Clinton moves on

It was supposed to be the midterm funeral of the Clinton presidency. The Republican bloodlust, aided and aggravated by the report of the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, even portrayed this presidency as morally deranged and sexually reckless, a repudiation of the values cherished by the quot;people of Americaquot;. The gallows was ready, the script of punishment was multiplying and impeachment was made out to be something so ordinary. The Election Day was hyped up as the Judgment Day. But the verdict of Tuesday8217;s midterm elections didn8217;t echo the Republican desperation. Nor did it endorse the politics of retribution. Rather, it asked the lawmakers to move on 8212; not with the business of presidential striptease but with the business of the nation. True, the Republicans have retained control of both the Houses of Congress, but there was no landslide. And the Democrats were not swept aside by a wave of popular anger and disgust. More or less, it is the same old arrangement, with less of Monica Lewinsky in the votingpattern. So who was saying that the vote was going to be a referendum on Bill Clinton8217;s sexual habits, on impeachment? Now it is clear: if there was a seducer in the fray, it was not Lewinsky. She scored zero, even the majority of women voters ditched her. Bad news for Ken Starr and those Republicans who found in his voluminous pornography the political obituary of Clinton.

So the Americans voted with predictable quot;eros fatiguequot;. They found the prosecutor8217;s replay of Oval Office fellatio as disgusting as the Republican recourse to the morality of Salem. For them, there were issues other than Citizen Bill. Issues that defined the local priorities of a prosperous nation. As the pre-election surveys indicated, the national mood was not one of punish-the-rogue. President Clinton could capture that mood. He talked of the federal budget and quot;our economic programmequot;. When Newt Gingrich responded, he sounded so defensive. Once the daring redeemer of conservatism, the House speaker on the stump resembled a man whohad forgotten his script. Whenever he highlighted quot;higher taxes, bigger government and more power in Washingtonquot;, the warning sounded so dishonest. For, the GOP8217;s most visible contribution was the demonisation of Bill Clinton. The party forgot its agenda, and took refuge in sleaze.

This verdict should have a sobering effect on the GOP. First of all, the party should realise that the so-called articles of impeachment have proved their redundancy in the court of the people. Unfortunately for the Republicans, it is not Kenneth Starr who is setting the agenda but Bill Clinton. Incredibly presidential in the time of personal crisis, Clinton has put the priorities of the nation above the problems of his own. The smartest of his generation, he not only soars in adversity but manipulates the national mind by subordinating personal trauma to the American triumph. At the G-7 summit, he captures the crisis of the global economy. In rural Maryland, flanked by the historical enemies of the Middle East, he renews his ownstatus as the peacemaker-in-chief. If Clinton was an issue in this election, it was not Clinton the sexual predator. It was President Clinton, and the voters echoed his sentiment without disturbing the equilibrium on Capitol Hill: let8217;s move on. Can the merchants of pornography doubling as keepers of morality afford to be deaf?