of office help to Commander in Chef." Four times this year, he bombed or threatened to bomb when Monica madness was at a flashpoint; on one of these occasions U.S. munitions wiped out a much-needed pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. (In 1992, when Gennifer Flowers threatened to undo his possible presidency, Clinton, who as governor did not have any cruise missiles at his disposal, had as an option the other form of state violence. That was when he greenlighted Rector's execution. See a pattern?) The U.S. Constitution, assigns only Congress "the power to declare war," and Ehrenreich reports that legal scholars Francis Boyle (University of Illinois) and Jules Lobbel (University of Pittsburgh) maintain that Clinton deserves impeachment -- not for, as she puts it, "casual sex but for what could be argued has been equally casual carnage." She offers a modest proposal: an "alternative" impeachment trial. "Gather together some legal experts and outraged citizens, and try Clinton for his real high crimes and misdemeanors -- violating the Constitution, using the military as his personal PR machine, and lying about the reasons for the bombings.

Okay, Barbara, where can one sign? Monicagate and impeachment has set off much loopy thinking. Some conservatives claim that all lying under oath is the same; some liberals argue that this whole affair is only about the affair and not the lies. Democrats who questioned George Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq blasted Republicans for questioning the suspicious timing of Clinton's bombings. On his CNN show this past Sunday, Jesse Jackson tossed only soft-as- lint questions to Vice President Al Gore on the Iraq attack. Last week, I was chatting with ex-leftie and now arch-rightie (and occasional New York Press contributor) David Horowitz and found that we both agreed that Clinton's air strikes were unconstitutional and deserving of more scorn than his philandering-related lies. Boy, did that frighten me for a moment. But I suppose the question is, does one permit conventional political realities (say, Clinton-versus-the Big Bad Religious Right) to define one's position, or does one strive for a broader view? One need not stand with Clinton to stand against Hyde. Those progressives who cannot see that will find themselves in Clinton's "little black box" (what an eloquent description), a punishment certainly fitting the crime.

Next: Privatizing Torture

Let's learn from dictators. The co-chair of the Cato Institute's project on Social Security privatization, Jose Pinera, served as labor minister in the government of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, now much in the news for having been arrested and held in London. Five years after General Pinochet overthrew a democratically elected government and started a killing rampage that claimed thousands of lives, Pinera joined the murderous regime and served for two years. These days, while Pinochet awaits judgment, Pinera has a comfortable office in Washington -- not too far from where Pinochet agents assassinated a Chilean exile and an American citizen in 1976 -- and he is working for a libertarian outfit that calls out ceaselessly for removing oppressive government from the backs of businesses and individuals. But doesn't a dictatorial state that allowed no political dissent count as excessive big government? Pinera's former affiliation with such an entity apparently has not troubled his comrades at the think tank. As long as Pinera can help hand over Social Security to Wall Street, his less-than-firm devotion to liberty and political freedom is not a disqualification at Cato.

-- David Corn