Clinton case exposes threat of far Right

LONDON: There are powerful advantages to the American system of democracy. The United States' written constitution entrenches individual rights to such a degree that it has cascaded into its culture; part of the vitality and individualism of U.S. society is not just due to the legacy of the frontier, but to the celebration in law of individual rights.

But the dark underside to America's attachment to its written constitution is its legalism. Americans devote more of their GDP to suing each other than citizens of any other country on earth; my right can be tested against your right in court.

It is this culture and constitution that has driven special prosecutor Kenneth Starr to spend $40 million and four years on his investigation into President Clinton's alleged misdemeanors in the Whitewater property dealings, of which a spin-off will be the President's appearance before a Grand Jury on 17 August to answer questions over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

But this is legalism and the U.S. system of checks and balances run riot. An elected President of the richest and most powerful country on earth faces at best a humiliating set of public questions about his affair with the former White House intern and the pedigree of the possible semen on her cocktail dress; at worst he may be found to have perjured himself in earlier evidence when he denied having sexual relationships with her.

If so, he faces not merely loss of face but possible impeachment. His authority will be undermined, perhaps fatally; he may even lose office.

To any friend of the U.S. and believer in U.S. democracy the issue is both serious and farcical. Few men and women would survive this degree of scrutiny over their lifelong sex lives, but Clinton has suffered not just because he is a President who has played the legal game like all his fellow, litigious countrymen, but because he gives so much offense to the Right.

Mr. Clinton really has been the victim, as his wife Hillary claimed, of a right-wing conspiracy. Mr. Clinton has certainly been free with his sexual favors and possibly economical with the truth; but without a fanatical bunch of racists, segregationists, a self- confessed fraudster and right-wing millionaires, the supply-lines of rumor and innuendo, along with a key witness, that have sustained the Starr inquiry for so long would never have existed.

The cast of characters makes a Tennessee Williams play look tame. There is the extraordinary ex-Arkansas state senator Jim Johnson, who has long been associated with lynch mob racist politics; his associate Larry Nichols, who produced the first claims in 1990 that Clinton had ex-marital affairs; Floyd Brown, the author of the evil Willie Horton adverts once used against Dukakis; and the millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife who backed the so-called 'Arkansas Project' with more than $2 million -- and that's just to begin.

Their great success was to use a self-confessed embezzler, David Hale, to plea-bargain with Starr over claims that Clinton had made him use public money to bail out Whitewater. But beyond prolonging the investigation, of immense use to the Right, so far no evidence has been found -- after four years -- against Clinton whatsoever. The purpose of the Lewinsky affair is simply to discredit Clinton's general testimony.

This is nasty and vindictive vendetta politics at its worst. As Johnson told The Observer, he wanted and wants to hurt Clinton. The culture of U.S. litigiousness certainly helps the process, as has Clinton's libido, but the President would not be in this invidious position without the persistence of what amounts to a de facto conspiracy.

Nor is this any conspiracy. Its objective has been the bringing low and possible impeachment of an elected American President. If it succeeds, democratic politics in the U.S. will have been brought to a new low ebb, with incalculable implications for the U.S. and the world.

In this post-cold war era it is no longer the Left but the fanatical Right that is the threat to civilized society, the rule of law and the supremacy of the democratic mandate.

-- Observers News Service