by Alan Colmes
Isn't it ironic that most of the House impeachment managers are no longer in Congress? And not all by their own choices. Bob Barr of Georgia, the man who started the impeachment ball rolling, lost a primary race to John Linder. George Gekas of Pennsylvania and James Rogan of California were thrown out. Ed Bryant of Tennessee lost a Senate primary bid. Bill McCollum, Asa Hutchinson, and Charles Canady all resigned their seats, the very seats they used to try to derail Clinton.
Clinton's most ardent foes begrudgingly acknowledge his prowess as a master politician. Part of his mastery of the political art was his ability to let you see him warts and all. Like all great men—check that—like all people, Clinton was flawed. The evildoers who were out to destroy his presidency tried to pass themselves off as unblemished, and that was their undoing. Clinton wasn't and isn't afraid to be who he is, even as his adversaries have tried to stick the "slick" label on him. Most Americans knew that he came from humble roots. In spite of the attempt to label him as money-hungry during "Whitewater," his last job before the presidency paid $35,000 a year. Hillary made six figures as a lawyer, so they weren't starving. Still, they owned no home, having spent years in a governor's mansion, and they actually lost money on the Whitewater deal. While the taxpayers ponied up $70 million when all was said and done to investigate it, the Clintons actually lost $47,000 on the Whitewater deal.
Conservatives tend to look at the world in stark terms. People can be denned, and often demonized, by one seminal event. For conservatives, Ronald Reagan may be defined as the man who told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," not as the man who visited the Bitburg cemetery where Nazis responsible for 642 victims of the 1944 massacre at Oradour in the south of France are buried, or the man who gave his first postconvention speech in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the place where, just sixteen years earlier, three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by members of the KKK. But Reagan never paid homage to these sacrificial lambs of the civil rights movement; instead, he was using code words like "states' rights." Conservatives will forever define Bill Clinton by a dumb affair and a stained dress, not by the number of people lifted out of poverty during his tenure. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is currently revered by conservatives for having been a tax cutter, and yet they never mention his legendary infidelities that made Clinton look practically celibate. Let's face it—we are all complex beings, and we can all find moments in our past that we would prefer not to appear in our epitaphs. It's a shame that sometimes we don't see the whole person but pick and choose how we view someone based on our own biases. If we don't agree with someone politically, we'll try to use personal weaknesses as evidence of professional failures. We demand a level of honor and morality in our leaders that we rarely exercise ourselves.
As for that dumb affair and the stained dress: Bill Clinton paid a huge price for his indiscretion. He suffered the ignominy of being the first elected president ever to be impeached. And I'm guessing things were not too rosy at the Clinton household when his attention was needed for important domestic and global matters. Yes, he brought this upon himself. But he fought back and didn't give in to the forces that wanted to do him in. And in the end, he was able to leave office with an admirable record on the issues that mattered. Most important for him personally, he was able to keep his family together, a fight he had to wage against the backdrop of constant public snorting by those who attacked him in the name of "family values."
A Legacy Up on the Competition
You probably noticed my earlier jab about the popular versus the electoral vote. Al Gore received more votes than any other Democratic presidential candidate, ever, but lost the presidency because of the odd electoral system we have, and because of a Supreme Court that suddenly decided it was no longer a "states' rights" court. But the Clinton legacy continues with his former adviser, Rahm Emanuel, whose Clinton ties didn't hurt his ability to win a congressional race in Chicago, by a wide margin, and with Bill Richardson, the former UN ambassador and Department of Energy secretary, who was handily elected governor of New Mexico. And let us not forget that the person to whom he is closest in life became a senator from New York, garnering 55 percent of the vote, 12 percentage points more than her opponent, Congressman Rick Lazio.
But even without bright lights from his administration to carry on Clinton's work, the fact is that at the end of the Clinton era we had a country that was financially in the black, a world mostly at peace, a booming stock market, and better lives for America's working poor. Sure, we have a few angry conservatives who continue to vent steam to this day that Clinton has the gall to walk the planet. And while that hot, polluted air is bad for us, I know we'll have a Democratic president one day who will clean up this pox on the environment.
Clinton continues to fight for the causes he championed as president, whether offering to mediate racial tensions in Cincinnati or speaking, as he did in February 2003, to scientists involved in AIDS research in Boston. He is especially active in developing countries, where he works to implement care, treatment, and prevention programs in order to help stem the AIDS epidemic. The Clinton Foundation is helping to build infrastructures to address this crisis, including acquiring the necessary pharmaceuticals so proper care can be offered.
It's true that politics makes strange bedfellows, but post-political life can make even stranger ones. Clinton has teamed with Senator Bob Dole, his 1996 challenger, to cochair the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, which helps to fund higher education of children whose families were victimized by the September 11 attacks.
As the former president continues his journey on the world stage and enhances his presidential accomplishments, his enemies will only grow angrier. Good. He'll continue to do what he's always done: work for the public good. And they'll do what they've always done: be angry with Bill Clinton.
Greatness isn't judged by one event, by an isolated moment in time, or by a set of statistics. It's not quantifiable, objective, or even verifiable. It's more of an "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" experience. We should be defined not by the mistakes we make, but what we make of our mistakes. Our actions are often less significant than our intent. Clinton held great promise for America. He didn't live up to every inch of that promise. Nobody could. But his love of his country, his desire to do good, his actual accomplishments, and his continued activism on behalf of causes he holds dear continue to define him.
I can understand how onetime Clinton supporters may have become former supporters, how both admirers and former admirers alike might feel let down by some of his behavior. And I don't exempt the former president from the need to take personal responsibility for the self-inflicted damage to his presidency. But we should look at the record objectively and not allow our understandably emotional reactions to his bad personal behavior obscure our sense of fairness and justice. Bill Clinton felt our pain for eight years. Can we be big enough as a nation, compassionate enough, and even Christian enough to feel his? Let's applaud him for his accomplishments and forgive him for his shortcomings, which is the same treatment we'd all want. It's not only the right thing to do. It's the American thing to do.
SEVEN
OJ Is Innocent
Orenthal James Simpson was found "not guilty" during his criminal trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. In America, you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nevertheless, OJ went on to be held liable for these murders in a civil trial stemming from the same alleged crime. I'm amazed that more people didn't point out that this should be a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution that prohibits the government from trying us twice for the same crime, sometimes referred to as "double jeopardy." It will forever be debated why he was found not guilty, but that was the verdict. Some conservatives love to use the term "convicted felon" when it comes to former assistant attorney general Webster Hubbell, Susan McDougal (who went to jail in the Whitewater case for refusing to test
ify against President Clinton), and anyone else associated with Clinton; but in the OJ case, when they found themselves with a jury verdict they didn't like, they refused to abide by the "innocent until proven guilty" bedrock of our criminal justice system.
There was a good reason the prosecution never proved that OJ was guilty in the first place. The glove that didn't fit was found by former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman at Simpson's home the day after the murders. It was described as "wet and sticky." But why would it be wet and sticky a day later? And since there was a Caucasian hair on the glove, might not a DNA test prove once and for all whether that glove had been planted? It wasn't just the gloves that didn't fit. Timing was off, as well. Dogs began barking at 10:35 or 10:40 p.m. The forensic experts said the struggle took between five and fifteen minutes. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran put it all into perspective during his closing argument:
Consider everything that Mr. Simpson would have had to have done in a very short time under their timeline. He would have had to drive over to Bundy, as they described in this little limited time frame where there is not enough time, kill two athletic people in a struggle that takes five to fifteen minutes, walk slowly from the scene, return to the scene, supposedly looking for a missing hat and glove and poking around, go back to this alley a second time, drive more than five minutes to Rockingham where nobody hears him or sees him, either stop along the way to hide these bloody clothes and knives, et cetera, or take them in the house with you where they are still hoisted by their own petard because there is no blood, there is no trace, there is no nothing. So that is why the prosecution has had to try and push back their timeline. Even to today they are still pushing it back because it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fit.
Furthermore, blood scrapings from beneath Nicole's fingernails were EAP type B. According to the serology report by Greg Matheson, the LAPD scientist, "Problem, no match to anyone." It didn't match Ron Goldman, OJ, or even Nicole herself. But the fact that it didn't match OJ's blood was most significant. Now, let's look at Simpson's Ford Bronco. They couldn't find Ron or Nicole's hair or clothing fibers in the car. And there was no DNA matching OJ found on the glove at Rockingham or the one found at Nicole's Bundy home.
It's troubling that certain common police procedures weren't followed. For example, blood was washed off Ron's and Nicole's bodies and never tested. Soil samples at Bundy were never tested to see if OJ had left any hair or fibers. There was a piece of paper at the crime scene that disappeared. Detective Tom Lange said that based on what he saw of the paper it was of no value. Since when is this kind of thing determined just visually? And since when is forensic evidence disposed of at a crime scene?
It was no secret that OJ was black, and it was no secret that he married and dated white women. And according to witnesses, this was something that didn't sit too well with Mark Fuhrman. Kathleen Bell, a Los Angeles real estate broker who met Fuhrman in 1985 and knew him socially, sent a letter to the defense, claiming, "When he sees a 'nigger' (as he called it) driving with a white woman, he would pull them over. I asked would he if he didn't have a reason, and he said that he would find one."
The famous Fuhrman tapes were recorded by Laura McKinny, who was a learning skills counselor for high-risk athletes at UCLA at the time she met Fuhrman in February 1985. She interviewed Fuhrman as part of her research for a screenplay she was writing about the Los Angeles Police Department. There are a number of places on the tapes where Fuhrman brags about defying police procedure. For example, when asked about arresting someone for an outstanding traffic warrant, he said:
FUHRMAN: . . . he's probably gotten several tickets from policemen, and he hasn't taken care of them. He's going to go to the station, because he won't have any identification because when he gives me his driver's license, I'll just rip the fucker up.
MCKINNY: Have you done that before?
FUHRMAN: (Nods.)
Fuhrman also admitted he didn't follow department procedure on whether to shoot to kill:
FUHRMAN: I listen to liberals talk, and I can't believe that someone who is educated, or even just opens their eyes for one day can think what they think.
MCKINNY: What are some of the things that really annoy you when you hear liberals talk?
FUHRMAN: Do you people—don't you shoot to wound 'em? No, we shoot to kill 'em. Now the department says we shoot to stop, not kill, which is horseshit. The only way you can stop somebody is to kill the son of a bitch. And what's the big deal? If you've got a reason to shoot somebody, you've got a reason to kill him.
According to these tapes, Fuhrman was no fan of females on the force:
FUHRMAN: They don't do anything. They don't go out and initiate contact with some 6'5" nigger that's been in prison for seven years pumping weights.
Fuhrman has claimed that these tapes don't represent his views, but rather that he was acting to help create a fictional story. Unfortunately these tapes came out after Fuhrman claimed he hadn't used the word nigger in ten years.
If Respect You Lack, You Must Be Black
The OJ trial was prosecuted against the backdrop of black versus white and liberal versus conservative. Many are troubled that OJ was treated differently than most murder defendants, but conservatives tend not to be as troubled by the number of blacks in America who are regularly tried, convicted, and put to death, often because of incompetent attorneys appointed by the state. The injustices to these indigent Americans are the flip side of the injustices of the OJ trial, but that rarely gets attention from the very people who were outraged by "The Trial of the Century." Why is a verdict troubling only when a black man goes free? Why is it that the federal criminal code and the laws of fourteen states allow a sentence of five years for selling five grams of crack, but to get five years for selling cocaine, you need to be found with five hundred grams? Could it be because cocaine is considered more of a white person's drug by the authorities? Contrary to those who whine that the white man is an endangered species in America, our nation continues to abide a tremendous amount of racism, sexism, and ageism.
Leo Terrell, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney, has been a frequent guest on Hannity & Colmes (and is an OJ friend and defender). During one of Terrell's appearances, we discussed how Congressman Jesse Jackson Junior referred to Bush 43 's State of the Union address as "The Police State of the Union," After that show, this love letter arrived:
From: kevin235
Sent: Wednesday, February 06,2002 10:29 PM
To: colmes
Subject: (no subject)
You and Leo Belong Together!... Leo Terrell is a Militant Racist Left-Wing Radical Hateful Nigger. Look up his name in the dictionary. It's listed under "Hate."
You and Leo should spend the rest of your lives in Hell… You and Leo are "The Best Example of the Worst we have to Offer in America."
kevin235
Canton, OH
When you start to think about how far we've come in terms of equality in America, it's a reality check to see how some people still think on this issue. Then you'll realize how far we still have to go.
The Right's Race Problem
Racism may never be fully expunged from American life. But I hope that racism as a political tool will be. Each party has its race demons, but it's the left that has spearheaded the civil rights movement, and it's the right that's had to play catch-up.
When the Washington Post reported in 1998 that Trent Lott had addressed the Conservative Citizens' Council, a group formed in the 1950s to fight the Supreme Court's ruling on desegregation of schools, Lott said he "had no firsthand knowledge of the group's views." As the story persisted, the Post reported Lott saying, "I have made my condemnation of the white supremacist and racist view of this group, or any group, clear. Any use of my name to publicize their view is not only unauthorized, it's wrong." How could Lott not have known their views as he claimed? He wrote for the CCC's publication, The Citizens Informer, and was the keynote speaker at a 1992 event where he said, "The people in
this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy."
When Bob Jones University was embroiled in an effort to keep its tax-exempt status in 1981, which was threatened by its policy that bans interracial dating, Trent Lott stepped in to defend the institution. Writing to the Supreme Court, Lott said, "If racial discrimination in the interest of diversity does not violate public policy, then surely discrimination in the practices of religion is no violation."
It's true that racial discrimination doesn't always violate public policy. But it seems as though Lott's statement excuses racial discrimination if it doesn't violate public policy and is offered in the name of religion. So perhaps I should suggest a policy to ban inter-political dating. Maybe liberals shouldn't get anywhere near the DNA of conservatives. It wouldn't violate public policy and would keep my political party "pure."
Lest you think America is without the fumes of a racist past, every so often an ugly statement rears its head that reminds us of our less-than-stellar civil rights background. This was the case at the one hundredth birthday party for the late Strom Thurmond on December 6, 2002, when Trent Lott got in some hot water for making this statement: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these years, either."
What wasn't said was that when Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 he did so as a Dixiecrat, on the platform of segregation. One of the Stromster's comments during that campaign was: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches." The great Lott controversy revolved around the Mississippi senator's implication that this is the America he wished a Thurmond presidency would have spawned.
