Aftermath: The Clinton Impeachment and the Presidency in the Age of Political Spectacle

by Leonard V. Kaplan, Beverly Moran

Overview

With the specter of prosecution after his term is over and the possibility of disbarment in Arkansas hanging over President Clinton, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the events that have followed it show no sign of abating. The question has become what to do, and how to think, about those eight months. Did the President lie or was it plausible that he had truthfully testified to no sexual relationship? Was the job search for Monica just help for a friend or a sinister means of obtaining silence? Even if all the charges were true, did impeachment follow or was censure enough? And what are the lasting repercussions on the office of the Presidency?
Aftermath: The Clinton Impeachment and the Presidency in the Age of Political Spectacle takes a multi-disciplinary approach to analyze the Clinton impeachment from political perspectives across the spectrum. The authors attempt to tease out the meanings of the scandal from the vantage point of law, religion, public opinion, and politics, both public and personal. Further, the impeachment itself is situated broadly within the contemporary American liberal state and mined for the contradictory possibilities for reconciliation it reveals in our culture.
Contributors: David T. Canon, John Cooper, Drucilla Cornell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Robert W. Gordon, Lawrence Joseph, Leonard V. Kaplan, David Kennedy, Kenneth R. Mayer, Beverly I. Moran, Father Richard John Neuhaus, David Novak, Linda Denise Oakley, Elizabeth Rapaport, Lawrence Rosen, Eric Rothstein, Aviam Soifer, Lawrence M. Solan, Cass R. Sunstein, Stephen Toulmin, Leon Trakman, Frank Tuerkheimer, Mark V. Tushnet, Andrew D. Weiner, Robin L. West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814747421
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2001
Series:	Critical America , #7
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Leonard V. Kaplan (Author)
Leonard V. Kaplan is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law has co-edited six books, and has written over thirty articles. He was a co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of a journal, Graven Images: Studies in Culture, Law and the Sacred.

Beverly Moran (Editor)
Beverly Moran is the Voss-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and Director of the Wisconsin Center on Law and Africa and the editor of Race and Wealth Disparities: A Multidisciplinary Discourse (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) and editor of Aftermath: The Clinton Impeachment and the Presidency in the Age of Political Spectacle (NYU Press, 2001).

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	1
Part I	Politics
1	A Case Study in Group Polarization (with Warnings for the Future)	11
2	Sex and Politics at the Close of the Twentieth Century: A Feminist Looks Back at the Clinton Impeachment and the Thomas Confirmation Hearings	22
3	Public, Private, and the Gender Division of Emotional Labor	34
4	Everything You Thought You Knew about Impeachment Is Wrong	47
5	Pierre Elliot Trudeau: A Canadian Scandal?	63
Part II	Law
6	Comparing the Independent Counsel to Other Prosecutors: Privilege and Other Issues	83
7	Legalizing Outrage	97
8	The Gold Standard and Guilt-Edged Insecurities: The Impeachment Crucible as Tragic Farce	113
9	Sex, Harm, and Impeachment	129
10	Impeachment: A (Civil) Religious Perspective	150
11	The Constitutional Politics of the Clinton Impeachment	162
Part III	Shaping Public Opinion
12	Ontology in the Clinton Era	179
13	All We Had to Do Was Rationalize the Sex	186
14	Perjury and Impeachment: The Rule of Law or the Rule of Lawyers?	199
15	Impeachment and Enchanting Arts	212
16	A Year after the Acquittal in the Impeachment Trial	226
Part IV	Religion
17	An Un-Christian Pursuit	237
18	Abuse of Power as a Cultural Construct	243
19	Bill Clinton and the American Character	253
20	The Clinton Scandal: Law and Morals	267
Part V	The Political Is Personal
21	The Spectacle and the Libertine	279
22	The Political Is Personal	297
23	Dropped Drawers: A Viewpoint	312
	Conclusion: The Penultimate: The Meaning of Impeachment and Liberal Governance	321
	Contributors	353
	Index	359

Editorial Reviews

"The first serious collection of academic reflections about the scandal, the essays in Aftermath offer citizens, students, lawyers, and historians fresh insights about American law and liberalism, about culture wars and family values, and about the politics of scandal in the late twentieth century."

Martha Minow

"History will be forever haunted by the 20th century's last, longest, legalistic right-wing coup attempt against a popular president. Limited to sleazy sex, political and policy differences were downplayed. The important, splendid, controversial essays collected in Aftermath provide learned context for this defining, though bizarre moment in American history and culture. Everyone interested in the individual and the law, politics and the future will want to read this book."

Blanche Wiesen Cook