Clinton Impeachment Trial(英)

d that the Administration's decision to go on "a war footing" when allegations of the President's affair with Lewinsky first surfaced proved costly. Relentless attacks by Clinton and his aides on the Office of Independent Counsel and Linda Tripp angered Republicans, polarized debate, and made impeachment by the House inevitable. (At the same time, the aggressive approach might have made acquittal in the Senate inevit

iable.)

　　We learned also that an impeachment trial is not necessarily a national calamity and might even have some benefits. George W. Bush has shown that the presidency was not seriously weakened by the ordeal. The public might be better off today for having had to think seriously about issues of both private and public morality during the impeachment process. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal also contributed to a franker national discussion about sex and, by demonstrating how many skeletons exist in the closets of politicians, might——it is hoped-cause future elections to turn more on matters of substance than what one of the candidates did in bed sometime in the past.

　　Finally, as Richard Posner astutely observes in An Affair of State, the impeachment of William Clinton has "by the dint of its riviting detail" made it "difficult to take presidents seriously." The destruction of the mystique of the presidency is for "those who think that authority depends upon mystery" a consequence to be lamented. But Posner disagrees: "My guess is that they are wrong, that Americans haves reached a level of political sophistication at which they can take in stride the knowledge that the nation's political and intellectual leaders are their peers, and not their paragons. The nation does not depend upon the superior virtue of one man.

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