THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609210025
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: 93 lines
Some notes on control of Congress, a Whitewater figure in irons, and Republican problems in conservatizing the courts. . . .
A proposition that Bill Clinton will win big enough to sweep Democrats to control of Congress arises from the polls. And leads House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt to make some soothing - and dubious - assurances about the result of a leadership turnover in which he would replace Newt Gingrich as speaker.
Why, says Gephardt to The Washington Post, there's nobody here but us wing-clipped, learned-our-lesson, middle-of-the-road liberals: ``We're all new Democrats now. . . . We have to be. Times change.''
Yes, but times change at a faster rate than political tendencies. After interviewing prospective committee chairman, David Broder concluded that ``the impulse for activist government has survived among key Democrats even in an era of limited budgets.''
Interestingly, Clinton has issued no clear call for a Democratic Congress. He wasn't on easy street when he had one. Democrats let his health-care plan die without a vote on the House floor; Republicans joined him to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and he joined Republicans to approve welfare reform.
Whether in alliance or in enmity, congressional Republicans have been useful to Clinton. Unlike the Democrats, they provided an agenda that forced him to take positions, often their own, that now help to propel his bid for re-election. Perhaps the arrangement ought to continue; a president with no policies to speak of doesn't deserve a mandate for his party of old Democrats in new suits.
* * * *
Fresh from the Larry King show, there she was on the evening news - Susan McDougal of Whitewater fame pretty in white blouse, pleated skirt, handcuffs and leg irons. Mrs. McDougal was on her way to jail. The shackles, said the U.S. Marshals Service, are SOP for all prisoners in transit on their own feet.
Cruel in appearance, they also enhanced her artful performance as an innocent victim in the Whitewater mess in general and independent counsel Kenneth Starr in particular. In a flurry of television appearances, she pictured Starr in overzealous pursuit of a case of wrongdoing against Bill and Hillary Clinton and in ruthless disregard of her rights as a witness before a grand jury.
She refused to testify and drew jail time for contempt of court on top of her earlier two-year sentence for fraud against the federal government in obtaining a $300,000 loan. She refused to say whether she believed Bill Clinton knew of the loan or that some of it went to the land-development company in which the Clintons and McDougals were partners.
Although done with panache, Susan McDougal's appeal to a television audience against a prosecutor and a judge was bizarre and seemingly pointless. She offered no evidence and inevitably drew attention to her criminal record, which may be lengthened in the fall when she's to be tried on California charges of stealing $150,000 from a former employer.
This record and her self-interest made her a less than ideal witness for the rectitude of the Clintons. The McDougal appearances on TV were obviously planned and most likely rehearsed; the identity of the producer is a tantalizing mystery. So is the question of why no one rose to take her side or even to salute her aplomb.
* * * *
As if on cue the specter of liberal judges reinventing the Constitution has risen again in presidential politics. Let Bill Clinton back in, warns Bob Dole, and he'll stack the bench with liberals packing expansive agendas.
This is an old theme that worked well for Richard Nixon in effecting his Southern strategy, and there's something to it. Democrats generally are more in favor of judicial intervention - even of that wrought by judges put on by Republican presidents.
Earl Warren, chosen to be chief justice by President Dwight Eisenhower, led a far-ranging revolution from the bench; its principal strategist was Justice William Brennan, another Eisenhower appointee.
Nixon chose Justice Harry Blackmun, who became chief exponent, author and public advocate of the abortion decision. Nixon also named Warren Burger, who decided to write the school busing decision rather than be a lonely dissenter. Even now that the court has taken a conservative tack, a more or less liberal minority of four justices includes David Souter, chosen by George Bush, and John Paul Stevens, appointed by Gerald Ford.
On the record it appears that Republican presidents seeking to conservatize the court have been off their game rather often; years of Republican rule in the White House have netted only three sure-fire conservative votes - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and associate justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Even so, the current tendency of the court is to restrain power at the federal level and allow more leeway to states and localities. Since one death or retirement on the court during the next four years would give Clinton or Dole opportunity to encourage or slow that trend, court appointments are a legitimate issue. Dole could sharpen the issue but only at the risk of mobilizing against him voters who cherish basic freedoms available to them only because the courts had a liberal phase before the conservative trend set in. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB