Kenneth Starr’s Reversal of Fortune
Editorial
If you’ve ever, even once, had a chance to catch NBC’s highly-rated, critically acclaimed cop show/courtroom drama “Law and Order,” then you’re familiar with the basic formula which informs every episode: The first half hour is devoted to following the police as they gather clues and suspects relevant to that week’s particular crime, while the second half focuses on the district attorney’s offices and their efforts to successfully prosecute the individuals the cops arrested sometime before the third commercial break.This disarmingly simple framework is satisfying to viewers precisely because of its simplicity. After all, it’s how the world around us really works; individuals act and sometimes there are consequences to those actions. When either the actions or the consequences which arise are deemed “illegal” in the eyes of the law, investigators make arrests and the legal system applies standards of judgment to determine guilt or innocence and, when appropriate, assigns punishment. It’s all a very logical procession of cause and effect which, we assume, more or less accurately reflects reality.Unless, of course, your reality is Washington, D.C. and your name happens to be Kenneth Starr, independent counsel.Starr’s $30 million fishing expedition into President Clinton’s past has successfully reversed the universal law of cause and effect by beginning at the end. The investigation, which started out as an inquiry into alleged financial misdeeds committed by Clinton while he was still governor of Arkansas, has been transformed into a sleazy tale of alleged adultery, perjury and obstruction of justice. Think of an episode of “Law and Order” in reverse, with the lawyers preceding the police in an attempt to prove a consequence before it’s even clear that an action has occurred.When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the independent counsel law in 1988, Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, pointed out this logical aberration: Unlike normal investigations which proceed from the crime to suspect, the independent counsel starts with a suspect and works backward in an attempt to link that person to crimes which they may have committed.Now, no one is questioning that Starr has the right and authority to expand his investigation to include whatever criminal wrong-doings he may unearth. Last month a special three-judge federal court ruled – in no uncertain terms – that he was authorized to do so. Unfortunately, what the law says the independent counsel may do and what the independent counsel should do are often two very different things.The question becomes whether one believes that the President of the United States, simply by virtue of his lofty position, should at all times be subject to this kind of legal inquisition.We certainly do not.Leaving aside questions of whether the lurid tales of Clinton’s sex life are relevant to his ability to effectively govern, we believe that Kenneth Starr has transformed the important position of independent counsel into a political billy club to be wielded at his own discretion. Starr, a member of the Bush administration and a prominent legal defender of a number of pet conservative causes, is so clearly partisan that even suggesting otherwise is to invite peals of laughter from beltway insiders.Unfortunately, things are very likely going to get worse before they get better. Let’s all just hope that Starr’s reversal of logic doesn’t set a lasting precedent.We couldn’t stand to go through this again with President Gore.
