FOUR MORE YEARS!

John Fund argues in today’s Wall Street Journal that on the fiftieth anniversary of the 22nd Amendment barring presidents from more than two full terms, we should rejoice. Why? Because it saved us from a third Clinton term. Unfortunately, I think John has it exactly the wrong way round. Many of our Clintonian problems stem from exactly the fact that we have the 22nd Amendment. What the country desperately needed in the wake of the Lewinsky matter was a clarifying vote on the 42nd president. Impeachment was a half-measure, too drastic for the issue at hand, not drastic enough for the real job of throwing a criminal president out of office. Last year’s election foisted the Clinton issue onto Gore, who only half deserved it, and rightly resented being the receptacle of our diverted rage. Part of the reason, I think, for the communal breast-beating of the last few weeks is a consequence of our never having been allowed to vent our feelings about Clinton directly at the ballot box where they belonged. I believe, despite John’s worries, that Clinton would have lost a third election; and that his loss is the only thing that would have led to a real national reckoning with the meaning of the man and the damage he has done to our culture, our law, and our politics. Elections are the core of our democratic experiment. Limiting them only pushes the pressures of democracy onto legal institutions (like independent counsels) or quasi-political institutions (like the press) which are not built to take the strain. The 22nd Amendment is one of the worst ever to have been passed. And we’re now living with the cultural and political consequences.