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HenchPAC NewsIT WAS only a vague hope: Maybe, just maybe, shame might surface at last and Bill Clinton, Esq., would spare his home state the protracted embarrassment of having to disbar him. If he would just turn in his law license, the state wouldn't have to take it away from him after another extended review of his phony testimony and phonier explanations thereof.
But the latest word is that The Hon. William Jefferson Clinton is planning to brazen out his disbarment, too. Why not? He got past his impeachment, didn't he? And he managed to mislead the court with his dubious testimony, at least till the judge caught on and found him in contempt. But is that grounds for disbarment? On the contrary, isn't that what lawyers are supposed to do--mislead? The president's explanation for his conduct has a certain cynical wisdom about it. Once the word lawyer becomes an accepted synonym for liar in the cynic's dictionary, he's got an airtight defense. As was said again and again during the late unpleasantness over his impeachment: They all do it, don't they?
It's not the kind of defense that would fool the truly honorable Susan Webber Wright, who found that her old law professor had given false and misleading testimony in a deliberate attempt to obstruct the judicial process. Judges tend to be touchy about witnesses who try to fool the court. But this is only the state's committee on professional conduct, which is composed of Bill Clinton's fellow lawyers. Surely they'll understand. The president's own high-paid and highly skilled attorneys, who have already seen him through so much, may figure they can get him out of this jam, too. Maybe they can get Dale Bumpers to deliver the summation again.
But why, one wonders, would the president want to prolong this scandal? He didn't appeal Judge Wright's findings or the $90,000 fine she assessed him. Is it the president's position that lawyers cited for contempt are ethical? Or just that this is the sort of thing one should expect from a member of this state's bar? Call it Arkansas Mores.
Or is it the president's position that he should be judged by different and lower standards precisely because he is president of the
United States--rather than some ordinary lawyer who's got to obey the rules? Why not? The list of high offices an accused may have held is now routinely offered to explain why less should be expected of such a defendant rather than more. ("Your Honor, consider his years of dedicated public service!") It's a curious inversion of standards. Call it the Clinton legacy.
Maybe some professor of legal ethics at the newly renamed Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock can explain to every incoming class why obstructing the judicial process is the kind of conduct that should be expected of attorneys in this small, wonderfully permissive state.
But Arkansas is better than others think. It's better than we think. This committee on professional conduct might actually insist on professional conduct.
What excuse will the well-drilled ranks of Clinton apologists offer this time? "They all do it"? That was their mantra during the Year of
Impeachment. But it's a little late by now to pretend that William J. Clinton has headed "the most ethical administration in history." Just to repeat that phrase has become an exercise in irony. But one would like to think it is not too late to salvage some semblance of Arkansas' dignity from the ethical wreckage of the Clinton Years. Disbar the shyster.
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