Misanthrope's Corner.(public opinion of the Clintons' departure from the White House)(Brief Article)

The ultimate test of a civilization's collective character is the value it places on idiosyncratic forms of honor. Ours were on heartening display in the public's reaction to the eleventh-hour kleptomania committed by departing Clintonians aboard Air Force One. More Americans were more shocked by the theft of silverware, dishes, and blankets than ever cared about Monica, Whitewater, and Chinagate combined.

The citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts, reacted the same way when Lizzie Borden was accused of shoplifting twelve years after being acquitted of double homicide. You know God's in His heaven and all's right with the world when rock-ribbed Yankees shake their heads and grumble, "Murder is one thing, but . . ." Thomas De Quincey understood this phenomenon. In his essay "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts," he wrote: "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." In other words, little things mean a lot because they are the things that most people can readily understand. As with all motivations to good behavior, this one is a matter of pride. Knowing ourselves to be incapable of crime on a really titanic scale, we harbor a corresponding dread of being exposed as petty criminals. We might not have the brains or the guts to pull off murder or extortion, but we're by-God not going to get caught swiping pillowcases and suffer the embarrassment of everybody knowing that we think small.

However, if somebody else gets caught swiping pillowcases, our dormant self-disgust suddenly awakens and "reaches out," as Republicans say. Psychiatrists use the term "projection" to describe the human urge to punish people who remind us of the least flattering aspects of ourselves.

The sure knowledge, evident to all by now, that we will never see the end of Bill Clinton is building up a massive sense of frustration in the country. It would help if an example were made of his light- fingered minions, but the Bushies don't seem to know it, or else are ignoring it.

The absence of righteous wrath on the part of the new administration is a big letdown. Between Air Force One thievery and the sophomoric destruction and defacement of White House property, I was sure that our long national nightmare of compassionate conservatism was finally over, but instead of ending with a bang it is proceeding with the old familiar whimper.

Asked about Bush's reaction to the trashing of the White House, Ari Fleischer said, "He does not consider it a personal affront." The copiers are spitting out cartoons of him as Alfred E. Neuman talking dirty and he doesn't consider it a personal affront?

Fleischer, who is fast shaping up as the man I'm going to love to hate, is a virtuoso on the humility horn, his boss's favorite instrument, which he tooted in a passage of triple-tonguing that approached incoherence: "The president understands that transitions ...