THOSE WHO BELIEVE CLINTON is an innocent lamb also believe, with unwavering certainty, two “truths.” The impeachment process is a subversion of the democratic process; and the vast right-wing conspiracy is behind it all.
This was made abundantly clear when a group of New York City Clinton-backers — drawn from the ranks of both the hoi polloi and the exalted — gathered at New York University Law School to spread a little holiday impeachment outrage. Organized by writer Paul Berman, historian Sean Wilentz, and law professor Stephen Holmes, the December 14 event was billed as an “emergency speakout.” The shindig couldn’t quite manage “rally” status, even though there were about 500 people present. The largely boomer-and-over crowd wasn’t about to convene in Washington Square Park, not at this time of year. Comfortably seated indoors, these members of the Rockport-and-Charlie-Rose set were nevertheless highly animated all night.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and novelist Toni Morrison were two of the bigger names of the speakout. Law professor Ronald Dworkin, novelist Mary Gordon (who suggested that Clinton was the first female president), Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and Elie Wiesel were in the lineup. And New York magazine’s Michael Tomasky was the moderator. Nearly every speaker urged audience members to contact their congressmen and make their opinions known — not that these fiery liberals needed any goading. They were happy to scribble down congressional Web sites and phone numbers in the hopes of entering their mounting anger into the historical record.
Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman hit the key note when she took to the podium. “What is at stake here is the right of the American people, by majority votes, to elect a president of the United States and not have that undone by a group of moralizing yet sanctimonious people.” In between “sanctimonious” and “people,” Holtzman paused, and the audience, on cue, yelled, “HYPOCRITES!”
But the crowd hadn’t reached the level of finish-the-speakers’-sentences all by themselves. Sen. Bob Torricelli of New Jersey had revved them up with a little doomsday scenario: “If Bill Clinton is impeached, one of the great gifts of the Founding Fathers of this Republic will be sacrificed in the process: political stability.” The senator continued, “What has occurred in the House is not simply a threat to the power of Bill Clinton, but the disenfranchisement of every man and woman who went to vote in 1996.”
Novelist E. L. Doctorow, who declared the impeachment proceedings to be a “conflagration of church and state,” placed the blame squarely on the independent counsel. “Ken Starr,” he thundered, “has shown us how a conscienceless and ideologically vindictive use of investigative privilege can undercut the legitimacy of a duly elected American government. More than partisan politics is going on here. This is the unseating of a democratically elected president, with all the legitimacy of a coup d’etat.”
The impeachment-as-coup story had legs with this crowd. Feminist scholar Blanche Wiesen Cook took advantage of it when she said that the impeachment proceedings were, simply, a “coup over a cock.”
Had there been a marquee for the evening, the local congressman Jerrold Nadler would have enjoyed star billing. When Manhattan’s Defender of the American Way strode onto the stage, the mostly grey-haired audience worked itself into a frenzy of clapping, cheering, and waving, far more of a display than they would muster for later speakers, even Alec Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Nadler managed to couple the coup idea with his own take on the vast right-wing conspiracy. “If, God forbid, this goes to trial in the Senate, the silver lining may be that we may be able to find out who started this coup d’etat. Who paid for it? What exactly was the role of the so-called Arkansas Project paid for by Richard Mellon Scaife? What role did that have in financing the Paula Jones case?”
Gloria Steinem tapped this same vein in proclaiming that impeachment is not about the president’s actions but about conservatives’ “desire to win the culture war at last. To get rid of a president they hate.” The feminist icon also called for an “end to the public humiliation of Monica Lewinsky,” who “could be us and our daughters.”
Throughout the evening, speakers made plain the fact that Republicans, and everything they stand for, are responsible for Clinton’s present situation. Actor Alec Baldwin, now a staple at all the popular liberal events, was short on logic and long on ad hominem attacks. After declaring that there are a few good Republicans, he lamented that they are “completely under the thumb of these sociopaths who run Congress.” Baldwin also pulled out the sure-fire hit: abortion. “What you see with the rabid conservative leadership in the Republican party is that there is never any homogeneity to their thinking. They want to take away a woman’s right to choose, and they don’t want to take care of that child once it is born. They are so concerned about the effects that Clinton’s perjury and behavior will have on their own children. These guys are pretty good actors. They sit there and they look at that camera and say, [and here he put on a deep cornpone accent] ‘I am concerned about the children of our country.'”
Hatred of the Right had become the unifying theme of the evening. Blanche Wiesen Cook invoked it when she tried to awaken the ’60s rebel within these parents and grandparents. They were with her at first, but began murmuring to each other as the feminist scholar’s rant became increasingly hysterical.
There is no reason for us to be here unless it is to reignite our Democratic-activist movement. . . . For weeks, for months, the Christian Coalition has gone around to churches and written letters. They’re on that phone tree! WHERE ARE OUR PHONE TREES?
We are looking at theocrats. We have to mobilize like we mobilized against the war in Vietnam, like we mobilized against slavery. This is about race. And Maxine Waters is right when she says this is about crack cocaine in the neighborhoods. [Republicans] do not believe in government; that’s why there are a million homeless people.
Former Episcopal bishop Paul Moore Jr. took a different tack, running down a laundry list of issues from Bosnia to Social Security and Medicare which the impeachment proceedings are supposedly undermining. Sorrowfully, he told the audience, “I think of the millions and millions of people who will suffer and die because the Republicans want to get President Clinton for a personal sin.”
The evening ended in song, with diva Jessye Norman leading tone-deaf fellow Clinton backers in the national anthem. Afterwards, the crowd began dispersing, but not before Rep. Nadler got a chance to mix with his adoring, infuriated public.
Pia Nordlinger is an editorial writer for the New York Post.
