This isn't about Clinton's soul

Partisan debate about the propriety of a Senate trial proceeds amidbipartisan consensus that there must never be another such president.His fate largely rests with people Democrats praise for their tepidpartisanship, people known as "moderate Republicans" and known forinconstancy. (About which Clinton crimes are they moderately miffed?)

Such are the spars to which he clings in the shipwreck of hispresidency, now that the Washington Post, which opposes impeachment,dismisses his defense as "a compound lie" and the New Republic, whichopposes impeachment, calls him "a moral and cultural disaster."

Granted, Republicans have mixed motives, some ignoble, forfavoring impeachment. Still, savor the rarity of some peopleunwilling to palter with the truth in order to pander to publicopinion. And salute some of them for an understanding of the popularwill far more profound than polls communicate. The reason judicialreview - unelected judges invalidating acts of electedrepresentatives - can be compatible with popular government is thatthe Constitution is the fundamental, the permanent rather thanevanescent, will of the American people.Whoever is scripting Clinton's various contrition skits missesthis point: Serial contrition, carefully calibrated, is oxymoronic.Clinton's current confessional theme is: I am ashamed of what I didto conceal behavior I was ashamed of, so now I have nothing to beashamed of. If there were a parliamentarian controlling the currentdebate, he would declare such skits ungermane. Enough, already, ofClinton's bulletins on his inner life.Clinton, whose self-absorption is the eighth wonder of theworld, thinks the current controversy is about the purity of hisrepentance. He is encouraged to think so by those critics who,steeped in today's confessional culture, say we could "get thisbehind us" if only Clinton would come to the front of the tent andtestify to having testified falsely under oath. But this reduces anassault on the rule of law to a problem that is half aesthetic andhalf pastoral.The vote to impeach should proceed on the understanding thatimpeachment is not punishment, it is hygiene for the regime. Thevote should turn on three questions:First, is it seemly to spare a president even a Senate trial toconsider the Everest of evidence of crimes of a sort for which someAmericans are in prison?Second, is it necessary to avoid a Senate trial, lest the nationbe jeopardized? Such a judgment effectively amends the Constitutionby repealing the impeachment provision as inapplicable to the modernpresidency because the presidency has grown too great to discipline.Third, what standard of presidential behavior will be endorsedby the House if it votes that not even a Senate trial is warranted byClinton's sustained and calculated "private" behavior, whichconsisted of lying to the public and in two public (judicial)proceedings about behavior in the symbolic epicenter of the nation'spublic life, the Oval Office?Clinton might survive a Senate trial in which the nation'swelfare, not his soul, would be the proper subject. But even ifonly, say, 55 senators, rather than the required two-thirds, voted toremove Clinton, his survival would not mean (as one of his lawyerssays) that this all would have been "much ado about nothing." IfClinton clings to office after majorities of both houses declare himunfit to do so, that outcome can accurately be called: censure.But before assuming that Clinton's support cannot fall below 34senators, consider: There is scant affection for him among Democrats.Some senior Democrats loathe him for reducing their party, onceexemplified by Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield andPaul Douglas, to a party exemplified by Jerrold Nadler and BarneyFrank.And some Democrats have made themselves hostage to polls byciting them as sufficient reason not to remove Clinton. They haveplanted their feet on the shiftable sand of opinion, and the publicmay yet come to feel that Clinton has to go.