SUPPORTERS of Maui Mayor Linda Lingle are still wondering what happened to the last wave of crossover Democratic voters they were counting on to carry them to victory over Gov. Ben Cayetano. Republican extremism
hurt Linda LingleThey'll find the source of their candidate's undoing in the impeachment circus in Washington.
Lingle kept saying that the election wasn't about Democrats and Republicans and deflected all questions about her Republicanism.
But in the end, many Hawaii Democrats who had flirted with Lingle got their snootful of Republicanism from the impeachment debate and joined the national Democratic surge that turned the election in the closing days. It wasn't about Lingle, who voters liked. It was about not giving the GOP more power to abuse.
There are striking parallels between the battle in Congress and Hawaii's battlefield.
In 1994, the country had enough of the long run of Democratic rule in the U.S. House of Representatives and voted in Newt Gingrich and his Republican majority.
We had high hopes for needed change and fresh ideas. Instead, the GOP gave us mean-spirited partisanship that has halted serious legislative work, an irrational hatred of the duly-elected Democratic president and outright buffoonery.
Hawaii Democrats watching this were supposed to believe that a change to Republican rule here would make things better?
Analysts expected Democrats to take a beating this year because of Bill Clinton's troubles. Instead, voters reduced the House Republican majority to deliver a message that they want the foolishness to end. House Republicans ousted Gingrich as their speaker and replaced him with Bob Livingston, only to have Livingston confess to his own "indiscretions" in virtually the same breath of his sanctimonious condemnation of Clinton.
This lame-duck Congress, filled with partisan zealots who just got a spanking from voters and led by a confessed serial philanderer, has absolutely no moral authority to impeach a president for lying about his philandering.
They can draw all the fine lines they want about Clinton lying under oath while Livingston and Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde -- another confessed philanderer -- lied only to their wives, but the fact is they've lost credibility with two-thirds of the electorate.
Not that they won't vote to impeach anyway. The thing about zealots is that they're so sure they're right that they don't care what the rest of us think. They won't even listen to their own party elders like Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, who say it's time to bring this to an end.
Many hope that the Senate, usually the more statesmanlike of the two houses, will dispatch the matter quickly with a strong reprimand of the president so we can move on. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott only threw fuel on the fire by virtually accusing Clinton of bombing Iraq to avoid impeachment and indicating he plans to drag it out with a full trial.
IF Republicans achieve their coup against Clinton, they've already laid the groundwork to harass Al Gore with investigations of campaign fund raising. Don't expect them to get to the people's business this century.
Nobody is saying that Clinton didn't do wrong and shouldn't be punished. The issue is whether his wrongdoing deserves the political equivalent of capital punishment and warrants corruption of our national agenda.
The bigger issue is that our democracy, built on compromise, respect for the opposition and fair play, is in a lot of trouble if we can't find our way back to those principles.
David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at editor@starbulletin.com.
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