The Clinton scandal is an occasion for ethical reflection, but it is far from the
most important issue facing ethicists.
THAD WILLIAMSON is a doctoral student in political theory at Harvard University and a
member of the ARIL board. He holds an M.A. in Christian Ethics from Union Theological
Seminary, New York.
Professional ethicists are sure to get mileage for years from analysis of the Bill
Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment trial. But how well can
ethicists, and religious ethicists in particular, respond to such a crisis in "real
time," and help clarify both the issues at stake and the next steps that should
be taken?
Two recent books, offering strikingly divergent perspectives on the Clinton scandal,
provide primary evidence with which to answer those questions. The first (From the Eye
of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out [Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press], 1998), was written by J. Philip Wogaman, a respected academic ethicist who
now holds the perhaps unenviable position of pastor to the President. The second volume (Judgment
Day At the White House: A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political
Use and Abuse of Religion, edited by Gabriel Fackre [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans], 1999)
consists of ruminations from both signatories and critics of a "Declaration
Concerning Religion, Ethics, and the Crisis in the Clinton Presidency," dated
December 1, 1998, and signed by over 140 scholars, the bulk of whom are faculty
members at historically conservative or moderate mainline Protestant seminaries.
The Declaration itself is an unimpressive document, woodenly written and lacking a
clear statement of what the signers think should be done in the Clinton case (other than a
platitudinous call for "national courage in deliberation that avoids ideological
division" on the part of Congress and the country in the impeachment debates). The
Declaration's fundamental contention is that "serious misunderstandings of repentance
and forgiveness are being exploited for political advantage." The lightning rod for
this charge is the Presidential Prayer Breakfast (an annual ecumenical gathering of over
100 religious leaders) that on September 11, 1998, featured a public display of
contrition by the President for his recently revealed misconduct. Clinton's words were
reportedly well-received by the religious leaders, many of whom personally offered words
of "spiritual support" for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. The implicit claim of the
Declaration is that Clinton used the occasion to dupe the clergy present and to forward
his own political advantage. (It might be asked whether what happened at the 1998 Prayer
Breakfast was different only in degree from past breakfasts. The willingness of the
American religious establishment to participate in publicity stunts designed to place
politicians in a favorable light hardly began with the Clinton presidency.) The
Declaration goes on to decry the debasement of public trust and ethical norms which the
President's behavior is believed to have engendered, going so far as to claim that the
crisis raised the question of "whether the moral basis of the constitutional system
itself will be lost."
The Declaration, unfortunately, does not make clear whether the ones in need of hearing
these exhortations are church leaders who have been "duped" by Clinton, other
academics, the media and the public at large, or the President himself. Many of the
specific claims are effectively placed in doubt by Declaration critics Nicholas
Wolterstorff of Yale University and Lewis Smedes and Glen Harold Stassen of Fuller
Theological Seminary in their contributions to the volume. (For instance, the Declaration
criticizes the publicity given to Clinton's ongoing pastoral meetings with a team of three
ministers, but as Stassen points out, it was the ministers, not Clinton, who informed the
public that these meetings were taking place.) Equally troubling, the Declaration
presumes, implicitly, to know that Clinton's contrition, as expressed on September 11
and other dates, could not be sincere. (To his credit, one signatory, Max Stackhouse,
explicitly expresses doubt on this point, while Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University allows
that "I suspect Clinton was as sincere as he could be.") Rather than resort to
such highly questionable presumptions, the signatories of the Declaration might have
better served the aim of expressing their anger and concern simply by explicitly stating
that "Bill Clinton is a chronic liar, a sickness on the body politic, and cannot be
trusted in any setting, public or private, under the cloak of religion or not."
Fortunately, the essays contributed by eleven of the signatories to this volume offer
considerably more punch, precision, and questions to ponder than the Declaration itself.
With characteristic sharpness, Hauerwas finds in Clinton's pattern of deceit evidence for
what happens to religion when it is separated from the ongoing practices of a disciplined
community. Hauerwas declares: "It is not just that President Clinton has no sense
that a public sin requires public penance. . . but that American Protestantism
has no sense of it either." Robert Jewett of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
deconstructs Clinton's earliest apologies to illustrate how far short they fell of genuine
Christian confession, which requires taking specific responsibility for specific actions,
not simply being sorry for the way things turned out. Klyne Snodgrass of North Park
Theological Seminary provides an effective critique of the efforts of some of Clinton's
defenders (including Wogaman) to use the story of David and Bathsheba as an argument for
allowing Clinton to keep his position, noting that while David himself was spared a series
of disasters fell upon his kingdom and his progeny in the wake of his own sex (and murder)
scandal. Edward Wimberly of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta decries
the uncritical attachment of African-American church leaders to Clinton,
"settling" for "leaders who cannot, in their private and public behavior,
meet our expectations. . . We would be better off without such leaders." (A
similar critique could be made of the close relationship between Clinton and leaders of
mainline institutions such as the National Council of Churches, in which the NCC has
offered implicit political support for the President, even as he pursued policies, such as
welfare reform, directly contradicting the stated social agenda of the mainline churches.)
The critics of the Declaration published in the volume express dissent at a variety of
levels. As noted, Wolterstorff and Smedes express doubt regarding the Declaration's
suspicion towards Clinton's sincerity, a point supported by William J. Buckley's
impressive exposition of Catholic doctrine on sin and forgiveness. John P. Burgess of
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary argues that truth-telling is the highest good that can be
achieved through the political and constitutional process and that theological observers
should content themselves in the Clinton affair that at least the truth has (finally) been
told. Donald and Peggy Shriver express dismay at Clinton's behavior but also concern that
discussion of the scandal has appealed to a narrow definition of morality that ignores
larger social evils. Meanwhile, Stassen calls for a return to the "rule of civil
decency," a rule which understood that the sex lives of politicians should be out of
the bounds of normal political discourse, while also stressing that, even in the case of
misdeeds like Clinton's, redemption and restoration are possible if the sinner in question
has entered into a sincere program of church-based discipline and repentance.
The President in fact has entered into such a program under the leadership of three
ministers, one of whom, Philip Wogaman, is his pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church
in Washington. Wogaman's book betrays no inside knowledge derived from his pastoral work
with the President. What Wogaman does do is to call for the moral priority of forgiveness,
decry the spirit of incivility which motivated all sides in the year-long scandal, and
offer an essentially political defense of the Clinton presidency. While Wogaman's call to
civility should draw few objections, far more contentious are the conclusions he draws
from the claim that "we are a society that should understand itself more deeply as a
community of love than as a community of law." Wogaman, who urged a censure
resolution to resolve the crisis as opposed to impeachment, challenges not just the
excesses and possible illegalities of the Starr investigation, but, by implication, the
moral legitimacy of the investigation itself. He thus asks: "Will we be a society
that is grounded in compassion and a generous spirit -- as exemplified by the themes of
the White House prayer breakfast. . . or will we allow ourselves to be
increasingly hard-hearted, as exemplified by the Starr Report and the manner of its
presentation to the nation?" The skeptical reader can be excused for asking whether
Wogaman really means to support blanket absolution of presidential wrongdoing whenever a
case presented against the President is excessively strident. If Congressional Democrats
in 1986 and 1987 had played political hardball and gone for the jugular of the Reagan
Presidency (as they most certainly did not), would that have made Reagan's (probable)
crimes in the Iran-Contra affair easier to pardon?
Such critical questions, asked not only of Wogaman but of the signers of the
Declaration, should at least make it clear that neither side has an open-and-shut case.
These ethicists are, for the most part, skilled writers with strong persuasive capacities,
and most readers should find merit in points made by those on both sides of the
Declaration. But what these volumes do not do is systematically analyze and evaluate the
various claims, a task perhaps appropriately left to readers. Now that the more specific
legal and constitutional questions regarding the crisis have been resolved, what exactly
are the issues at stake in considering the larger ethical meaning of the Clinton scandal?
What central claims can be made about Clinton's behavior, and how should these claims be
assessed? How does the love-justice tension characteristic of Christian thought best apply
to each claim? What follows is a preliminary discussion of six distinct moral claims that
have been pressed by ethicists regarding the Clinton scandal, four of which are claims
against the President and two of which are aimed at the larger political system and
culture in which the Presidency is located.
The Moral Claims Against the President -- and the Country
1. That the President committed adultery and betrayed his wife and family. On
this claim, it would appear to be clear that Wogaman's call for the priority of
forgiveness over judgmentalism is well-placed. It might be further suggested that, as a
purely private behavior, misleading others about one's sexual behavior is less to be
condemned with moral swagger than to be accepted as part of the human condition. Professor
Christopher Morse of Union Theological Seminary has called attention (in a recent public
lecture) to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's problematization of conventional understandings of
"telling the truth." Truth is contextual, Bonhoeffer urged, and " 'telling
the truth' means something different according to the particular situation in which one
stands. Account must be taken of the one's relationships at each particular time."
Further, not all who inquire have the right to know the truth -- and in particular,
Bonhoeffer noted, not everything regarding sexuality is meant to be exposed.
"Exposure is cynical," wrote Bonhoeffer, "and even if the cynic appears to
himself to be specially honest, or if he sets himself up as a fanatical devotee of truth,
he nevertheless fails to achieve the truth which is of decisive importance, namely, the
truth that since the Fall there has been a need also for concealment and secrecy."
More generally, Bonhoeffer wrote, "those who pretend to be executing God's
judgment" are in fact pursuing "a truth which is of Satan." Such fanatical
truth-seeking "wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the
community in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and
at human weakness which 'cannot bear the truth.' He says truth is destructive and demands
its victims." It is safe to say that Bonhoeffer would have much to say about the
Starr investigation -- and that he might also cast a wary eye at religious ethicists
publishing a book titled Judgment Day at the White House, a title which seems to
imply that final judgement is in human hands, not those of God.
2. That the President has exhibited a sustained pattern of adultery and of viewing
women (in his private life) as instruments for sexual gratification, as well as a
willingness to exploit his personal position for such gratification. Even if
Christian love and forgiveness should be readily extended to those who have been
unfaithful in marriage but have expressed contrition and sought to repent, such
forgiveness can became a form of "enabling" if the behavior in question does not
change over time. Wogaman and the President's defenders are notably weak on this point. As
Jean Bethke Elshtain has pointed out, Wogaman makes no mention of the seriousness of the
harassment charge brought by Paula Jones; nor does he address Clinton's increasingly
well-documented pattern of unfaithfulness, or the possibility that the inequality of power
inherent in a liaison between the President of the United States and a young intern
represents not only betrayal in marriage but an abuse of power. Wogaman never acknowledges
the legitimacy of the Jones lawsuit, nor considers whether the right of a woman to pursue
harassment charges should outweigh the obvious right-wing political motivations behind the
suit. Wogaman's case would be more convincing if he acknowledged Jones' right to sue,
while regretting that the Supreme Court allowed the trial to be brought against a sitting
President (and that Clinton did not quickly settle the matter out of court.)
To the extent that Clinton's behavior represented not just a tragic slip-up but an
expression of more persistent patterns of behavior, there would be good reason for a
community of fellow believers to insist upon more from Brother Bill than diluted verbal
apologies that, as Jewett points out, failed to take explicit responsibility for specific
acts, and instead fully insist, to use Jewett's criteria for authentic repentance, on a
full acknowledgment of sin as well as "renunciation of irresponsible behavior, and a
return to a healthy relationship with God and one's fellow humans." Yet, even if one
agrees with Jewett on this point, it is far from clear what citizens -- outsiders who are
not part of Clinton's community of believers -- can and should do about "getting Bill
Clinton right with God" (and fellow humans), other than pray for the success of
Clinton's sessions with his spiritual counselors and his ultimate spiritual
rehabilitation.
It may well be, as Hauerwas and others suspect, that Clinton is too much a political
animal, too much a creature of pride, and too skilled a liar truly to mend his flaws, at
least within the context of being President of the United States. Perhaps it would be
better for Clinton's soul if he gave up being President before the end of his term. But
that is the kind of conversation that best takes place internal to a community of faith.
Again, there seems to be little the public at large could or should do other than to pray
for the wisdom of the counsel of Clinton's own community of faith, such as it is, in
dealing with the very serious ongoing pattern of behavior the President has exhibited.
3. That the President's actions violated the public trust and the implicit contract
between leaders and citizens. The signers of the Declaration, however, insist that
there is a public dimension to Clinton's wrongdoing, even beyond the questions of adultery
and perjury -- namely, that he enlisted other public servants to participate in his lie
over an eight-month time span. Elshtain concludes from these facts that
"if. . . the president is of low moral character and his word cannot be
trusted, then he cannot do his job effectively. If everything the President says is
subject to ridicule and reinterpretation because he has become untrustworthy, it becomes
difficult, if not impossible, for him to govern effectively." Wogaman and the other
Declaration dissenters do not respond to this specific point -- but perhaps they did not
need to. Now that the impeachment trial is over, Clinton, although wounded, is still
governing, and not everything he says is in fact subject to ridicule. Indeed, Elshtain's
argument that leaders who are caught in lies are subsequently unable to govern effectively
now appears to be ahistorical.
Far more persuasive than that failed attempt to build a consequentialist argument for
why leaders should not lie, however, is the lingering concern that, in Elshtain's words,
"we have moved into a zone of amoral Machiavellianism that ill befits us a
people. . ." One of the most chilling images generated by the scandal is
that of the President speaking by phone with pollster Dick Morris in January 1998,
weighing how to respond to the initial allegations of an affair with Lewinsky. Instead of
consulting his pastors, biblical texts, or his own conscience, Clinton consulted a
pollster in order to calculate what sort of response would produce the greatest political
advantage. Much as Elshtain's words indicate, the episode symbolizes the priority of
(short-term and short-sighted, as it turned out) political reasoning over moral reasoning
in the Clinton presidency -- and in a very tangible sense, the failure of the President to
exercise leadership, not just follow the polls.
4. That the President's actions, by weakening his presidency, represent a betrayal
of the political contract between Clinton and those who supported him, in that he
subordinated his larger social goals to his private gratification. This point has
been stressed in the Fackre collection by self-described "Yankee Democrat" Max
Stackhouse, among others. Placed in a position of unmatched power with so many
possibilities for doing good in a world with so much need for good to be done, the
President expended his energy, and eventually that of the entire country, on the
narrowest, most short-sighted of gratifications. Academic students of the presidency, such
as Richard E. Neustadt, have stressed the political acumen, shrewdness, prudence, and
sense of one's longer-term "power prospects" required to push one's political
agenda through the complex of checks, balances, and bureaucratic interests characteristic
of the American system. Although Clinton is the rare President that has read such studies,
once in office he brazenly disregarded their central tenets, sacrificing his own power and
hence his political agenda for the sake of Monica Lewinsky.
This is a just cause of real anger at the President, not only from close associates
such as George Stephanopolous but even more so from poorer Americans and disadvantaged
constituencies who were counting on the President to give his best effort to deliver the
goods. Yet, if one examines Clinton's previous record in Arkansas, it can also be said
that Democratic partisans got very much the man they voted for in 1992 -- and more
broadly, that the risks of such political betrayal are inherent in our form of democracy,
in which failed leaders are difficult to remove and large amounts of power are
concentrated in the presidency. (On the other hand, during the impeachment debates some
observers, including Wogaman, appealed to what they believe has been the President's
success in fulfilling his political contract -- "Many things have gone well on his
'watch,' " avers Wogaman -- in explaining why Clinton should not be removed from
office.)
5. That the fact that we have Clinton as President is evidence of systemic flaws in
our political process, flaws which reward those who can deceive the public and punish
honesty. This is a point on which critics of a variety of political stripes might
reasonably agree. In the Fackre collection, Hauerwas expresses the point, writing that
"our elections are meant to ensure that anyone we elect to public office has lost his
or her hold on the truth. It is all a matter of 'spin."' Hauerwas apparently believes
that this is simply an immutable fact of American democracy, but the truism that in
politics (as in war) truth is the first casualty is in fact intimately related to
historically-specific institutional arrangements. Consider that the prominence of money
and the compulsion to raise it in political life forces those with ambition to become
political entrepreneurs and eliminates from politics' highest echelons capable and
competent citizens lacking access to large amounts of money; that our electoral process
lacks any explicitly deliberative mechanisms; that the "political class" holds
ordinary citizens in corrosive contempt; and that in a country of 260 million people
spread over thousands of square miles television will usually trump more traditional
democratic virtues such as face-to-face political organizing, door-to-door canvassing,
etc. Given these structural features of our politics, it can effectively be argued that
Clinton should be seen as much a creature of as contributor to a flawed political system
that gives incentives to the wrong virtues. The extent to which, in the long haul, these
structural features can be altered or ameliorated remains an important open question for
those who yearn for a healthier politics and a more appealing brand of politician.
6. That the larger problem behind the Clinton scandal rests in American culture
itself, particularly insofar as it has distorted the proper role of sexuality in human
life. In an odd way, both Wogaman and harsh conservative critics of the President
such as William Bennett place the ultimate source of the presidential crisis in
shortcomings in American culture. For Bennett, the blame lies with the majority of
Americans who, inexplicably in his view, did not wish the President to be expelled from
office. According to Bennett, this response represents a dulling of our collective moral
sense. Wogaman also believes something has gone deeply awry in the culture in terms of
sexuality: The commercial media have found profit in helping to create an over-stimulated
culture and in promulgating the idea of sex as a "form of self-centeredness or
selfish exploitation of others." But where Wogaman would take direct issue with the
general approach of a Bennett or a Starr is in doubting that the best way to deal with the
problem is "by exposing and condemning the excesses, meanwhile titillating the
onlookers. . ." Since the real problem is the absence of love in our
understanding of sexuality, Wogaman suggests, any corrective action must be taken in a
spirit of love and with full acknowledgement of human weakness.
Wogaman's refusal to combat sin with self-righteousness appears to be on solid
theological and ethical ground, particularly if we recall Bonhoeffer's warnings about
over-zealous, self-appointed exposers of "truth." Yet one may also wonder
whether Wogaman has any substantive ideas for seriously challenging the society's
(mis)understanding of sexuality and the media through by which it is created and through
which it is filtered. (None are in evidence in this book.) To the extent that Wogaman and
other ethicists believe that there is a serious cultural dysfunction that needs to be
addressed, it is incumbent upon them to provide substantive suggestions about how to
reweave the needed moral fabric. Otherwise, critics of Starr-style exposés may themselves
be accused of simply citing a sociological fact (this culture's distorted understanding of
sexuality) that they have no real intention of seriously trying to alter in order to
deflect attention from the tangible failings of an individual human being.
Restating the Ethical Agenda
What then are we to make of these claims? This preliminary analysis suggests that,
beyond the President's legal liability, there is little ground for persons external to
Mr. Clinton's marriage or his community of faith to pass judgment or demand
forgiveness with regard to the first two claims. With regard to the third and fourth
claims, pertaining to Clinton's betrayal of his constituency and the public at large,
critics of the President are on stronger ground. There is good reason to believe that
history will not be kind to the President for squandering his opportunity to serve the
public because of a lack of personal discipline, and, ultimately, a lack of commitment to
his avowed public agenda. The fifth and sixth claims ultimately require that citizens stop
pointing the finger at one man but instead scrutinize the larger political system as a
whole -- and perhaps take a long look in the mirror. Apart from one rather bland sentence
in the Declaration itself, it is unfortunate that most of the essays in Judgment Day
at the White House tend to downplay or ignore this dimension -- the responsibility of
citizens who do not like the current state of the nation's political or cultural life to
act in common to improve the situation, rather than cast blame on one obviously
flawed man.
Indeed, perhaps the most disturbing question to be raised about these books is why it
took this event and not some other to stir so many ethicists into public speech. With few
exceptions (such as Hauerwas), the Declaration and its signers seem more bent on
protecting American constitutionalism and political culture from perceived moral threats
than in acknowledging that this very political culture is itself morally problematic and
all too frequently complicit in the execution or perpetuation of radical evil. Neither
Wogaman's emphasis on forgiveness and caring, nor his defense of the President's record in
office, impress when placed beside the fact that this President, like many others before
him, continues to call for billions of dollars in increased arms spending -- and lacks the
imagination or courage even to consider implementing the global anti-poverty agenda of the
United Nations Development Program, which could eliminate child hunger and provide basic
social services worldwide for roughly $40 billion a year. Meanwhile, several hundred
thousand Iraqi children have died during Clinton's presidency because of an embargo of
dubious effectiveness that has earned the outrage and condemnation of international
observers. These moral evils do not much exercise the minds or occasion the writings of
many of the academic ethicists who have been eager to spill ink on the Clinton scandal.
Biblical ethics at its best calls us to see the world fresh through the eyes of the
Bible, and to let biblical notions of justice set the agenda. Such a worldview requires
not only that one be reactive to the events of the day, no matter how traumatic or
diverting, but also carry forward a positive agenda for the achievement of social justice
and human reconciliation. While the volumes at hand do raise the major issues presented by
the Clinton crisis and offer considerable wisdom, their confusion, shortcomings, and
especially their hyperbole reflect the fact that with few exceptions these ethicists too
closely echo the information and opinions of the mainstream media outlets.
What is missing is the reminder that of all the evils in the world, President Clinton's
behavior in the Monica Lewinsky affair, deplorable as it is, is hardly the most serious.
Its impact on our national life has too often been exaggerated. Long before the scandal
broke, Americans were losing faith in their government, the capacity of ordinary citizens
to influence public life was weakening, institutions responsible for moral formation were
under attack, and children were going hungry -- to name just a few of the very real
problems of American life that religious ethicists need to be confronting directly. The
real question is not whether religious ethicists can respond effectively in "real
time" to these traumatic episodes in the national life, taking their seats at the
punditry table to contribute soundbites to an agenda set by the nation's media complex,
but whether ethicists can find ways to call effective attention to the deeper, persistent
problems of American society and its relationship with the world.
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