Anger Fueling Left’s Defense of Indefensible

President Clinton’s dishonor as the only elected president in U.S. history to be impeached has made America’s left wing a wee bit grumpy. Did they ever lose the Christmas spirit!

They’ve reacted by calling for an end to “the politics of personal destruction.” However, their opprobrium is narrowly directed at those who believe they applied the apt constitutional sanction to one who used the rule of law as a doormat for his ambition. Thus, the daggers are out for the House supporters of impeachment.

The inevitable White House talking points have been followed faithfully by Clinton’s sycophants. And then some. Rep. John Conyers Jr., who in 1974 wanted President Nixon impeached for the unproved allegation that he fudged on his tax returns, called Clinton’s impeachers “clinical, psychopathic” Republicans. Sen. Tom Harkin accused House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of having “twisted morals.”

California Rep. Tom Lantos soared into a weird ether by likening the House of Representatives to “Hitler’s parliament.” Al Gore--the pot--devotedly embraced his boss by blackening the kettle for “excessive partisanship . . . vitriol and vehemence.” House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (whose verbal wilding continues to undercut his presidential hopes) rewarded White House puppeteers by citing a “partisan vote” and adding hysterically that impeaching Clinton was “a disgrace to our country and our Constitution.”

Editorial page writers and Sen. Ted Kennedy were in sync by blaming “extremists” for the House action. Others blathered cliches about the “right wing.” The predictable ravings of O.J.’s counsel, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, were a call to halt impeachment to stop bigotry, fundamentalism, anti-environmentalism, the radical right, the right-to-life movement and “the forces of evil, evil, genuine evil.”

Further proof that the establishment left is circling the wagons around Clinton are the impassioned editorial pleas by the New York Times and Washington Post for censure in place of impeachment. New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that faux independent, has fallen wimp-like into line for the White House. Other normally more contemplative liberals likely will follow.

The real question--given the bloody caning that Clinton has administered to our nation’s underlying rule of law--is: What accounts for the left’s single-minded intensity to salvage this fetid presidency?

The answer is that we are witnessing a logical progression of the left’s politics over four decades. It was not enough for them to defeat Barry Goldwater in 1964; they had to bludgeon him by creating the false caricature of a reckless maniac. It was their first taste of real blood.

Then they turned on Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey--dissatisfied with the monumental growth their Great Society brought to the reach of government--and unleashed their anti-war dogs to bring them down.

Richard Nixon was a no-brainer. Hatred for him pent up for two decades was easy to pour out. The relentless attack on Nixon’s Vietnam policies, his domestic initiatives and his appointees was furthered by bitter resentment over his humiliating defeat of George McGovern in 1972. Nixon’s persevering to succeed in Vietnam while dramatically engaging the Soviet Empire and mainland China applied salt to the wounds of their frustration, making Watergate pure rapture.

That victory was fleeting because of the inept post-Watergate presidency of Jimmy Carter and the hopeless candidacies of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. The result was creation of the left’s principal source of power and ideological drive: the United States Congress.

Thus did the Democratic Congress from 1986--when Iran-Contra weakened President Reagan--through the term of a too-kind-and-gentle George Bush embrace a determined view: to obstruct any further progress from the right and restore the dominion of the left. Their attack-and-destroy mentality once expressed by protests and physical destruction would now be exercised through the rule of legislative obduracy--kill the bills, investigate the Republicans and destroy their appointees: Bob Bork, Clarence Thomas and John Tower.

So when Republicans won back the Congress in 1994, the shock to the system was too great for them to take, and the left has returned to what is natural: anger, discontent and shouted opposition. Releasing this bitterness and resentment explains why, in the case of William Jefferson Clinton, they comfortably defend the indefensible. With this bodyguard for his lies, it is no surprise that when asked by a reporter how it felt to be impeached, Clinton replied: “Not bad.”

How sad.