May 26, 2004

Abu-Ghraib… and Monica Lewinsky

Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This article was honored to be included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Read My Lips.

We’ve got to stop wasting the time of our Presidents, and that of the nation, over trivialities.

Nixon was the one who taught us to impeach a President over a relatively minor matter. Everyone’s always said that if he’d just admitted Watergate and apologized for it, that would have been the end of it.

Acting out some tragic character flaw, Nixon burned up decades of goodwill felt by the American people toward the Presidency. He taught us to distrust government. And we’ve been trying to impeach the President, regardless of party, ever since.

The left tried to impeach Reagan over Iran-Contra, and tied up that administration for years. The Iran-Contra affair was far from trivial. But the right was offended. It was unprecedented to use a scandal such as Iran-Contra to attack and distract an administration for years.

In the Clinton era the right responded with an effort to impeach Clinton. Unfortunately it was over something relatively trivial—Monicagate. I was not a fan of Clinton’s, but I wrote to the LA TIMES that we had to leave our Presidents free to govern, and not seek to impeach unless the charge was extremely serious.

Now the left has been having a field day over the Abu-Ghraib story. And lo and behold, it actually seems to have hurt Bush’s approval ratings. Just as Monicagate hurt Clinton. As in the case of Monicagate, a relatively small story has been blown out of proportion.

And a few months ago, the left was talking about impeaching Bush over the argument that he lied when he accused Hussein of having WMD, despite the fact that any number of prominent Democrats had also charged Hussein with having WMD.

Of course I was offended by Clinton’s use of the Oval Office for sex. And I’m offended by the behavior of the soldiers at Abu-Ghraib.

But if we want to continue to have a successful nation, we can’t be tying the hands of our Presidents, by making gigantic stories out of things like these. Monicagate was about sexcapades; Abu-Ghraib is about the actions of a relatively miniscule number of soldiers.

The Abu-Ghraib story has all but run its course; it’s done most of the damage it was going to do. We can take this opportunity to do the country a great deal of good by noting the damage done to Presidents of both parties by blowing such stories out of proportion. Whoever the next President is, whatever his party, he deserves stronger support from the American people, and from politicians on both sides of the aisle.

From Mayor Daley of Chicago:

“The thing I worry about in politics is all of these people hating one another [saying], ‘I hate Kerry’, ‘I hate Bush.’ I wish the former presidents—Carter and Ford and Clinton and Bush—would all get up and tell people, ‘You may support candidates, but don’t hate the other candidate.’

“You see too much hate. And I’ll tell you one thing—hate will turn on people. . . . When hate gets in politics, it’s a very, very dangerous aspect.”

Update 6-4-04: See also my follow-up article, We’re Following Nixon’s Lead (and What to Do About It).