Unsavoury characters who sit in judgment on Clinton

The most important thing to remember about the sombre deliberations on the possible impeachment of Bill Clinton is the Mae West principle: goodness has nothing to do with it. It would be sweet to think that a bad man will be judged by good men, that the sins of a slimy reprobate are to be measured against immutable moral principles by the representatives of the people in Congress assembled. The truth, however, is rather different. Clinton is to be judged by men who wouldn't recognise a moral principle unless they met it at a $10,000-aplate fund-raising dinner. Consider Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives which will decide on impeachment and effective head of the Republican Party that controls both houses of Congress. Gingrich's own breaches of ethical standards and of electoral laws have been so egregious that even some of his own Republican colleagues felt it necessary to punish them. For lying flagrantly to the House and for abusing registered charities in an effort to get around legal limits on campaign spending, the House handed him a censure and a $300,000 fine.

The same Newt Gingrich, when he became Speaker, accepted $4.5 million up front as an "advance" payment for a book he was writing. The generous publisher was Rupert Murdoch, who had a huge interest in various laws and regulations before the House at the time. Gingrich's moral awareness is so sharp that he saw nothing wrong with this deal until press and public anger forced him to refuse the money. Five years ago one of Gingrich's closest friends, Representative Vin Weber, retired from the House and immediately became a paid lobbyist for, among others, the Israeli Export Development Company. Not only did he begin to lobby his old friend on behalf of the company but, in an amazing coincidence, Marianne Gingrich, the Speaker's second wife, who had no known experience in the field of international trade, suddenly became vice-president of the Israeli Export Development Company. All of this, in the opinion of the independent and non-partisan Centre for Public Integrity, appears to violate federal laws. But, as that Washington-based watchdog drily notes in a new report, The Buying of the Congress, "There has been no sign that the Justice Department has any interest in pursuing the matter."

And what about Bob Barr, the most vocal and hostile of Clinton's critics on the House Judiciary Committee that will hear the case for impeachment? Barr has received a great deal of funding and a huge amount of political and logistical support from the National Rifle Association. Almost 600,000 people in the United States have died from gunshot wounds in the last 10 years. The NRA is passionately devoted to resisting all attempts to regulate or limit the "right" to own and use guns.

The moralist Barr is the NRA's most trusted supporter in the House. He hired the NRA's press secretary to do the same job for himself. One of his finest political achievements is the passage by the House in 1996 of a measure he proposed to repeal a ban on assault weapons passed by the previous Congress. He has also led the fight in the House against proposals to require chemical markers to be placed in explosives like Semtex so that the police could track them more easily.

Over in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee which would have a leading role in the trial of Bill Clinton if he is impeached is Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. Hatch is another politician who accepts money and support from the NRA, to which he has pledged to "make inroads into the despotism of gun control". One of his most senior colleagues, and one of those most flamboyantly disgusted by Clinton's immorality, is Senator Phil Gramm, who keeps a rifle and a pistol on display in his office and who told an NRA rally in 1995, "I own more shotguns than I need but not as many as I want".

Everywhere you look in the ranks of the righteous, there are politicians who take huge sums from the gun lobby, from the tobacco industry, from incorrigible polluters and from shady dealers. Both sides in Congress are steeped in a culture of continual fund-raising "free" trips to exotic places sponsored by lobbyists and privileged access to special share deals. None of this, of course is actually free, but the cost is in the way the politicians return the compliment. There are undoubtedly some honest and moral members of both parties, but the overall atmosphere of Congress is such that some of its most powerful members actually boast of the way they trade favours for cash.

One example that sums up the situation is that of T. Cass Ballenger, a Republican from North Carolina who chairs the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee and is therefore in charge of the federal agency that is supposed to ensure the safety of workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Given the appalling toll of workplace accidents in the US, it may seem puzzling that the OSHA is being weakened and starved of funds. Ballenger, himself the owner of plastics factories that the OSHA is meant to oversee, is happy to enlighten the innocent. He told a reporter how he raised money for his 1994 election campaign: "I'd say, `Guess who might be chairman of the committee who'd be in charge of the OSHA?' And they'd say `who?' and I'd say `me'. And I'd say `I need some money'. And - whoosh! - I got it. This was my sales pitch: `Businessmen, wouldn't you like to have a friend overseeing the OSHA?"

These people do things - block gun control, support the tobacco industry, let employers away with dangerous practices - that cost thousands of lives every year. Yet how often is the word "immoral" ever heard in relation to them? When are their misdeeds parsed, documented and sent into cyberspace? When are they held up as sinners? Never. Instead, they get to shake their heads and wag their fingers at the bad, dirty man who commits adultery and lies about it.

The hypocrisy of his judges doesn't make Clinton's actions okay. But it does underline yet again how ludicrously narrow is the operative definition of political morality. It is immoral to have sex with an intern but not to rain bombs on Khartoum without knowing quite who might be under them. It is moral to spend $2 billion for each B-2 bomber in the US Air Force while one in five American children lives in poverty but immoral to make up a stupid story to hide a stupid affair. It is a good thing to make sure that any maniac who wants an AK-47 can get his hands on one but a bad thing to get your own hands on an inappropriate part of someone else's body. Forcing people with disabilities to work for their measly welfare cheques is fine, but talking dirty on the phone is disgusting.

No wonder it is easier to find a president's DNA on a navy blue dress than it is to find evidence of moral principle in American politics.