The Outrage That Wasn't

The heartland spoke, and it said, Nobody's perfect

By Michael Kinsley Monday, Dec. 28, 1998

    • John D. Gartner's In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography .

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    This sounds like straightforward libertarianism, but it's not quite the same thing. Libertarians try to persuade you that this or that form of aberrant behavior is actually harmless or beneficial. They believe that freedom from various legal or social restraints makes the individual a better person. What public response to the White House scandal demonstrates is more like the opposite: a belief that we're all weirder than we care to admit, and it's best not to get too pious about it.

    Another issue of this sort coming along at year's end is assisted suicide. It is unstoppable. The medical and legal and religious establishments are against it. But people in general are increasingly for it--and for it with surprising intensity. Why? Out of empathy for someone trapped in life's messy complications. In this case empathy is enhanced by the knowledge that they not only could be that person but very likely will be. Abstract principles--even correct ones, or ones you believe in--can't compete. No jury will convict Dr. Kevorkian. Maybe if there were a censure option.

    One thing people could be saying in their opposition to impeachment is that we all have the right to our flaws--even the President. Or at least that we don't want the government wringing them out of us. In that sense the new tolerance is not a rejection of conservative values but an application of the lessons conservatives have been teaching. If you can't trust the government to raise taxes or educate children, why on earth would you trust it to discipline people for sexual misbehavior and the inevitable complications that follow? Let communities, families, churches and individuals do that, just as they're supposed to perform other formerly public functions. A pro-impeachment commentator recently suggested that the nation would be "morally bankrupt" if we declined to punish President Clinton merely because nobody's perfect. But maybe what America decided in 1998 was not to abandon morality. Maybe we just decided to privatize it.

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