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I'm not writing Barr off forever, and I am pleased that he has wised up. But many of the Republicans who were gung-ho Clinton haters have done little more than to justify their behavior, and Bob Barr was one of them.
If it really did come down to his deep and abiding distaste for Clinton's adjudicted "lie", Barr is going to have to elaborate. His remarks have the aroma of a man simply trying to get off the hook for gross misbehavior. He may be consistent on the details -- presidents should not lie -- but only with a completely legalistic, literalistic reading. I don't want to see Barr crawl, but I would like to hear him explain how his morality worked, given his actual behavior toward Democrats versus those in his own party. His various statements and judgements can not be summed up by saying "the President should not lie". He said a lot more, and to claim otherwise is itself a lie.
In addition, Barr seems oblivious to how much damage could have been done over the impeachment. That Clinton chose to accept significant undeserved blame escapes him. Also escaping him is a vision of the consequences that could have occurred had he succeeded.
The Really Big Thing that most historians neglect is that our country came much closer to wreckage than we realize. Clinton was compelled to bargain for his guilt to be accepted. If he had wanted to, he could have fought all charges tooth-and-nail and won easily. But Clinton felt that it would have caused a major, destructive political crisis that could not be managed by anyone, even him. And the Republicans -- including Barr -- wanted it that way. Their practice of brinksmanship worked brilliantly.
Think about what would have happened if Clinton had stood his ground and the GOP had engineered an impeachment and a conviction. It would have made the USA a very insecure place for foreign investors to place their money. With a split between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch, and a significant division among the people, a low-intensity civil war would be the next logical step, in the eyes of the investment firms. Any ensuing conflicts would not have had to be "warlike" at all (a simple verbal disagreement or two over the disposition of a state's National Guard would have sufficed) but all of North America would become poisoned ground for foreign investment -- for a long, long time.
The capital base of the USA could have easily lost 90, 95% of its value within a matter of weeks. The republic would have ground to a painful, destructive standstill. All because Bob Barr and his cronies were in a snit over Bill Clinton trying to cover up his juvenile grab-ass games? The House Impeachment committee members were either drunk on power, stoned on Mother Nature, or suffering from a collective brain tumor.
And Clinton would have gotten the blame. Cold comfort for 300,000,000 people facing a 20-year-long super-depression as Europe and Asia rolled the dice for our unserviceable, outstanding debts, like the Roman soldiers over Jesus' toga.
Similarly, if/when it comes to Mr. Bush's impeachment, we had better be damned careful of how we handle it; if we flush wrong, Bush has the connections to drag the country into the sewer behind him.
I don't think any of us would demand that Barr dine on crow, crawl in the mud, oink like a pig, lick our boots, request a sound flogging, and call us "Master" and "Mistress". But unless he's holding back for that tell-all memoir, he owes us some sense of perspective as to why our country had to suffer such political trauma over an offense that was effectively unprosecutable. (That is, not an offense at all.)
That's why I think Barr and the rest still have their share of political explanations to make. It isn't simply that they were the ultimate losers, but that they were wrong to prosecute Clinton the way they did. They nearly did drive the country to ruin. And in the interest of the public's right to know WTF happened, their political rehabilitation should depend on them simply making a clean breast of it.
--p!
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