The rule of law is absolutely
essential to a representative democracy being able to endure even as strong
personalities in public office may seek to bend or even dismiss law for their
own purposes. The notion that anyone subject to law gets a pass according to
one’s own discretion and power is toxic to a republic being regarded as fair.
Just as everyone has a right to due process in legal proceedings in the U.S.,
no one is above the law there. This applies to former presidents and
secretaries of state, and thus to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Their written
statement in refusing to recognize a Congressional subpoena as valid—a presumptuous
stunt to be sure—reveals that they held the presumption of being able to decide
whether a law to which they were subject was valid. This presumption could also
be seen when Bill Clinton occupied the White House, for he deliberately lied under
oath, “I did not have sexual relations with” Monika Lewinski even though she had
performed oral sex with him in the Oval Office when she was a White House
intern. My point is that the underlying pattern is clear with respect to a lack
of regard for law itself (even though both Clintons went to Yale’s law school)
and the presumption of setting oneself in the position of invalidating law to
which one is subject. That Bill Clinton was no punished with incarceration in
the 1990s was unfortunate even for him and his wife as they were not afforded the
opportunity to learn a lesson.
The full essay is at "Congressional Subpoenas."
