The Magic of Talking Points: A case study

The Magic of Talking Points: A Case Study.

My attention recently was called to an article published by FoxNews by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, entitled “Do The Clintons Now Support Jail Time for Perjurers?“ The basic thrust of their article is that for Hillary Clinton to criticize the clemency granted to Scooter Libby is hypocritical, considering the pardons Bill Clinton granted to his cronies.

I choose to target this essay because it is an example of the kind of “talking points” often used to defend the Bush Administration, and is a sorry display of commentators entering the fray with rubber spears. I don’t care if the journalist is a liberal or a conservative, I am on a mission to decontaminate the public air of pseudo thought processing.

I am no defender of Bill Clinton’s morality nor everyday political machinations, but Morris and McGann’s effort to whitewash Scooter Libby by making dissimilar associations between him and, for example, Marc Rich (a Democratic supporter of President Clinton indicted for securities fraud but pardoned by Clinton), and to hoist the charge of perjury against Clinton on stage for comparison, should flunk any test of sound argumentation. And as an easy-to-miss consequence of Morris and McGann’s jumbled logic, their effort backfires on them.

Here is the problem:

First: (Ill-logic)

To speak of Clinton’s perjury and Libby’s perjury as if they were the same thing is just sloppy talk. What was each lying about? Clinton lied about inexcusable, yet private behavior--unrelated to issues of public matters of office. Libby lied about his official duties and activities as the Vice President’s Chief of Staff. Yes perjury is perjury, but there are degrees and kinds. Our legal tradition has divided other violations more definitively, such as the distinction between murder and manslaughter, or felonies and misdemeanors. Perjury is difficult to prosecute successfully. And the Senate decided Clinton’s actions did not meet the constitutional standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

In contrast Libby was convicted in federal court. To call the Libby and Clinton perjuries the same thing is as sensible as to think that John Edwards, the presidential candidate, and John Edwards, the TV psychic, are the same person.

Second: (use of magic tricks in place of reasoning)

A common mortar used to build a wall of talking points is the use of "slight-of-word." Morris and McGann state, "Libby’s offense was so similar to Bill’s own criminal conviction." Notice that Libby here, according to our commentators, only committed an "offense," while Clinton’s act was "criminal." They have it exactly backwards. Libby was convicted of a crime. Clinton was guilty of "offending" the public’s sense of decency. The public and the Senate apparently figured "no harm, no foul." Morris and McGann apparently figure "yes foul, no harm," but try to deflect attention from the "yes foul" by making a straw horse comparison.

When there is a fork in the road, talking points only point; they don’t serve as good information directives. Morris and McGann’s premise is that their "comparison" makes Hillary Clinton a hypocrite for objecting to Libby’s pardon (oops, commutation). But actually sound reasoning based on Morris and McGann’s premise could as easily lead to an entirely different conclusion. If the Clinton pardons of Marc Rich and others were bad, Libby’s "clemency" is equally bad. Two bad’s don’t make one of the bad’s a good.

Third: (careless terminology and mis-use of information--quintessential with talking points)

Morris and McGann apparently find it necessary to fog over the distinction between pardons and commutations by using the term "executive privilege." Only setting it up this way enables them to discuss Libby and Clinton on the same plane.

The clubfooted comparison is further enfeebled by the strained remark that Clinton is the "king of pardons" with his 140 acts. The complete story is that Nixon issued well over 900 (in about half the time), and G.W. Bush is not done. If his insistence on "executive privilege" is pushed by Congress into arbitration by the courts and it fails to meet the Constitutional test as the President practices it, he may have to issue a number of more pardons, as his father did for other convicted, high level law breakers in the Iran-Contra scandal. Even if Clinton issued pardons that are indefensible on their face. I am not aware that he granted any of them to "protect" himself from charges of personal complicity, as (in my mind) is the motivation behind the key pardons of George I and the commutation of George II.

Fourth: (it takes one to know one)

Morris and McGann make a strong case about cronyism. It is a sad story. Unfortunately I am confident that the charge of cronyism will stain the pages that historians will write about the Bush family as deeply as the story of the Clintons.

However, it is a different matter when the cronies are given high level offices in the Administration. There is a difference between the messy brashness of rewarding friends financially for their support and putting them into office where they can do public damage. I find it difficult to think of the Chief of Staff of the Vice President as a mere "crony." Do you think of H.R. Haldeman, John Mitchell, Jeb Stuart, John Dean, and other felons of Watergate as mere "cronies"? Scooter Libby was Cheney’s Chief of Staff and was convicted of felonies, including obstruction of justice. To make him a mere "crony" in order to smudge Clinton with more of the same, again backfires on Morris and McGann . The pot calls the kettle black in order to divert attention from its own blackness. But he who is not tricked by this strategy can quickly see that the pot’s claim against the kettle is actually an admission of its own darkness.

Let’s take the pot and kettle off the stove, let them cool down, and reason together. Good reasoning is nothing more than commonsense applied to good information without emotional attachment.

In Conclusion:
My overall point is that trading on Clinton’s badness doesn’t make Bush a good guy for doing the same thing, particularly when the case in point is not the same thing. What is at the root of this perjury matter is a constitutional issue. At least Clinton did not try to subvert the Constitution’s structure as a modus operandi, which in my mind is what the whole Libby matter, Valerie Plame outing, federal prosecutors’ firing, etc., etc., is all about. (note my blogsite entry, "Dead Voices Still Speak.")

Just last week, in his interim "surge" report, Bush said his guide is not the polls but the military generals (He, of course does not mean the ones who have retired or were eased out-- who oppose him publicly.) Translation: Bush’s preferred generals rather than the people rule us. If he is Commander-in-Chief, why does the President push the responsibility for Iraq onto the general’s shoulders? President Truman, without a college education, knew how to handle generals, and he did it out in the open. Our current President, a Yale graduate, needs to pull out his high school history text where he will find a copy of the Constitution. The writers made an intentional point of making the commander-in chief an elective position. This crippled pardon analogy is a smokescreen for a more serious matter.

Doug Good