Oh, the irony, the delicious irony. Like a pet dog, it sits up and barks at you and begs to be noticed.
No matter how this whole sorry impeachment mess is finally resolved, what the Republican right has unwittingly established is sure to have repercussions in the ballot box two years down the road.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to the Republican conservatives the big bad wolf, the Freddie Kruger of American politics, is big government, right?
The conservatives and their first cousins, the libertarians, have been railing against Big Brother government for years, right? They don't want the government meddling with our private businesses or our private lives. They want to get rid of government regulations and government welfare, except, of course, corporate welfare.
They want to be free of the burden of providing for the unemployed, the sick, the elderly, the disabled and the hungry. Helping people, say the conservatives, should be an option, a voluntary act. Let the churches and the good Samaritans take care of that. It is not the business of government. After all, this is America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
So what if you cut a few corners, or have to lay off a few people, or jeopardize your employees' health with unsafe working conditions. So what if you don't pay your fair share of taxes. This is capitalism, this is entrepreneurship, this is America.
This is the country of dreams and rugged individualism. You make your own breaks. This is John Wayne country, pilgrim.
No wonder Ronald Reagan was so popular. Oh yes, rugged Ronnie, the actor who became involved in politics while serving as head of the Screen Actors Guild after his film career nose-dived. So what if he lied to us about arms for hostages and aid to the Contras. He talked tough, quoted Clint Eastwood, chopped wood on his ranch and told funny stories.
Hey, do you think, maybe, he might have fooled around a little during his Hollywood days? Nah, not Ronnie. Besides, that's none of our business, right? Lots of presidents have fooled around, right? And we certainly don't want Big Brother peeking into our private lives, especially our bedrooms, right?
Well, maybe most of us (70 percent?) don't, but apparently the conservatives, led by a few Bible-thumping zealots from the Christian right, think it's perfectly all right.
They're against regulations on business, but very comfortable with regulations on morals.
It follows that what's good for the president is good for the rest of us. Today the president, tomorrow you and me. God knows, I've got enough skeletons in my closet to stock the Harvard medical school for a decade.
The moralists in Washington, you see, not only want to determine who's worthy of public office and who isn't, they want to set the moral standard for everyone in the country, regardless of race, creed or nationality. Now I agree that this country needs to clean up its act, but I don't want Tom DeLay or Pat Robertson telling me what's acceptable and what isn't.
But what the DeLays and Robertsons and Trent Lotts really want to do, the long-range plan, is to break down the wall between church (their church) and state. They don't want a democracy, they want a theocracy. They would like to go back to the Calvinistic government of the Puritans in early New England.
This is all for our own good, of course, because they are going to save the country from the depravity of liberalism. All our woes, you see, are due to immoral liberals and their concerns for the poor and the under-privileged.
Sex out of wedlock is bad, but giant business mergers that put thousands of people out of work are good. They have their own set of values, you see. It's all in the way you look at things.
As for those Americans, all 70 percent of us, who think lying about an extramarital affair and trying to cover it up are not impeachable offenses, they are either misguided, ignorant or morally bankrupt. And the self-appointed moralists are going to show us the errors of our ways, whether we like it or not.
They want to be our Big Brother, you see. And if you don't think that's ironic, you'd better turn to the comics page.
Bob Hanna is a staff writer for The Standard-Times.