Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 73

MISSISSIPPI PERSPECTIVE 3 nj EDITORIALS 4 NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE 5 SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 1998 TO SHARE TIPS, IDEAS: I Contact: David Hampton, editorial director Jackson area: 961-7240 Toll free: 1-800-222-8015 Fax: 961-721 1 E-mail: dhamptonjackson.gannett.com THE CLARION-LEDGER JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI 4i Jr. A kiss of death for independent counsels Contact Editorial Director David Hampton at 961-7240 or gannett.com law really does erode the those of us who are not Starr-haters, the president legitimate powers. vision this inves tigation has hatched of a Until we defined presi dency create bad precedents for future White House occupants were his as well. But the recent rulings nonetheless strip Scalia's wolf of the disguise that Justice Scalia saw through. A weakened president has become, as he described, a cost of having the law.

If the independent counsel law were allowed to expire, of course, a large portion of the recent imbalance would suddenly dissipate. In normal ClintonStarr face-off has force rulings that weaken the presidency By Benjamin Wittes (c) 1998. The Waahlngton Pott WASHINGTON "Once and for all, there is a great deal I do not want to know," Nietzsche once wrote. "Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge." We have learned a great deal in recent months about the nature of the terrain when an criminal investigations, after all, such questions as Secret Service or governmental attorney-client privilege are never brought to court. They are, rather, worked out within the hier-archy of the executive branch with the attorney general as umpire and the independent counsel investigates a president, and much of it was worth not knowing.

Crystaline clarity in law is not always such a good thing, and the ambiguity that used to characterize the balance of power between president and independent counsel was a constructive one. Wisdom president as the ultimate constitutional arbiter. In certain cases, of course, the attorney general might punt "5 -Sin- fs certainly counseled against finding out for sure whether X'-W I 'CV'- -'fl6. i5 II a particular matter to a regu latory special prosecutor, and in these cases, the diminutions of the president's prerogatives would still be a factor. But naming a special prosecutor would never be required by law, so the executive branch could never be forced, as it can be now, to give away its own powers.

The trouble with this model, of course, is that the independent counsel law was passed for a pretty good reason. It is worth some inconvenience to the president's powers to have the option of a truly independent investigation of his conduct. The best solution is still to improve the law, not to abolish it. But each time a court decision comes down in Starr's favor and disrupts further the balance between presidents and those who would investigate them each time, in other words, we learn something that wisdom would coun-sel against knowing it becomes clearer that the current law goes well beyond mere inconvenience and it becomes more difficult to design a replacement. And our public policy choice becomes a little starker: Do we prefer a weakened president or a president who cannot be easily investigated? It is a choice that knowledge, not wisdom, is forcing on us.

government attorney-client privilege can be cited by White House lawyers in grand jury testimony or whether Secret Service agents can refuse to answer questions about their protective function. It counsels now against defining further the boundaries of executive privilege. The zeal to learn the precise contours of the battle between a president and those who wield presidential powers against him has shifted the field dramati- c-cally against the president by eviscerating his confidentiality. Whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton or Kenneth Starr, this must be a disturbing development for the institution of the presidency. And perhaps paradoxically, it is hardly a less disturbing development for the institution of the independent counsel.

In the immediate investigative sense, of course, Clinton's losses are Starr's gains. But from an institutional point of view, they are a kiss of death for all independent counsels. The greater the disequilibrium between the presidency and the institution of the independent counsel grows, the stronger the temptation becomes to reestablish some balance by doing away with the office altogether. Even among Journalism is a high calling even with low points We get a lot of responses to the articles we publish in our Perspective section, but a recent e-mail hit close to home. Mr.

David, Hi. My name is Natalie. I am 16 years old and am a student bom Brandon. I just read the column "Journalism: The really bad news" and I was, I guess you would say, confused. For about two years now I have been planning on going to Ole Miss and majoring in journalism for four years.

But after reading this article, lam having second thoughts. Is journalism highly overrated in six years is it going to get just as bad as it is now? Is this situation actually going to get reversed and have more meaningful news like the end of the article says? You have no idea how concerned I am about this because honestly this determines what my entire future willlooklike. Thanks, Natalie Villari Ms. Villari was referring to the recent self-examination of the media in light of, shall we say, some "problems" with accuracy and ethics. Embarrassing mistakes Just to name a few: the offensive sationalism of the O.J.

Simpson and Princes Diana coverage; CNN retracting a major investigative piece alleging the use of poisonous gas on defectors in Vietnam; The Cincinnati Enquirer pilfering voice mail messages; the Boston Globe firing one columnist for making up quotes and suspending another for pla-, giarizing.There are others. But, all of these recent problems and criticism of the media should not discourage any young person about entering this profession. Yes, there have been tremendous changes in the media, many of which I don't like. I am disgusted by the excessive coverage of the sensational stories. I don't like the shallowness.

And, oh, how I miss Walter Cronkite. The new technologies, the competitiveness, the business pressures have had many negative influences, as Marvin Kalb pointed out in the Perspective piece. But, there are many new possibilities and opportunities. There is much more information, many more voices speaking. Journalists are better educated, better paid (that's a big one, Natalie) and have many more opportunities.

I am disturbed by the incompetence and lack of professionalism I have seen in these highly publicized cases as all of us are. But, as with any profession, they do not represent the whole. More good journalism Good journalism goes on every minute at every level. And, I thoroughly believe that good people given good information will make the right choices. It's a high calling to provide that information.

The best journalists are those who understand the profession's importance. They gripe and carp about the foul-ups in the business because they care. They are their own worst critics. I can tell Natalie that, if she chooses to become a journalist, she won't get rich and she will make sacrfices in other areas of her life. She will work hard.

She will be subjected to criticism. But, she will have an exciting career. She will have great satisfaction in her work. She will have an opportunity to make a difference. And, if Natalie is asking critical questions about the journalism profession now, she is a very good candidate for making it better in the future.

Contact David Hampton at (601) 961-7240; e-mail, dhamptonjackson.gan-, nett.com. Harold Gater The Clarion-Ledger president as impotent in the context of an independent counsel investigation, he had some strength in that the question marks in the law forced negotiations over privilege assertions. Now, however, no independent counsel needs to negotiate with a president over the testimony of government lawyers or Secret Service agents. He can simply do as he pleases. While recent independent counsels including Starr have been more aggressive than their predecessors, Clinton largely brought this development on himself.

It was he, not Starr, who got himself into the whole Monica Lewinsky mess, and the decisions to litigate matters that were likely to fessor Akhil Amar has been teaching the case since it was handed down in 1988 and has also been polling his students about whether they agreed with Scalia or with the court majority on its merits. During the Bush years, he says, Scalia got only 25 percent of the student votes. Last fall, Scalia got roughly 70 percent of the vote. This could be a reflection of a tendency among Yale law students to sympathize more with President Clinton than with his Republican predecessors. I suspect, however, that it chiefly reflects the fact that the past several years of independent counsel investigations have highlighted ways which had, until then, been hypothetical in which the incapable of confidential deliberations makes it difficult to imagine reauthorizing the independent counsel statute in its current form when it expires next year.

Some far-sighted observers generally conservatives pinpointed the dangers of the independent counsel law early on. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his now-famed dissent in Morrison v. Olson, in which he argued in vain that the law was unconstitutional, that some perils to the constitutional structure of the country come "clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing. But this wolf comes as a wolf." Perhaps. But the law's wolfishness was not immediately apparent to many observers.

Yale law pro American's faith in presidency is unshaken By Marie Cocco (c) 1998, Neweday plan, not a single spending bill has made it off Capitol Hill, and the White House has threatened to veto seven of the 13 that are making their way through Congress. The same public that still expresses confidence in Clinton's credibility before the Lewinsky grand jury doesn't really understand his influence with Congress is nil. The people will be surprised to find out in September that programs they elected Clinton to protect environmental cleanups, teacher training, money to help states bolster education standards and even college work-study funds all have been on the congressional chopping block again. Once they find out, we will see whom they blame: Clinton, for squandering his presidency, or his political opponents for trying to rob him of it. Clinton's alleged wrongdoing is puny and unworthy of public attention let alone the extraordinary prosecutorial zeal that's been unleashed.

In a few weeks, another wake-up call will sound when it becomes impossible to hide the fact that Congress has surpassed records for tardiness in passing this year's budget bills and we are headed again for an impasse like the one that shut down the government in 1995. While the media have been busy dissecting Clinton's sexual habits, the House of Representatives was busy undoing last year's balanced-budget agreement, in which Clinton and congressional Republicans reached what was supposed to be a five-year truce over tax and spending priorities. Republicans in the House and Senate never agreed among themselves on a budget bald lies. Yet a CBS poll taken just as Lewinsky was baring intimacies to a grand jury still yielded this result: When asked if Clinton would be a credible witness before the grand jury next week, 59 percent said he would be credible and that jurors would believe him. As for Lewinsky, she was judged credible by 43 percent.

The most powerful man in the world vs. the pitiable woman who would bring him down. No contest. Somehow, after a political lifetime of allegation and innuendo, of evasions and equivocations, of lascivious jokes and unrelenting laceration by opponents, Clinton retains the people's confidence. This drives bis opponents to hysteria because they have always thought Clinton would self-immolate, and they've been certain the Lewinsky affair finally ignited the bonfire.

It is they who underestimated the very civic virtue they claim to protect: Americans' faith in the presidency. It is the only office in which the interests of all Americans are supposed to be represented, the only one whose occupant is chosen by the collective judgment of all the people. The president is the only official to whom the nation can turn when some unseen, brutal force blows up a building and blood rains down. The smarmiest of Clinton's opponents have suggested the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa occurred because the president is so politically weak right now (blithely ignoring the terrorist toll during the Bush and Reagan administrations).

It's more likely the enormity of this crime will just reinforce in the public's sentiment that There isn't a minute of any day that the president of the United States is not the single most important person in the world. He is the one individual depended upon to provide judgment in crisis, to comfort the stricken, to see to it that national priorities are pursued so the public can get some of what it wants and most of what it needs. Americans know this, though it's clear their reverence for the office has not much to do any more with grade-school mythology or delusions of presidential purity. At the moment, an overwhelming majority of people believes President Clinton probably had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Put another way, they think Clinton's denials are i Ideological terrorists can destroy, kill and maim, but they can't win eminent and assert its own power, it must "claim credit" for its act.

Political terrorists have always done that and more. By identifying themselves, terrorists attract retaliation if they present any visible targets at all, but that is the inevitable price they must pay. Unless they attract attention to themselves, they cannot achieve their political purpose: propaganda by acts of violence. The individual attacks of political terrorists may be horribly inhu- because no group is asserting its power to frighten, destroy and kill. Ideological terrorism is not, therefore, a violent form of political propaganda but rather a small-scale form of war.

The more extreme Islamic fundamentalists the most likely culprits would like to destroy every church, every government building, every institution in the Western world to pave the way for the victory of Islam. Because they can only attack a few buildings in as a weapon of war simply because its scale is too small. Nor can it achieve any political results No government, however fragile, can be seriously weakened by anonymous violence, and certainly no govern ment can negotiate when there i nobody to talk to. That is of smaS comfort to the victims of the cr leltdes. Luttwak is a eenlor fellow at th.

Center for Strategic and Tn tionalStudie.h1Wa8i,ng?0nntrM; mane, but they are still rational acts that can lead to real results in the end. Recently, however, the world has been confronted by the very different phenomenon of ideological terrorism. Its identifying characteristic is the lack of identification; its violence is anonymous. Buildings are blown up, many are killed, as in New York City, Dhahran and now both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and nobody claims the act. The purpose cannot be political, 1 the most vulnerable places, they naturally choose American targets, because in their minds the United States is the shield and sword of the entire Western world.

As the equivalent of an army and an army that happens to be very weak ideological terrorists can best protect themselves by remaining anonymous. The long-term threat of ideological terrorism is virtually nil, because its attacks are too sporadic to cause any real damage. It is futile By Edward N. Luttwak Special to the Loft Angelee Tlmee All attacks against civilian targets count as terrorism if executed outside a state of war, but what the world has been used to since antiquity is political terrorism. Like any other political act, from putting up a poster to mass demonstrations violent or not, it has a recognizable purpose.

That in turn invariably requires that the terrorists identify themselves. If Group wants to humiliate its own or a foreign gov- fc.