Now We Must Seek True Representation

This morning, the sun came up. Wives and husbands exchanged Valentine messages of love and devotion, and meant it. Children flourished under the loving care of adults who fully intend for them to grow up as truth tellers and keepers of their word. Executives, who deem it unthinkable to defraud their customers or molest their subordinates, are on their way to church, where they will worship in a spirit of humility and sincerity.

The Republic has survived.

This is a remarkable thing, for at times during the caterwauling over the impeachment of Bill Clinton, it was asserted that the United States would suffer some intolerable trauma if Clinton were prosecuted and tried.

Wrong. The Constitution’s impeachment process shook off a century’s worth of dust and worked, reaching an orderly conclusion with which most Americans appear to agree.

It also was asserted, as support for impeachment collapsed, that Americans no longer embrace the virtues the president violated.

Wrong. Outside the artificial world of politics, most Americans still strive to do the right thing, expect the next generation to do the same, and recognize a difference between right and wrong.

But there is a gap, wide as the Grand Canyon, between the ideals most of us apply to our daily lives, and the expectations we apply to our representatives in government. Americans elected Bill Clinton, knowing he was a manipulator and a scalawag, and they elected the hypocrites who passed judgment on him, from Edward Kennedy on the left to Bob Barr on the right.

There lies Clinton’s most dangerous legacy. If we resign ourselves to the claim that corruption is tolerable because all politicians are corrupt - including any who object to the sleaze - then Clinton will not be the last, or the worst, to abuse his office.

However, we ought to be as leery of partisan ayatollahs as we are of partisan Lotharios. If we are going to salvage anything good from this fiasco, how about seeking a higher standard of conduct in our representatives? What if we stopped rewarding political parties with our votes and donations when they fight only over which one holds power? Mere power struggle leads to the politics of leaks, smears and personal attack. Democracy does have higher purposes.

The real scandal has been the inability of Democrats and Republicans in Congress to unite, short of impeachment, in a clear denunciation of Clinton’s self-serving abuses of power.

Now it’s the public’s turn. We still have an opportunity to apply the standards most of us prefer in raising our children, to our decisions at election time. Imagine: We could look for Democrats, Republicans and independents who’d use the power of democracy for the betterment of government services rather than the gratification of their egos and the destruction of their foes.