Clinton: Enough.(Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)

It would be perfectly appropriate, strictly as a legal matter, for independent counsel Robert Ray to indict Citizen Clinton. Bill Clinton lied under oath in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, compounded the offense by repeating his lies to a federal grand jury, and topped it all off with a healthy helping of witness-tampering and obstruction of justice. Clinton's own, not particularly energetic Justice Department has pursued dozens of prosecutions for perjury in roughly comparable civil cases. Indeed, Ray, whose office requires him to investigate and prosecute crimes related to the Lewinsky matter, would be hard pressed to justify not indicting Clinton.

An indictment would represent a gratifying comeuppance for Clinton, who is not only remorseless, but actually proud of his fight to defend his Oval Office trysts and subsequent lies (see his Esquire interview-it's the one with the cover featuring the president's crotch). But this doesn't mean indictment would be the right thing, as a matter of process or politics. The trouble isn't with Ray, but with his office. Conservatives have always opposed the independent counsel as an extra-constitutional excrescence unmoored from any political accountability. This is why Lawrence Walsh could pursue niggling indictments years after the Iran-contra scandal had reached a political resolution through resignations and damage to the Reagan administration. And why Ray may indict Clinton after the political process has already rendered rough justice in ...