No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

The Clinton Wars

David Greenberg in The Washington Monthly Online does an excellent article on Sidney Blumenthal's book, The Clinton Wars. If you were wondering what the Starr Investigation of Clinton and the impeachment attempt were all about, read the article. As samples:

When it comes to the pseudo-scandals, especially the impeachment, The Clinton Wars draws on many other books besides Toobin's, notably those of Peter Baker, Marvin Kalb, and Gene Lyons and Joe Conason. Blumenthal shows once again the existence of what has been called--at once ironically and literally--a vast right-wing conspiracy: the collaboration among Republican activists, Paula Jones's legal team, and Ken Starr's office to bring about Clinton's impeachment. Blumenthal's reconstruction of events reminds us that if not for the secret collusion between the lawyers for Jones, who was suing the president for sexual harassment, and Starr's Independent Counsel's office, which was investigating him over unrelated Whitewater charges, Starr would never have been able to convince Janet Reno to let him expand his probe into Clinton's sex life, and the protracted struggle of 1998 could never have come about.

Dusting off his reporter's notebook, Blumenthal landed interviews with several of his former attackers that add to the historical record: an unnamed prosecutor in Starr's office (who seems have been Bruce Udolf); Sam Dash, the "ethics adviser" to the Independent Counsel who quit in late 1998 to protest Starr's decision to testify against Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee; and Jim Rogan, the House member who led the questioning of Blumenthal during his deposition in Clinton's impeachment trial. From the prosecutor, we get inside confirmation of Starr's deputies' extensive, illegal leaking. From Dash, we get the searing judgments that "this was a mean-spirited, politically motivated investigation" and that "Ken [Starr] is capable of saying anything so long as you don't have him on tape."

The Clinton Wars can be read as part of Blumenthal's continuing study of the Right, a follow-up to his Rise of the Counter-Establishment (1986), which traced the movement from its World War II-era "remnant" through its heady Reagan years. In this quasi-sequel, covering the years of the Democrats' return to power under Clinton, the Reagan triumph has crested and gives way to frustrated, flailing Clinton-hating. The scandal-mongering that beclouded Clinton's presidency represented both a venting of the Right's rage at liberalism's quiet victories on the issues of sex, race, and religion and an evasion of conservatism's own political weaknesses on those issues.

Where Clinton truly offended the Right was on the cluster of issues surrounding sex, race, and religion. Notwithstanding the post-1960s backlash against "permissiveness," Americans have grown increasingly broadminded on these matters, as Alan Wolfe showed in One Nation, After All (1998). Clinton not only championed toleration in his policies (at least most of the time) but, more important, he personally embodied the new ethic. He was the first Baby Boomer to win the presidency; a white Southerner at ease with blacks; the husband of a confident career woman; an avid learner who liked the company of Jewish intellectuals; and a man comfortable (indeed, perhaps too comfortable) with his sexuality.

Clinton's attackers, on the other hand, mostly came from those elements unreconciled to the new toleration. When Bob Barr disparaged Clinton supporters as not being "real Americans," when Tom DeLay said he pushed impeachment to promote a "biblical worldview" that Clinton didn't share, or when Ken Starr touted his own marital fidelity and his daily singing of Christian hymns, they revealed their own alienation from the emerging live-and-let-live consensus. In this context, the Right's more sinister swipes at the Jewish intellectual Blumenthal--not to mention its resolve to press ahead with impeachment in the face of public outcry--becomes more comprehensible. These are the death throes of a retrograde morality.

These are just some samples from the article. Go read the article. Then, when you have the time, go read the book as I will.
posted by Richard at 8:14 AM