CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence UN-DOOMED DEMOCRATS I desperately hope that William Kristol’s dire predictions for the Democratic party are proved accurate in every particular (“The Democrats’ Fate,” Oct. 19)....
...Rather, I think it’s obscene, a frontal attack on the idea of limited government and individual privacy, and the purveyor of shoddy constitutional doctrines and interpretations that we would condemn if others had proposed them...
...I am sure the founders did not want government agents exposing small and intimate conversations, no matter how tawdry...
...Gratuitous also were comments so unnecessary to the case at hand that they seem to bespeak a joy at exercising arbitrary power and a willful invasion of privacy...
...NORMAN F. CANTOR SAG HARBOR, NY...
...There is one difference between the two: Cecil was strictly homosexual...
...And having argued for so long for a return to the founders’ intentions, why do we find ourselves siding with the view that, in this arena, the Constitution might be anything Congress wants it to be...
...If I am, I’ll happily buy Kristol a dinner at the Washington restaurant of his choice should our paths ever cross again...
...Clinton, apparently, is exclusively heterosexual...
...MAURY HOLLAND EUGENE, OR FOUL BALL, NOT HOME RUN I am chagrined by the thought that my fellow conservatives see the Starr report as a “home run” (“Case Closed,” Sept...
...None...
...Many of us who served in the Reagan administration experienced strong, even bitter, partisan opposition...
...And the repetition of sexual matters in the report, far beyond what was necessary to prove the original lie, was gratuitous and deadly, just like ordinary pornography...
...JOHN AGRESTO SANTA FE, NM OF CECIL AND BUBBA Joseph Epstein remarks that Bill Clinton was not the kind of person Cecil Rhodes “had in mind” for his Oxford scholars (“Oxbridge Envy,” Oct...
...On the contrary, Cecil thought of his Rhodes scholars as men (no women) like himself...
...Then only those who care nothing about their honor will forge on...
...How many of us have been arguing for years that the NEA should be shut down for using tax dollars to distribute obscenity...
...An electoral result of that kind will be widely interpreted as voters’ expressing opposition to Clinton’s removal and as a rebuke to Republicans for distracting Congress from issues “the American people really care about,” as if having a likely felon in the Oval Office were of no particular concern to them...
...We needn’t be libertarians to know that this quasi-arbitrary power exercised with such glee is hardly what we mean by limited government...
...They seem considerably more put out by Republicans’ investigation of Clinton’s criminal misconduct than by the misconduct itself...
...Finally, I find it hard to believe that any of the eleven charges—or all of them together—rise to the level of high crimes...
...Since the Lewinsky scandal broke last January, Kristol has been predicting the imminent demise of Clinton and his administration, but today’s polls tend to show that roughly twothirds of voters still oppose his resignation or removal from office...
...My present guess is that the prediction of just a month ago, that Republicans will score substantial gains in both the Senate and the House in November, will not be borne out, and that the actual gains will be a much more modest two Senate and four or five House seats...
...Astonishingly, I’m afraid that the Democrats’ calculation will be proved accurate enough for government work, and that Clinton will complete his term with his relatively high approval ratings intact, and possibly even higher...
...And shame on the Congress that pimped it...
...Rather, the result will be the removal from all decent people of the willingness to stand and serve...
...But no attack rose to this level of indecency...
...Even if we were convinced it truly was perjury, have we so flexible a Constitution that the impeachment clause now stoops that low...
...He and Clinton are both narcissistic, megalomaniacal, mendacious rogues...
...To what legitimate purpose was the president cited as saying that he didn’t know if his marriage would last...
...Well, now we did it ourselves...
...it was simply a way of piling on...
...My guess is that the lasting result of all this will not be the removal of the president...
...I have never more fervently hoped that I am wrong about all of this...
...However, I fear that once again we conservatives are in for a bitter disappointment owing to our Reaganesque, but unjustified, confidence in the sound judgment of the American people...
...My pessimistic sense is that what Robert Bork has called “modern liberalism,” having extended outward or downward from our once-great universities and other elite institutions, has so corrupted American culture and society that Democrats are more likely to be rewarded than punished for their contemptible, though deft, defense of the president...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 8
