Post-Impeachment Blues

For anyone who cares about democratic values, the most significant thing about the impeachment debacle was the vapidity of the surrounding debate—its failure to raise serious questions about the structure or future of American democracy. This, and not the question of Clinton’s vindication, is its true significance. Indeed, beneath the inflated constitutional rhetoric and salacious media attention, the proceedings reveal some troubling features of the operation of power in American politics today.

One is the Southernization/Dixiecratization of the Republican Party, and the development of a strong mobilization of bias against Clinton and what he is held to represent—Ivy League savvy, feminism, the blues, “relativism,” the ...