PLOP, PLOP, FIZZLE, FIZZLE
FERGUSON, ANDREW
PLOP, PLOP, FIZZLE, FIZZLE by Andrew Ferguson All events associated with the Clinton presidency eventually take on the character of the president's sex life: a series of fevered acts that are...
...Inside a crush of cameramen settled themselves before the witness table, awaiting a dramatic entrance by the hearing's sole witness...
...in the area of public policy, where he promises to deliver 100,000 new cops, but they never quite materialize...
...The reason the committee's minority members didn't argue the facts, it turned out, was that they accept the facts...
...To a disinterested observer their position might therefore be thought hopeless...
...I spent some time talking to Rep...
...I tried to argue with him a little, but there didn't seem to be much point, and he started to get mad...
...But so was Johnnie Cochran's...
...The president's lawyer David Kendall, given another hour, did the same...
...This has quickly become the smart set's critique of Starr's brief against Clinton: It's dull, there's nothing new, we've heard it all before...
...Not very long, as it turned out...
...still, as the impeachment hearing began last Thursday morning, it had all the trappings of something, well, climactic...
...Abbe Lowell, the committee's Democratic counsel, was allowed an hour to question Starr's brief, and allocated his time like so: 10 minutes on why Starr didn't ask Linda Tripp not to talk with the press...
...15 minutes on why Starr didn't tell the Justice Department he had once debated Larry Tribe on NPR about Paula Jones...
...Back in the press section of the hearing room, as Starr droned on, the hacks began to fidget...
...Confronted with proof of felonies, the Democrats focused on prosecutorial misconduct...
...in foreign affairs, where he threatens to bomb but the bombs don't fall...
...For months Starr's work has been blasted for being too exciting: pornographic, salacious, prurient, an exercise in titillation demeaning to the institutional grandeur of the presidency...
...Wagers were made about how long the television networks could broadcast these doldrums before they cut away to Rosie O'Donnell and Oprah...
...He deserves some sort of admonishment—some sort of censure...
...Outside the hearing room, security was heavy and intrusive, with the Capitol cops on hair-trigger alert...
...and various other inchoate allegations of bad behavior—Ken Starr's bad behavior...
...Congressmen nudged each other to keep awake, while the journalists rolled their eyes...
...But it was a Clintonian moment, a tease: bursting with potential, all of it unexploited...
...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...That is not perjury...
...Like Cochran, who also had the law and the facts impressively and irrefutably arrayed against him, the Democrats have decided to attack the prosecutor...
...Marty Meehan, from Massachusetts...
...None of them bothered to argue the law or the facts—the reality of the president's conduct or the legal view that perjury may be an impeachable offense...
...Like the president's foreplay, they end not with a bang, but a whimper...
...The president will go without any punishment...
...another 20 on his investigators' handling of Lewinsky at the Ritz-Carlton hotel...
...It will come to a vote on the floor of the House and it will fail...
...Now, if you lie under oath about selling arms—if you lie under oath about whether you authorized a break-in at the DNC—that's perjury...
...PLOP, PLOP, FIZZLE, FIZZLE by Andrew Ferguson All events associated with the Clinton presidency eventually take on the character of the president's sex life: a series of fevered acts that are never brought to completion...
...Suddenly, here in the hearing room, he's a plodder—a drudge who has ignored his obligation, in the age of 24-hour media, to offer a continuous stream of entertaining information...
...But you know what will happen, because of the Republicans...
...Marshals, like an informer from a witness-protection program...
...Starr's opening statement was two-and-a-half hours' worth of distilled, well-reasoned, and compelling argument, read without inflection in a lawyerly manner—and hence, to the assembled journalists and congressmen, boring...
...The drama quickly dissipated...
...One reporter for a newsweekly ZZle made the mistake of following congresswoman Mary Bono down the wrong hallway, and he got body-slammed against a wall by a female cop...
...It is clear to me the president lied under oath," Meehan said...
...You see it in his speeches, where the rhetorical flourishes swirl about and culminate in nothing memorable...
...Look," he said, "I'm not forgiving the president...
...And now, with Ken starr's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, we know this is true even of the Clinton scandals...
...We should have expected as much...
...Boring...
...If the president walks, the Republicans are to blame: This is the whimper we'll hear as the scandal draws to a close...
...An article of impeachment will pass out of committee...
...All this musty talk about perjury and who-did-what-when and the sanctity of the rule of law—it's all, like, so five minutes ago...
...SUDDEMY, IN THE HEARING ROOM, HES A PLODDER...
...Ken Starr can't win...
...And it will be the Republicans' fault...
...There is never a climax...
...And then the Republicans will vote against any sort of admonishment of the president...
...A long line of normal people—i.e., non-journalists, non-politicians—buzzed and jostled in a roped-off queue, hoping to snag one of the handful of seats set aside for spectators...
...And Starr didn't disappoint: He entered the room from a side door in a flying wedge of U.S...
...about the initial questioning of Monica Lewinsky...
...The Democrats can't win either, really, but that's less important to them, since their main object in the impeachment proceedings is to see that Starr and the Republicans lose...
...15 minutes on a press release Starr issued FOR MONTHS STARRS WORK HAS BEEN BLASTED FOR BEING TOO EXCITING...
...But he was lying about a sexual relationship...
...From Larry Flynt to Elmer Fudd in a matter of minutes...
...This is why they used to be called "soft on crime...
...During the breaks, out in the hallway, the Democrats were slightly more interesting—that is, less dull...
...Yet no one seemed to note the irony...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 12
