No resignation, no impeachment

If President Bill Clinton resigns rather than face the tidal wave of a highly partisan impeachment proceeding complete with X-rated testimony, will the country be better off?

No. It will only give the witch hunters what they want: The death of a presidency.

Did Clinton bring this on himself? No doubt about it, although he had some help from Special Prosecutor Ken Starr. Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury about having an adulterous affair with Monica Lewinsky. He refused to kiss and tell, even under oath. She chose to kiss and tell about a dozen of her closest friends, not to mention the grand jury.

This sounds more like an episode of Jerry Springer, or any number of daytime soap operas. This is what $40 million and a four-year investigation has given us: No wrong doing in the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas, no wrongdoing in the dismissal of staffers in the White House Travel Office and no wrongdoing in the use of misappropriated FBI files. What a bargain.

We are left with lies about sex in sworn testimony in a case that was dismissed by a federal judge. How can Americans trust a president who lies about sex? Easy.

This country has trusted—and survived--presidents who have lied about a lot more than sex. Just to name two: President Lyndon Johnson regularly lied to Americans about the state of the war and casualties in Vietnam. President Richard M. Nixon denied being part of a burglary ring, even while he was re-establishing ties with China and winding down the war.

Can Clinton still lead? Of course he can.

The republic has bigger problems than Clinton’s sex life. How are we going to put the vicious special-prosecutor genie back in the bottle? How can we restore the balance of power so that the Supreme Court and Congress can’t gang up and beat the presidency to death with an ideological club? How can we keep partisan politicians from being more interested in The Scarlet Letter than they are in what Pakistan has in mind for its new A-bombs?

Congress should look at Starr’s report and stop the impeachment train before it pulls out of the station. It should get back to the real business of government—fast. Dragging the nation through an interminable impeachment process will only damage the nation, the Constitution and the presidency more than they’ve been damaged already.