The National Interest

The Oliver Twist

And this: "There is one judge that really does make a difference. Ollie North sat before a bank of people asking him questions, congressmen and senators. The American people watched it, and you know what the American people saw? They saw a Congress they didn't like, and they loved Ollie North." In fact, they didn't, really, not even in conservative Virginia, where North lost.

Among politicians, though, Lott wasn't alone. "Generally, it broke along regional lines," recalls Craig Bieber, executive director of the Virginia Democratic Party, of North's support. "I don't remember any Northerners supporting him with any enthusiasm. Thebig wheels were Lott, Gramm, Helms, ousted senator Lauch Faircloth, and Don Nickels." Gramm proclaimed himself "in full support of Ollie North," while Oklahoma's Nickels decried the "quite zealous" prosecution of North -- as opposed to the, what, temperate prosecution of Bill Clinton? -- and said "I'm supporting Oliver North. I think he would do well here."

There's more where this came from, but you get the idea. Lott, Helms, and Gramm helped North privately as well. They put the screws to Bob Dole, who retracted his original sour assessment of North's candidacy, sent his campaign $5,000, and announced his willingness to stump with North, under sub rosa assurances from the virtuous troika that he (Dole) could kiss the GOP presidential nomination good-bye if he didn't back North.

It's not the sex, we've heard Republicans say time and time again; it's the perjury. But the North episode makes clear that it's not the perjury, either, since several of the Republican senators who will hear evidence against Clinton and who are almost certain to vote to convict him were willing to forgive perjury once before. So what is it?

When public opinion, expressed repeatedly and forcefully for months, and election results themselves can be mocked and dismissed, there is more than just a whiff of Weimar in the air. Lott, as Tom Edsall revealed in the Washington Post, spoke before something called the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization with white-supremacist views, which Lott praised as "standing for the right principles and the right philosophy." A Lott spokesman has said, naturally, that the senator had no idea of the group's views. But one of the CCC's leaders identified Lott as a member of the group. You'd think the possibility that the third-most-powerful politician in America was a member of a white-supremacist organization would excite intense investigation in the nation's leading media, or at least a forceful call for him to explain himself. Well, you'd be living in a very different country.

Right-wing conspiracy-monger Richard Mellon Scaife, in an interview with George magazine, opined that Ken Starr was a sellout (!) and estimated that Clinton has probably had about 60 people snuffed. A family-values lunatic named James Dobson has charged that the White House has directed the schools to have America's children draw the world's largest penis and compare white penises to black. This from a book to which the revered Bill Bennett contributed the introduction.

Scaife, Bennett, and Dobson aren't elected officials (though Bennett still is said to imagine life at the White House), but they set the agenda that people like Lott follow. And people like Lott set the agenda the Washington media follow, which ends up being the agenda the rest of us follow, too. So we're stuck with a few more weeks of Monica, while hypocrites and madmen -- including North, now a well-paid talk-show host -- play out their culture war. Short trial or long, it's a war the Republicans have lost.