Book Reviews--

The Meaning of Is: The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton, Bob Barr. Stroud & Hall Publishers, 2004, 246 pages, hardcover, $26.00.

Bob Barr is a former U.S. Attorney and prosecutor who from 1995 to 2003 represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a senior member of the Judiciary Committee at the time of the Clinton impeachment, and served as one of the “House impeachment managers” for the trial in the Senate.

His book The Meaning of Is is an important addition to the book by David Schippers, Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton’s Impeachment. Schippers saw the impeachment from much the same vantage-point as Barr, since Schippers was the Chief Investigative Counsel for the Republican majority of the House Judiciary Committee.

The significance of both books is made clear when Barr reminds us that the Clinton legacy is almost certain to be defined, at least in the short run, by today’s dominant coterie of professional and academic historians, four hundred of whom signed a statement opposing the impeachment. Barr says “the individuals who will write much of the history of the Clinton administration are completely devoid of objectivity.” He says “these are the self-styled ‘intellectual giants’ who occupy posh distinguished chairs in academic ivory towers around the country.” One such historian Barr cites is Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who called Kenneth Starr “America’s No. 1 pornographer” because Starr, as the appointed independent counsel, detailed the Lewinsky affair in his report to Congress. Barr sees his own book as helping to “keep the record straight” about the Clinton years.

It isn’t altogether clear that Barr is correct in thinking the Clinton legacy will be recounted in a heavily favorable way. An interesting thing has happened to the memory of John F. Kennedy during the more than four decades since his assassination: to be sure, much of the popular media continue the “Camelot” myth; but a great deal has come to light from insiders about Kennedy’s behavior, both as to his adultery and his relations with mob figures. There, the “court historians” have not permanently defined the JFK image. One suspects that much the same will happen with William Jefferson Clinton.

Schippers and Barr were of like mind in having wanted the impeachment inquiry to go far beyond the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky episodes. Barr in particular emphasizes that there were stronger grounds for impeachment in the damage Barr sees Clinton as having done to national security, in the misuse of the presidency, and in the undermining of civil liberties. Barr’s book goes into considerable detail about each, and this provides much of its substance.

“National security,” he says, “remains the foremost reason Bill Clinton should have been impeached and removed.”

Not only did Bill Clinton take campaign contributions from agents of foreign governments, but he also gave at least one of them a top job at the Department of Commerce. The now-infamous name of this particular individual is John Huang. Huang got his job because he raised massive amounts of cash--more than one million dollars--for Bill Clinton. As was later discovered, much of this money was illegally laundered foreign cash.

Red China conducted espionage that sought nuclear parity with the United States, obtained the illegal transfer of missile technology and the easing of export restrictions on technology, and (according to the bipartisan commission headed by congressman Chris Cox, as stated by Barr),

. . . obtained computer models, guidance system designs, and virtually every cutting-edge technology needed to construct world-class nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles.

National security was further compromised by the administration’s active opposition to security checks on White House personnel, as detailed by FBI agent Gary Aldrich, who served inside the White House at the end of the George H. W. Bush administration and the beginning of Clinton’s first term, in his own book, Unlimited Access. Moreover, access was sold for campaign contributions: “One of the worst such cases,” Barr says, “was that of Jorge ‘Gordito’ Cabrera of Miami. Cabrera was a top cocaine trafficker for Colombian drug cartels,” who had made a “large donation of campaign cash.”

The book recounts various ways Barr sees abuse of the presidential office. These include the hurried naturalization of one million immigrants immediately before the 1996 election to enlarge the Democratic electorate, with a fifth not receiving the required FBI checks; the use of the American military to direct attention away from Clinton’s troubles; the solicitation of campaign contributions from government offices (which, Barr says, is a widely observed legally imposed taboo); the violation of election spending caps; the obstruction of the investigation following the death of Vince Foster (even though Barr himself concludes the death was a suicide); the White House Travel Office cronyism scandal; and a systematic obstruction of justice in the Whitewater scandal.

The attack on civil liberties, Barr argues, was apparent in the misuse of confidential FBI files about hundreds of Republicans; the political use of the Internal Revenue Service to cause several conservative think tanks to be audited; the egregious misconduct in the Waco disaster, and its subsequent cover-up; the “unjustified force resulting in the deaths of Americans” at Ruby Ridge; and the vastly disproportionate use of force in the Elian Gonzalez case.

The items listed in these categories don’t exhaust the misconduct that pertains to Clinton’s legacy, since they don’t include such matters as the last-minute presidential pardons or the systematic vandalism that did so much damage in the White House as the Clintons moved out. These came too late to have been possible grounds for impeachment. Nor do the lists enumerate the various charges of sexual harassment and abuse, such as from Kathleen Wiley and Juanita Broaddrick.

A number of reasons came together, Barr says, to prevent the use of these many earlier abuses in the grounds for impeachment, which both he and Schippers passionately wanted to do. Most specifically, the Republicans waited too long for the Starr Report (which wasn’t filed with the Congress until September 9, 1998) and placed too exclusive a reliance upon it. The Report was limited to detailing a legal case of perjury and obstruction in the Lewinsky and Jones affairs. Barr explains that

. . . if we extended the inquiry long enough to achieve a full investigation, it would run into the next Congress, forcing us [the Judiciary Committee] to obtain new authority and funding from a body with new members . . . --clearly an unlikely scenario.

Thus did the “political side of impeachment--the more operative side--come to be essentially ignored.”

There were other forces at work as well, according to Barr. For a number of reasons going back to 1995, the Republican leadership lost its morale and will to lead, which led it to prefer to leave Clinton in office to “end his term as a crippled president.” For their part, the Democrats produced a solidarity not unlike that of a Leninist party; and Attorney General Janet Reno successfully dragged her feet at critical junctures.

It all amounted, as the sub-title to Barr’s book states, to a “squandered impeachment and wasted legacy of William Jefferson Clinton.” It is likely that scholars and political commentators (perhaps a future William Shakespeare) will long find it to hold much grist for thought. This is especially so because the whole episode so greatly holds up a mirror to American society.

--Dwight D. Murphey

Classic Americans, Louise Lane and James Albert. Windham Press, P.O. Box 292, New Rochelle, N.Y. 10804, (2001), $14.99.

Louise Lane and James Albert’s Classic Americans contain 32  biographical vignettes of men and women--many but not all famous--who contributed in varying ways to our national heritage. Generally running from four to twelve pages, the accounts are stylistically simple enough for not only junior college students but also upper levels in high school. Indeed, this should be required reading for immigrants to promote assimilation!

The authors’ underlying premise is that personal idealism and often courageous individual efforts played a major role in the success of their subjects. This applies to almost a dozen who were female or Black, as it does to the substantial majority whose origins were modest or even impoverished.

Much of the burgeoning “literature” that inundates college and high school instructors today implies either that our success depends upon government regulations and handouts, or conversely that the system itself oppressively limits our opportunities to make a difference. Similarly, the role of great American individuals is either dwarfed by “social forces,” or they are portrayed--if European Americans--as in some important sense morally defective (e.g., Washington owned slaves).

In all these respects, Classic Americans can be used by politically incorrect instructors to provide not only a semblance of ideological balance, but also a source of positive inspiration to students who want to feel pride in their country’s heritage. In a sense, the authors--whose selections reflect our classical as opposed to radicalized liberal tradition--are in keeping with the pre-1960s orientation toward America’s heritage.

The work’s contemporary value for students then cannot be exaggerated. Its shortcomings can even serve as a basis for classroom discussion. For example, are the treatments unduly laudatory? Or is this a much-needed antidote to the plethora of deconstructionist treatments that permeate academia and the mass media (e.g., “Empire of Faith” on PBS).

Similarly one can easily question the authors’ selections. Of the few on the left, why Eleanor Roosevelt rather than Thomas Jefferson, Eugene Debs, Woodrow Wilson or even her husband? Or with respect to other women, why Sybil Ludington as opposed to Pat Schroeder or even Phyllis Schafly? As for Blacks, aren’t Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, M. L. King or even Malcolm X of greater significance than C. J. Walker?

The same can be said with respect to conservatives, centrists and the apolitical. Surely James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Robert E. Lee, T. R. Roosevelt or Douglas MacArthur played more important roles than Rosalyn Yalow, Jimmy Stewart or Irving Berlin. Then there are omissions of such influential conservative idealists as Ronald Reagan, Dr. Laura, William F. Buckley and Rush Limbaugh!

Indeed there is a total absence of agrarian or paleo-conservatives. Charles Linbergh who comes closest to this tendency is eulogized without explaining or even mentioning his role in America First during the late 1930s. Both Lindbergh and Henry Ford are erroneously depicted as pacifists during this period even though they are described as playing important roles in the subsequent war effort.

Thus, although Lane and Albert’s Classic Americans leans slightly to the left due to these attributes and its disproportionate inclusion of minorities and women, such a tacit compromise with political correctness may be the price of inclusion in the junior college and secondary school market.

Even so, many multiculturalist Liberals or “progressives” will deep-six it for being too moderate, including a majority who are dead white men, etc. Perhaps in the current climate, this is the most one can realistically expect to be offered students even on a limited basis. As the Swedes say, “never let the best be an enemy of the better.”

--Miles D. Wolpin

Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, by Jack F. Matlock Jr. Random House, $27.95, 363 pages, illus.

This is the story of a global miracle and how it happened. It’s been told before by other historians, but not with the same insights and almost burdensome inside information as are contained in Jack F. Matlock Jr.’s new book, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.

Mr. Matlock, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union (1987-1991), was President Ronald Reagan’s adviser as Russia moved from its inhuman totalitarian system to the beginnings of a genuine thaw. Historians of the Cold War will find this book indispensable.

Mr. Matlock tells the story in so pedestrian a fashion that there are times you want to stop reading. But then, perhaps when you get right down to the nitty-gritty technical details of miracles--say, the parting of the Red Sea or how Balaam’s ass got talking or the loaves and fishes--such information might become over-detailed.

It is a fascinating memoir, and as I read it I kept thinking about the two men who made the miracle possible.

The miracle? A Cold War that ended cold, without missiles and megadeaths.

The miracle workers? Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who as late as 1986 said in an interview with the French Communist daily, L’Humanite, “Stalinism is a concept thought up by the enemies of Communism to discredit socialism as a whole.” (Somebody should ask Mr. Gorbachev whether he still believes that particular piece of tripe.)

Three years later the Berlin Wall came down and with it the whole kit and caboodle called “socialism.” For a little while longer, Mr. Gorbachev continued to believe that the bloody-minded V.I. Lenin had been a great leader.

President Reagan, says Mr. Matlock, had no such problem about changing his mind or his ideas about Communism. He came to the White House animated by one idea: The Soviet Union was an “evil empire.” Or as he put it succinctly, “We win, they lose.”

Mr. Matlock minimizes Reagan’s anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism, which is a mistake. In fact he blames Reagan’s speech writers for pushing their--not his--anti-Soviet agenda. He forgets that it was Gov. Reagan who insisted at the 1976 Republican convention on passage of a resolution in favor of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to counteract President Ford’s refusal (thanks to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) to receive the Russian dissident novelist.

What becomes clear from Mr. Matlock’s account is that Reagan’s anti-Communism changed dramatically with the arrival on the scene of Mr. Gorbachev.

There was no way of knowing that Mr. Gorbachev would become the great reformer. After all, he was the protege of KGB chief and later Soviet General Secretary Yuri V. Andropov, the hard liner of hard liners.

But Reagan knew something, and acted on what turned out to be a sagacious hunch.

What Reagan did in his first term was to obliterate the Kissinger detente policy: trade agreements, phony summit meetings, loss of U.S. strategic nuclear superiority, casting a blind eye on Soviet violations of arms control agreements and legitimizing as a permanent Soviet sphere of influence Central and Eastern Europe.

In toto, what Kissingerism or Nixonism meant was graciously accepting second place in the world of nations. In fact, in a half-hour TV broadcast on March 31, 1976, Reagan quoted Mr. Kissinger as telling Adm. Elmo Zumwalt,

The day of the United States is past and today is the day of the Soviet Union. My job as Secretary of State is to negotiate the most acceptable second-best position available.

Thirteen years later, when Reagan left the White House in January 1989, Mr. Matlock writes, “the Cold War had ended in principle.” And with it, two years later, the Soviet Union ended in fact.

Reagan was fortunate in having at his side the masterful Secretary of State George Shultz, whom Mr. Matlock describes as “one of the most effective statesmen of the twentieth century.”

No man is better equipped than Mr. Matlock, who speaks fluent Russian, to tell the story of the Soviet implosion. In 1981 he had been charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, then was ambassador to Czechoslovakia, and then a member of the National Security Council until his ambassadorial assignment to Moscow in 1987.

In a piquant touch, the research assistant for this memoir was Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the sociopathic ruler of Russia from 1957 to 1964.

Reagan and Gorbachev has its flaws. One of them is Mr. Matlock’s view, which borders on the metaphysical, of how the Cold War ended. As he puts it, “as for winners, everyone including the Soviet Union won.”

Why is it that, when you ask who won World War I, World War II or the war in Vietnam, the answers are easily forthcoming (the Allies beat the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler, the United States lost to North Vietnam), but when it comes to who triumphed in the Cold War, a great smog immediately blankets the question?

The response, if you’re Mr. Matlock, is simple and utterly inaccurate. Everybody did not win the Cold War. This is the ahistorical George Kennan position.

In 1969, Mr. Kennan wrote:

The retraction of Soviet power from its present bloated and unhealthy limits is essential to the stability of world relationships.

Twenty-seven years later, there was no Soviet power; its “bloated and unhealthy limits” had been retracted. There wasn’t even a Soviet Union.

So didn’t the democracies win the Cold War? Didn’t the once Soviet-satellized countries of Central Europe and the Baltic “win” the Cold War? When the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989, without bloodshed, wasn’t that a victory? Shh, mustn’t gloat in front of the children.

The problem is that Mr. Matlock, like Mr. Kennan, doesn’t tell you how he defines victory. It is playing with words to say everybody won the Cold War.

Clearly Mr. Matlock is a Reagan admirer. He tells us that Reagan “had no secret strategy but described every element of his policy to the public,” that “he saw both the arms race and geopolitical competition as symptoms of an ideological struggle, not its causes.”

. . . His greatest asset was his character. He dealt with others, whether friends, adversaries, or subordinates, openly and without guile.

A slow read but worth the investment.

--Arnold Beichman