IMPEACHMENT--- A MORAL CRISIS

Victor Bloom MD

The gears of government and politics have been grinding inexorably toward this moment, which is said to be 'historic' and it may well be so. It seems likely that this is a special time when we are checking our moral compass.

What the president did, was it a small crime or a large one? If it is large, is it large enough to topple the choice of an electorate? Is the election itself sacred, such that the president can function with impunity? The president was elected by a small plurality of voters.

Can or should an election ever be overturned? The impeachment of president Johnson was clearly merely political, and this crisis is now being called political, but it will be political if the ideology of that political power is devoutedly moralistic.

The new P-C attitude is super-tolerant, urging acceptance into the main society of every minority and fringe group, no matter how handicapped or deviant. If, as a society, we can accept abortion, extramarital sex, lying and cheating, certainly we can accept a president who fits right in. Two thirds of Americans, if we are to believe the polls, are saying in effect, "he is one of us".

Maureen Dowd, the clever op-ed writer for the New York Times shifts from trashing the president to trashing his detractors. When it boils down to it, though, she is against the old gray-haired men, her latest stereotype of the Republican prosecutors. Because of the lengths to which they had to go to prove their case, because of the extensive publication of explicit details, the men are assumed to be voyeurs and perverts, salaciously drooling. They are undoubtedly envious of the president's sexual prowess and proclivities and directing an irrational rage toward him. The old men want to destroy the young men.

Dowd makes fun of the old men. She writes as if she thinks that older men are petty and mean-spirited, deep down, and are irrational, out of control and mindless in wanting to impeach the president. She may be right about some of the unconscious dynamics, but simplistic stereotypes and caricatures do not tell the whole story.

The rest of the story is whether or not we will have a government and leader who truly is devoted to the constitution and the good of the people, and to principles of law-abiding honesty and true sincerity. I hear the argument that it was never so and will never be so, so that should be the end of it.

I am heartened that the constitutional powers of the Congress were being exercised, and that the Republican majority had the votes to pursue impeachment for worthy reasons. The White House says they are attacking the presidency as well as the president, and the Congress says we will no longer tolerate business-as-usual---abuse of power, corruption, lying and hypocrisy. In these critical times, we need a leader we can look up to and trust. The president no longer seems worthy of trust, but his idealogues dismiss and discount the gravity of the charges.

I am sure the founders of this country who forged our constitution, which includes a balance of powers by means of the separation of powers, did not intend the results of an impeachment to be established by national referendum. The pollsters are saying the Republicans should give it up, so we can get moving again, like that is the will of the American people. I have not been polled and nobody I know has been polled. It doesn't matter what the majority of the American people want right now, having been buffetted by the media.

What does matter, is what the majority of the Senate decides. The constitution calls for a trial, and a trial demands evidence, and it is witnesses who provide evidence. The Senate majority intends for the proceedings to be solemn, civil and dignified, and it is hoped there will be no petty partisan bickering.

If the Republicans seem partisan, I believe it is because they are united in a moral purpose, to improve the real stature (not just the image) of the president and government, so that we will have adequate leadership for the trials of the next century, and the future in general, which our children and grandchildren will inherit.

Maureen Dowd characterizes the old, gray-haired men as creatures who are salacious, mean, petty and hypocritical, and give them no credit for the wisdom accumulated during the generation in which young Maureen Dowd has not yet lived. Her characterization falls right in with the current academia, which trashes so-called dead white males.

These dead white males include Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Homer, Sophocles and Euripides, Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw and many other great playrights. Again and again in Shakespeare's historical plays, he shows the consequences of abuses of power.

What is repeated in America today is the drama of pulling down a degraded leader, who is unworthy of office. We want a better role model, maybe unprecedented, for our children and grandchildren as we lurch toward the next millenium.

Dr. Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and he welcomes comments and questions at his e-mail address: vbloom@compuserve.com and visitors to his website: factotem.com/vbloom.