Discussion Group Report

"Anyone who thinks the impeachment trial is just about William Jefferson Clinton, his behavior and his opponents should think again," says Ken Ringle in the International Herald Tribune of January 21, 1999. Rather, the trial, "...according to a number of thinkers on language, ethics and history is one of the great morality plays of this century: a contest for the moral soul of the United States of America. It is not really about Monica Lewinski or Linda Tripp or lying or perjury or thong underwear and cigars in the oval office." Nor is it about partisan political gamesmanship.

"It is about something far deeper and more basic to our culture," says Jan Shipps, a historian of Christian conservatism. "It is about the behavioral boundaries once defined by class but increasingly in flux everywhere since World War II." She, along with George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't, posit that impeachment is a surrogate battleground for culture wars over issues from abortion and race to economics and gay rights.

Lakoff says the trial is about two very different but equally sincere ways of looking at and thinking and talking about American society, and it is not as simple as it is often pictured: Mr. Clinton's baby boom generation against everyone else. Shipps says the baby boomers are the very ones fueling growth in fundamentalist churches.

Accountability and discipline are less important to liberals than nurturing is, opines Lakoff. "But to conservatives they are the foundation of American character: without them the whole house of cards comes tumbling down." Clinton's opponents argued for punishment of moral transgression. His defenders saw greater morality in leaving him in office to help the disadvantaged.

Shipps sees the roots of the nation's political and cultural split not in the Woodstocks and riots of the 1960's, but in the passage of the GI Bill of Rights in 1944. With its promise of college and home ownership for returning veterans, it "did what nothing else in history probably ever has: it transformed the class structure of an entire nation almost overnight. Sons and daughters of farmers and factory workers, often threadbare survivors of the Great Depression of the 1930's, whose lives might well have duplicated their parents' instead found themselves suburban college graduates living a middle class life style. The structures of class and community, both urban and rural, "pretty much defined acceptable limits of behavior" in the 1930's, but the GI Bill boosted the majority of Americans into the middle class.

Lakoff views the baby boomer generation as reacting against the "stern father" governmental model of the president, which had served so well during the Great Depression and World War II. They demanded a different "nurturing parent" model, which recognized that plenty alone was not enough. To liberals moral authority comes from a president's success in meeting public needs. This Clinton has done. To them Clinton is a moral president, however they may view him as a moral man. Conservatives believe that, if we close our eyes to a lying, philandering president, the republic is going to crumble.

Humanist Paul Kurtz also thinks the impeachment trial was manifestation of the clash of two cultures, but he identifies them differently than the aforementioned writers. Two contending conceptions are engulfing America--the humanistic morality, which prizes individual freedom and autonomy and the pre-modern conception, which has its roots in historical religious tradition. The humanist ethical principle, the core principle of large sectors of life in Western civilization, is "the right of privacy," which states that society should respect the right of an individual to control his or her own personal life as long as he or she does not intrude upon or deny the rights of other individuals. Traditional morality is Biblical (or Koranic). It is guided by a set of absolute moral commandments. Some of its advocates would call upon the state to legislate moral conduct. The Christian Coalition of the United States and fundamentalist religions in other parts of the world are intent on overthrowing humanist morality and imposing a puritanical inquisition.

The new Puritans, says Kurtz, insist that the president should have no private life; he must be a Paragon of Virtue. He has committed two unpardonable sins: adultery and lying. "It is also apparent that many of those who wish to impeach the president also wish to fundamentally remake all our institutions; to solidify their control of Congress, the presidency, and the courts," states Kurtz. "In my view, they pose a real threat to the very fabric of our society."