To me, the scariest aspect of the whole matter is Kenneth Starr's
abuse of the Independant Counsel statutes, by repeated expansion of
his original mandate, to the point that he now seems to be functioning
effectively in a role that might best be dubbed Inquisitor General,
empowered to use any and all means (Body wires! Secret tapes! Whole
squads of FBI agents! --- and how the hell did the *FBI* get into this
anyway?) to pursue any and all accusations of any kind of misconduct
whatever against the President.
And for what? By all reasonable accounts, while there is serious
tabloid trash potential here, the case for criminal misconduct by the
President (i.e., suborning perjury) seems pretty damn thin --- the
media reports say that in several months of surreptitiously (and
illegally) taping Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp didn't manage to get
her to state, or even clearly imply, even once that either Clinton or
his advisers had actually encouraged her to lie about anything. But
the *possibility* exists. So loose the hounds!
I'm not a big fan of Bill Clinton, both on political and personal
grounds --- he doesn't keep his promises even where it *matters*
(i.e., policy). I mean, what can you say about a Democratic president
who has a noticably better public rapport with Newt the Nut than with
his own party's Congressional leadership? But this Whitewater
business has long ago transited into the realm of the delusional and
absurd. Starr has been working on the damn thing for nearly as long
as Clinton has been in office. Hey, buddy, if you haven't got an
actionable court case yet, then you aren't going to. Give it up!
And what sensible person, no matter how spotless their morals or
public and private conduct, would want to serve in the executive
branch when they might find themselves the subject of an inquiry by
the Starr chamber, or one of its ilk (like the one which has indicted
Henry Cisneros, not for failing to disclose the payments to his
mistress, but for underestimating the dollar amount)? No one. We're
chasing good people away from the White House, and leaving it to the
scoundrels.
rst