Clinton's Lack of Principle Is Reflected in Foreign, Domestic Policy

Salt Lake Tribune, Opinion, 12/16/98

WASHINGTON -- For the past seven years, many of us who cover foreign policy have all too often been aghast at the changes we were seeing in today's new American establishment and how it was handling the world it pretended to lead.

Everything seemed to have changed overnight. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the two quintessential examples of the post-Cold War world, for instance, we saw a United States once criticized as overly "moralistic" acting on the dulling "neutralism" idea: that no one was really innocent and no one was really ever guilty. They should just all stop fighting and get along with each other! Equally, no one in real positions of responsibility, even for mass murder, would be punished. They would be won over, used like Slobodan Milosevic to "make peace."

Plumb this daring new philosophy, and it does not take long to see that the one overriding principle is the conviction that there are no principles in this fashionably postmodern world. Certainly there are none in the traditional American sense of using power to achieve prosperity and justice. Instead, there are only attempts at foreign policy therapy, embarrassment over the use of power, and pre-emptive forgiveness for just about anything. "Three strikes and you're out" has grown to a symbolic "thiry-three strikes and you're out."

As Bill Clinton's impeachment possibilities have grown exponentially, it is apparent that our lack of foreign policy principles has been nothing more than a reflection of the real personality of Clinton, the man, but (and far sadder) also of "Clintonism," the leadership generation.

This nation is morally divided today. Moreover, that divide is reflected worlds away and also right here on the floor of Congress every day.

Concomitantly with our official attitude toward attempted genocide in Bosnia, one finds, with a few magnificent exceptions like Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Clinton wing of the Democrats virtually never arguing principle over the president's behavior, but only arguing that impeachment would be "too upsetting" for the nation. All the while they are painting a picture of Ken Starr as de Torquemada.

On television Sunday on one of the endless discussion shows, journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, two tough guys if ever there were, noted sadly that the Democrats never argue principle during these sobering proceedings.

This should make no one happy, because it is now an indicator to many that Bill Clinton has brought the Democratic Party itself to the end of a historical line in both policy and principle. Virtually all of his domestic "successes" -- welfare reform, law-and-order policies, to cite two -- were imposed upon him by the Republicans. As to foreign policy successes, there are almost none.

Indeed, the Clinton policies, whether overseas or here in his own defense, are based not on rationality or reason, but on emotion and charisma; not on a strategic use of power to assert American interests, but on tactical concessions that ever more threaten them; not on becoming a statesman, but on being a celebrity; not on inspiring the world, but on buying it off; not on holding a nation to principle, but on destroying the reputations of any who dare to suggest it.

In a profound article recently in The Wall Street Journal, scholar Shelby Steele wrote with rare insight of "Baby-Boom Virtue" that "public virtue is in fact a substitute for individual responsibility, so much so that personal irresponsibility may not threaten the essential 'goodness' of a person whose politics are 'progressive' and 'compassionate.' It is a baby-boomer sophistication that the politically virtuous person is virtuous."

This entire issue of principle -- in the impeachment process, basing your arguments on the rule of law and not on the moment's relief of having the whole thing over and done with -- is where we should place our trust. If we do that, we will see quickly that the trial of a president going on for months and months is not the "horror" it has been made out to be.

Why should we be brainwashed so to fear impeachment? Human beings make mistakes, good socienties sometimes choose bad leaders, nations err terribly, as we did in Vietnam. European governments, with their parliamentary systems, fall every day -- so what? The overwhelming consideration here is to deal with the problem, to see that justice is done, to think genuinely about what is good for the country in the long run.

Last week, I was talking with a seasoned Reader's Digest writer who had found himself in East Berlin, sitting with one of the leading East German communists, the night after Richard Nixon left office in 1974. The American, traumatized by events at home, said at one point to the communist, "You must think we are very foolish."

To his amazement, the communist grew very serious. Finally, he said, "Not at all. In fact, we cannot but admire you."

Georgie Anne Geyer, Universal Press Syndicate