I think... I'll put my head up my ass by Jon Worley
There's this bumper sticker I've seen from time to time. It goes something like "I think, therefore I vote Republican". This might lead a person to a couple of conclusions. First, that the person driving the stickered car believed that Vulcan was indeed a perfect world, a place where intellect triumphed over emotion. The second reckonoing a person might reach from a reading of that sticker is that the driver of the car is a jerk. As for the first notion, anyone who has watched one episode of Star Trek knows that Vulcans were anything but ideal beings.
But, what the hell, I'll put my personal prejudices aside for a moment and objectively evaluate the "thinking" of the current Republican Congress. A place where reason doesn't seem to be a regularly traded commodity.
I'm not even talking about the cultural conservatives. Everyone (well, 80 percent of the nation, anyway) knows those folks are crackpots who are scared of their own collective shadow. No, I'm talking about political leaders, people who are supposed to know something about the will of the nation, shifting winds and spin control. Judging by the recent House Judiciary Committee hearings on impeachment, the Republicans don't get it. At all.
The hard, objective fact is that President Clinton might have lied under oath. Might. The rest of the charges are even more vague, ridiculous or both. Abuse of power for utilizing constitutional rights? Come on. As for the campaign finance investigation, the Federal Elections Commission recently "suggested" that the Clinton campaign return $7 million in contributions, and the Dole campaign $17 million. I won't suggest that the Dole campaign was more corrupt than Clinton's, but I think when the staff from the Judiciary Committee opened the grand jury information, they realized there was a big ol' can of worms just waiting to spring forth. They recommended that no action be taken.
That is the only act of thinking I have seen in more than a month from the Republican leadership.
To even consider expanding an investiation into campaign finance, when everyone knows that both Republicans and Democrats bent, if not broke, the law in 1996 (and even the folks who wrote the laws aren't sure either way) is simply retarded. This is one of those classic "blow up in yer face" kinda deals. Could the gung-ho for impeachment Republicans really think that their glass house could withstand a bi-partisan inquiry?
Perhaps, except that almost every single act by the holier-than-thou inquisitors has been a fiasco. Releasing Clinton's video testimony built up a large well of sympathy for the President. Releasing reams and reams of grand jury information a month later did the same thing. The results of the election are one thing, but ponder this: No one but the Republicans could make the first lady one of the most popular women in America. If she ran for Pat Moynahan's Senate seat in 2000 (this has been widely suggested), she might even win. Now, I've always liked Hillary Rodham Clinton better than her husband from the start. I saw her speak in a Wichita airplane hangar back in March 1992, and I've been a big fan since. But I'm in the minority, and I know it. She tried everything after the health care disaster, but ultimately the attacks on her husband (and her generally noble countenance in times of trouble) were what rehabilitated her image.
A masterful job of character refurbishment, except I'm pretty sure the Republicans didn't mean for that to happen, either. Hillary Clinton has always been a favorite target of the right, mostly because just about any smart, aggressive woman scares dim, indolent white guys. Anita Hill? Same deal. But the Mrs. of the Clintons proved more effective than her husband this fall on the stump. All thanks to Republican efforts.
I always wanted to put out a resonse bumper sticker which reads "I care, therefore I vote Democratic", but it seems to me that makes the same mistake. Cold, calculated moves which do not take emotion into account do not appeal to the masses. Emotive pleas fall on hard ears. The trick is to use both, in tandem, to do something which most folks think ought to be done. National health care, say. Or maybe meaningful school reform. I dunno.
In any case, I think that GOP sticker is counterintuitive. We do not exist on intellectual rigor alone. The People (as in "We the People") demand some feeling in our reason. Writers like Dickens and Sinclair helped motivate a common social conscience. Their ideas were clear, lucid and emotional.
Both, see?
Jon Worley is still facing down a mountain of boxes. He promises to think a little bit more next week.