The beginning of the end
Despite the vicious attacks from the Clinton propaganda machine, Starr has succeeded in exposing a dangerous, pathological liar.

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And so, the unraveling begins. The Starr Report -- with 500 pages of text about multiple "impeachable" offenses -- has been released. Senior voices in the president's own party have already stepped forward to state the obvious, and also the fundamental: that the president's behavior has been reprehensible, immoral, irresponsible and dangerous; that no chief executive can function if he is widely perceived as a compulsive liar; that a president without credibility, in a world fraught with peril, is a national security risk; that the Oval Office is not a private bedroom, but a people's symbol. Ronald Reagan refused even to remove his jacket in the White House, out of respect for the office. Let alone drop his pants. To debase the presidency and to cover it with shame ought to be an impeachable crime in itself.

And yet the denial continues, and the war goes on.

A Clinton ally interviewed by Salon's Jonathan Broder on the day the report was delivered to Congress described the strategy of the White House as "contrition and [damage] control." If Clinton can avoid the impeachment process, according to Broder's sources, the strategy will have succeeded. But if it doesn't? "I think there is a possibility that everything slides and all bets are off," this ally threatened. "And if everything slides, everyone will be punished -- everyone, including the press. It will be a total meltdown."

This threat reminds us that it is the Clinton White House that has misappropriated nearly 1,000 FBI files of its political opponents, containing raw sewage about their personal lives, and that in the past the Clintonites have shown no compunction about sullying the reputations of persons high and low, public and private, who got in their way. These include alleged ex-girlfriends such as Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones and senior civil servants such as the near-retirement Travel Office chief Billy Dale, who served without blemish under seven presidents until the Clinton White House wanted his job and decided the way to do it was to launch criminal proceedings against him and send him to jail (the effort fortunately failed). But no one has been more damaged by the Clintons' war to save themselves than their own chief prosecutor, Kenneth Starr.

Until now the war has been largely one-sided. The Clintons have been able to use the most powerful pulpit in the nation to blacken Starr's previously unblemished reputation for fairness and nonpartisanship while Starr has been bound to silence by law. Whether Starr's office has leaked some information about the case or not, the fact remains that Starr has not been able to make a public statement about the president and his bully boys characterizing their tactics in dealing with this case. This one-sided war is itself an obstruction of justice, and unprecedented in the history of the special prosecutor's office. If the target of the investigation were anyone besides the president and his staff, Carville, Blumenthal, Lindsey and their patrons would by now be indicted and on their way to jail.

The Clintonites' defense (and their line on Starr's investigation) is quickly summarized: 1) Until the Lewinsky affair, the lengthy and expensive inquiry into the Clintons' affairs turned up nothing that would justify it; 2) The Lewinsky affair is about sex; 3) Everybody lies (and would even perjure themselves) about sex.

This argument misrepresents (or misunderstands) 1) the significance of the Lewinsky affair in the fabric of Starr's case and 2) the importance of character in the construction of lies.

N E X T+P A G E +| Clinton's pattern of lies