WASHINGTON OUTLOOK

THE RIGHT SWINGS THE WRONG WAY IN JUDGING AMERICA'S MORAL PENDULUM

Among conservatives it is an article of faith that Congress has to
oust President Clinton to awaken a country badly in need of moral
renewal. That argument has only two problems. One is that all
evidence suggests that a moral renewal is already underway in
America. The second is that the public response to the Clinton
scandal--condemnation of his behavior bounded by opposition to his
removal--embodies the new social consensus that's making this renewal
possible.

During the House impeachment debate earlier this month, the principal
Republican argument was that removing Clinton was essential to uphold
"the rule of law." But the underground spring feeding much of the
fervor in this fight is the conservative belief that America is
locked in a 30-year "culture war." To the right, Clinton embodies
everything that went wrong with America in the 1960s. Forcing him out
is meant not only to hold him personally accountable for his
duplicity, it's also meant to roll back the "moral relativism"
advanced by the baby boom generation and reestablish bright lines of
right and wrong.

These themes suffuse conservative writing and thinking about the
scandal. In September, when independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr
released his report on Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, the
Wall Street Journal editorialized that Starr was "not just
prosecuting Bill Clinton; he was prosecuting the entire culture that
gave birth to what Bill Clinton represents." Rev. John Neuhaus,
editor of the influential conservative magazine First Things, says
that removing Clinton "would be an enormous emetic" (it is a word;
you can look it up) and "would purge us" as a society. House Majority
Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) brought this subtext to the surface when he
declared that the struggle over impeachment was "a debate about
relativism versus absolute truth." These arguments not only help
explain why conservatives have been so passionate about removing
Clinton. They also help explain why the rest of the country has been
so cool--if not hostile--to that cause.

The right's problem is that while it sees the struggle against Clinton
as a critical moment in a long culture war, most Americans consider
that war long settled. Conservative thinkers such as Robert H. Bork
may worry that Clinton symbolizes a society that has lost the
capacity to distinguish right from wrong, but virtually every major
social indicator now shows Americans turning back toward more
traditional views about family, self-restraint and personal
responsibility.

In its latest issue, the conservative American Enterprise magazine
offers more than two dozen indicators charting what looks much like a
cultural U-turn. Not all trends, of course, are positive (teen drug
use, for one). But the overall direction is unmistakable. Among
teens, suicide, sex and pregnancy are down (pregnancy to its lowest
level in 20 years) and church attendance is up. For society overall,
the rates of both abortion and out-of-wedlock births are dropping,
crime and welfare dependency are plummeting, the divorce rate has
been edging down since 1980, and charitable giving is up.

Yet even amid this return to more traditional moral patterns, there's
no sign that the country is simply trying to recapture the past; it's
not as if everyone is trying to move into "Pleasantville." Instead,
the evidence suggests that families today seem to be melding the GI
generation's respect for rules with the baby boomers' reverence for
individual choice in a classically American pattern of amalgamation
and fusion.

The result is a pragmatic moral synthesis that accepts the need for
transcendent standards of right and wrong yet tempers that conviction
with a '60s notion of tolerance for those who fail to meet those
standards. As sociologist Alan Wolfe wrote in his recent book, "One
Nation, After All"--an insightful examination of middle-class
morality--Americans now "believe in the importance of leading a
virtuous life but are reluctant to impose values they understand as
virtuous for themselves on others." In a society in which questioning
authority has itself become something of a traditional value, what
makes this morality work is its willingness to make distinctions. As
Wolfe writes, many Americans now recoil from "morality writ large":
oracular, inflexible pronouncements from any institution (especially
government). What they want is "morality writ small": a code of
conduct that establishes clear expectations but also acknowledges the
messy choices of daily life.

Nothing demonstrates that preference more clearly than the public
reaction to the Clinton scandal. In poll after poll, the country has
unequivocally denounced Clinton's behavior. Yet, most Americans have
rejected the conclusion that Clinton's offenses are sufficient to
justify his removal--or even to erase the positive attributes
(empathy, tenacity, vision) that they continue to see in him.

In many ways, the argument over Clinton comes down to competing planes
of vision: morality writ large vs. morality writ small. Conservatives
want to focus on the underlying principle: He lied, and that's wrong.
Most Americans, while accepting the principle, continue to temper it
by looking at the particulars: He lied about sex, not about a
fundamental decision of state.

In the end, this extended morality play may send out a different
cultural message from the one the right hopes for. Clinton's critics
want to show that a society cannot function without sharp lines of
right and wrong--and a willingness to punish those who cross them.
But with this struggle unearthing the adulteries of so many other
political leaders, the country may take an opposite message: that
tolerance of human imperfection is as essential to a society's
functioning as respect for absolute standards.

That is actually a moral calculus more sophisticated and nuanced than
most of the Washington elite has applied to the Clinton scandal. The
capital is now obsessed with finding every politician's maximum point
of vulnerability and then bludgeoning him or her with it. But the
public is insisting on judging its political leaders not only by what
they've done at the lowest moments of their lives but also by what
they can be at their best. That's not a sign of moral collapse; it's
the mark of a society building a moral code both demanding enough and
forgiving enough to unify the most diverse nation on the planet.

Ronald Brownstein's column appears in this space every
Monday.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry