DEFENDING PROPRIETY
MANSFIELD, HARVEY
DEFENDING PROPRIETY HARVEY MANSFIELD WHEN I LAST APPEARED IN THESE PAGES it was to complain that the Republicans had not made an issue of President Clinton's misconduct during the election...
...One melancholy lesson from this episode: Propriety is connected to virtue but is not as attractive as virtue...
...Clinton's very admission becomes almost a demand to do nothing about it...
...Propriety is stronger than the law because it is enforced with shame, not prison...
...The Democrats risk being branded as the party of moral laxity, the Republicans as the party obsessed with sexual peccadilloes...
...Harvey Mansfield is professor of government at Harvard...
...But in truth, the issue is over propriety, over how it is proper to appear, more than about sexual morality simply...
...How can Republicans do a better job of defending propriety against impatience and contempt...
...For Democrats either thought it improper to pursue him despite his dishonesty, or honestly did not care whether he behaved inappropriately...
...They do not themselves necessarily think that adultery is a peccadillo, a "slight sin," but, having been taught by Hollywood, they regard it as endemic to celebrities, among whom (thanks to Clinton) they now include politicians...
...They are the respectable party and always have been...
...Behind the curtain you won't be seen, but you must also not let yourself be seen...
...After the impeachment I withdraw that point...
...We bourgeois love our privacy, whether for enjoying sex when we are young or money when we are old...
...He had to lie...
...The president admitted that his conduct was "inappropriate," by which he meant something less than "immoral," as Sen...
...President Clinton's greatest offense was to let himself be seen, and then to be seen not to care...
...You can do it with dignity, as he did, but a certain self-inflation is required that is easily mocked even when it is impressive...
...The earnest House impeachment managers were typical Republicans, rightly but easily shocked by Clinton's flouting of the law...
...self up like Henry Hyde...
...What the Senate has done is accommodate the president's popularity and the partisan determination of his defenders...
...Democrats are on the whole a little less scrupulous to deal with, and a little less dull to be with...
...So his dishonesty got him in trouble, his honesty got him impeached, and both together got him off...
...That counterculture has now become the offi- cial culture and acquired a propriety of its own...
...DEFENDING PROPRIETY HARVEY MANSFIELD WHEN I LAST APPEARED IN THESE PAGES it was to complain that the Republicans had not made an issue of President Clinton's misconduct during the election campaign last year...
...Although attacks on respectable America are nothing new—think of Sinclair Lewis—it was the '60s culture that spoke out for liberation from propriety as such...
...Propriety and morality are close friends, and an assault on the first undermines the second...
...In bourgeois virtue—our virtue—not only do self-interest and virtue meet, but their union is blessed with respectability, which is the face of virtue...
...And the argument has had considerable success: Many feel that it was improper for Starr and the Republicans to pursue impropriety so relentlessly— which means, at all...
...Republicans, however, have come to the defense of propriety...
...It's not cool to defend propriety...
...His honesty showed, however, in his attitude, in his brazen refusal to knuckle under to Republicans...
...Propriety, more than sexual harassment law, perhaps more than diamonds, is a girl's best friend...
...But there is no privacy without the curtain of propriety, which offers protection in return for restraint...
...Propriety is something we are more likely to learn about from Miss Manners than from moral philosophers, who today typically ignore it...
...But like a broken window left unfixed, which signifies a bad neighborhood, impropriety left unreproved shows people do not care about moral standards...
...To be contemptuous of propriety means to declare loyalty to the urges that propriety restrains, hence to a certain spurious honesty to oneself as against the hypocrisy of the proper and respectable...
...It is disconcerting that offenders against propriety should profit from the fact that propriety usually defends itself by ignoring what is inappropriate...
...But it cannot escape the contradiction that came out in Clinton's case...
...That is one reason why the virtuous don't always win...
...Joseph Lieberman pointed out...
...Now that the die is cast, neither Democrats nor Republicans can be entirely happy with the issue that the impeachment has made between them...
...There's no roguishly congenial way to do a job for which you have to heat yourDemocrats are a little less scrupulous to deal with, and a little less dull to be with...
...Being merely inappropriate, Clinton's conduct should be overlooked, just as it is polite to overlook offenses against politeness...
...Reluctantly, but with increasing courage and conviction, the House Republicans were brought to accuse the president, partly because Kenneth Starr's report forced them to act, and partly because the president and his party goaded them beyond bearing...
...They represent people who are impatient with propriety and intellectuals who are contemptuous of it...
...Since propriety is concerned with appearances, it is less than the morality of the heart...
...But in fact Clinton was unable to be honest in this way because he was unable to escape the shame of being caught...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
