The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals.

William J. Bennett The Free Press, $20, 154 pp.

David McCabe

Bill Bennett's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. You can't blame him, really. Even though events of the last year have surely exceeded the wish list of any of Bill Clinton's foes - the expansion of the independent counsel's investigation into the president's relationship with a White House intern, Clinton's emphatic and very public lie to the nation, his petty evasion and possible perjury in legal proceedings, and the embarrassing litany of his sexual idiosyncrasies - what is still missing is the final payoff that his opponents clamor for with increasing fervor: general denunciation of his job as president and insistence on his removal from office. The public's palpable desire that the Lewinsky matter be done with, and its continued approval of Clinton's performance in office, must be bitter ashes in the mouths of his enemies. Their wildest dreams have come true save the one that matters most.

This book hopes to deliver the coup de grace, to make the American public as outraged as Bennett believes they should be. Simplifying a bit, the argument involves two steps. First, persuade readers that Clinton's handling of the Lewinsky affair (and other scandals) reveals serious flaws in his moral character. Second, show that the existence of these flaws makes him unsuitable for his office.

On the first, Bennett largely succeeds. Some, though, may question the need for the lesson. I for one would have thought that by now certain traits of Clinton had been irrevocably revealed: that he is a man willing to do whatever it takes to advance both himself and his causes (in that order), that he is sorely and probably pathologically tempted by pleasures of the flesh, that he has a capacity for self-deception rivaled only by certain heroes of tragic drama, that he is a man one should trust no farther than one can throw. The problem, of course, is that this is only part of the picture: that his vitality, intelligence, and powers of persuasion make him in American politics a virtual force of nature; that he has directly and at some political risk attempted to address neglected issues of basic justice; that he has articulated a vision of the nation's future far more compelling and humane than any offered by his rancorous and increasingly vindictive opponents - these characteristics must also be established pretty clearly in the minds of most Americans.

If anything justifies our national obsession with the Clinton presidency, it is precisely this combination of moral commitment and political ruthlessness. We've known each in isolation (Carter and Nixon), but their commingling in one man leaves us uncertain. Here we come to the second, more difficult step of Bennett's indictment, in which he argues that the president's unsavory character and naked drive for self-advancement make him unfit for office. It is a point that few people in America are either more qualified or more inclined to establish: Bennett holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy, is fluent in moral argument, and serves unofficially as the nation's morals czar. And the question he's addressing is one the Clinton presidency raises with special urgency. For even if it's true, as the more realpolitik Democrats argue, that Clinton's character flaws are not especially egregious compared with those of many who have achieved that office, never before have we had to confront them so directly, and packaged in a man whose preternatural glibness makes him appear so much more sinister than any of his predecessors. (Imagine Ronald Reagan trying to make a point by distinguishing the meanings of the present tense.)

Though Bennett's case against the president occasionally slips into stale metaphor (there's talk of "moral disarmament" and "moral bankruptcy"), his central argument is clear: tolerance for Clinton constitutes an irresponsible failure to uphold important moral values and, given the unique position of the presidency in American culture, threatens to erode those moral standards that reflect our nation's greatest accomplishment. Bennett is surely right to be sharply impatient with those who respond to the president's transgressions with a noncommittal "Who are we to judge?" A human being who resists all such judgments is not tolerant - he's monstrous, and a community of such citizens is a nightmarish prospect.

The problem with this argument, however, is that the American public have judged. They h, ave judged that a lie in response to a question that should never have been asked, resulting from an inquiry motivated (it's increasingly clear) by political and personal hostility to Bill Clinton, does not constitute a serious betrayal of our constitutional principles. They have judged that subsequent actions to cover up that lie, though misguided, are understandable. And they have judged that engaging in bizarre and unfathomable sexual escapades does not demonstrate moral corruption at the core of one's being. Bennett may disagree, but the disagreement is over which judgment is appropriate, not over the appropriateness of judgment.

In favor of his judgment, Bennett argues that the president has "defiled" and "tarnished" the presidency, and thereby debased the moral standards of our nation. Though I disagree with Bennett's smug assessment of our own nation's record regarding those standards (tolerating millions of Americans' absence of health care, adequate living conditions, and real educational opportunities seem to me a much clearer sign of moral corruption than Clinton's occasional trysts), I share his belief that citizens must be united by more than mere economic exchange and geographical proximity, that unity around shared norms and symbols is critical to a healthy polity. And it is true, as Bennett says, both that we need moral exemplars and that presidents have often filled that role in our national consciousness.

But, alas, this last presumption is no longer viable (if it ever was), and his reliance on it lends to Bennett's argument an air of nostalgia that undermines its persuasiveness. We can have no illusions about what it takes to get elected president today: the process surpasses both legislating and sausage-making in its power to disgust. Presidential campaigns, which are today chiefly money-driven, media-driven, and poll-driven, could not be designed any more effectively to eliminate individuals of integrity and principle. Nor should we expect candidates forced to trawl in the depths of presidential electioneering to smell as sweet as before the process; readers may have cheered when Beowulf emerged from the swamp after slaying Grendel's mother, but he must have stunk to high heaven. Given the realities of our political scene today, the American public may just have decided to put up with some rank offense in the White House in the name of other, more important principles.

This is not meant as a counsel of despair: good people are working against awesome odds to ensure that candidates can get elected who possess qualities more laudable than the coolly reptilian fixation on winning that Clinton's career displays and that Bennett presents so clearly. But such hopes are for the future. For now, Clinton is ours, and the public's sufferance of his failings, while dispiriting to some, probably just represents their adaptation to a dismal political landscape that can inspire in any sensible person only rage or indifference. At the end of his life, Heidegger suggested that the human condition was so dismal that only a God could save us. One hopes that the health of our political system will not require deliverance of the same magnitude.

David McCabe teaches philosophy at Colgate University.