The Grand Inquisitor Gets Out the Cuffs

Kenneth Starr is a sick puppy. That’s the kindest thing one can say about the news reports leaked from his office that he may criminally indict the president of the United States. The Senate may acquit, but Starr will be there with the handcuffs.

Starr is accountable only to the demons who drive him, and the sooner that peculiar battle of his is made a matter of private therapy, rather than national trauma, the better. Janet Reno should summon the courage to fire this grand inquisitor, who is incapable of separating his personal obsessions from his official duties. His is the mind-set of the stalker, so carried away by a spirit of vendetta that he’s willing to denigrate not only the office of the presidency but the very ideal of representative democracy it embodies in the eyes of the world. His contempt for the public will is unbounded.

It’s bad enough that Starr’s antics have brought us to the point of national humiliation where the U.S. Senate sits in trial of one of America’s most able and internationally admired presidents. But Starr could not even wait for the Senate to pass its judgment before leaking the threat that he has the power to indict Clinton at any time of his choosing.

Starr’s suspected illegal leaks of grand jury testimony, secret collaboration with Paula Jones’ lawyers that he did not disclose to the Justice Department and his continuing ideological zealotry already provided ample grounds for disqualification. But his latest outrage is the most egregious of all.

The threat to indict the president while in office if, as expected, the Senate fails to convict is a claim of power unparalleled in its subversion of the founding fathers’ intent. Would the president of the United States be fingerprinted and booked like a common criminal? Is this what the Supreme Court had in mind when it voted to allow the Paula Jones case to proceed on the assumption that it would not seriously interfere with the workings of the executive office?

To make such a threat is to spit on the graves of those who created the institution of the presidency, the world’s most important expression of democratic government. It subjects the president to the whim of one unelected individual with the power to intimidate the holder of this democracy’s highest office. How can a president be expected to govern in the national interest if he must live in constant fear that an aggressive, politically driven prosecutor like Starr could at any moment of displeasure indict him as a felon?

For example, might Clinton not want to back off in his criticisms of the tobacco industry as a means of mollifying his tormentor? Starr is, has been and always will be a political animal. He was appointed by a right-wing Republican judge after a luncheon meeting with two right-wing Republican senators, all three of whom were supporters of the tobacco industry.

As their man, Starr spent $50 million of taxpayers’ money trying to nail the president while his own bank account was being fattened by huge fees from big tobacco. This is only one of many issues on which he vehemently disagrees with Clinton, whom he seeks to drive from office.

Even a fair and objective prosecutor should never be trusted with such power. Conservative lawyers were right when they argued in United States vs. Nixon: “If the president were indictable while in office, any prosecutor and grand jury would have within their powers the ability to cripple an entire branch of our national government.” To his credit, Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski agreed that the criminal indictment of Nixon would be unconstitutional.

The New York Times, which served as the vehicle for the leaks from Starr’s office suggesting a possible criminal indictment of the president, quoted one of Starr’s associates as saying “prosecutors should pay no heed to considerations of national interest.” This is precisely why the removal of a president is not constitutionally left to the whim of prosecutors and requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

The senators must ultimately face the verdict of the voters, who do care deeply about the national interest. The public is right to want to retain Clinton and to be rid of his nemesis. Clinton’s stewardship of our nation has produced an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity at a time when many of the world’s economies threaten to crumble.

The president’s high job approval ratings worldwide will come to be validated by the judgment of future historians, who will mark Clinton’s real achievements and treat Starr’s harassment of him as a lengthy but perverse footnote.