argumentation seem to make it possible to cut through stylistic excess and retrieve what is essential about core issues and to deploy truth’s harsh light to excavate what exists, no matter how disturbing or ugly. And, presumably, when language is stripped of its excesses, we should be able to notice when substance is missing. But it is also possible to read those conventions as conventional, a portal to instrumental thinking that gives the appearance of bona fide engagement while instantiating the mechanistic repetition of practices devoid of scrutiny that might be called critical.
Delahunt’s statement registers the difficulty of knowing whose use of language is, indeed, practicing due diligence. If it is possible to regard the very claims of fairness as an abuse of power, then we may question whether to automatically place a higher premium on the discursive practices that claim to aim towards truth’s revelation. In effect, discourses about the impeachment asked citizens to determine whether having faith in language’s ability to convey truth neutrally should underwrite the nation’s representational agenda.
Idiosyncratic Action
Once the President’s use of language was targeted for critique, it became paramount for the GOP to exhibit a mode of representation that did not dissemble and that instead fulfilled moral obligations to be true. One notable attempt to illustrate what “straight talk” looked like could be found in the Articles of Impeachment, the legal document that officially represented what was at issue and in so doing, promised to provide a clear demonstration of how argumentation is structured by correspondences between signs and referents. There were four articles, but I will cite only Article One:
In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United States for his personal gain and exoneration, impeding the administration of justice, in that: On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action. In doing this, William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, William Jefferson Clinton, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.17
Ostensibly, the Articles of Impeachment offered a legal representation that straightforwardly delineated the charges and their reasoned justifications. But like much of the discourse involved in this event, the very language in these documents seemed noticeable. Rather than solidify a sense that a crime had been committed, the Articles renewed doubts, at least for some citizens, about whether this issue deserved attention at all. Indeed, rather than provoke recognition of a severe crime, the legal language highlighted the difference between narrated descriptions and lived perceptions of Clinton’s behavior. Humiliating? Yes. Disgraceful? To adherents of a particular version of propriety, yes. But was a lie about a sexual liaison equal to a violation to protect The Constitution? Should a refusal to fully cooperate in an inquiry about one’s sexual dalliances be represented as an “obstruction of justice”? To some, Clinton’s responses to the grand jury in the Paula Jones case had to be measured against the dubious merit of that proceeding. If Clinton did lie (fudge?) about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, then was that a crime at all? A high crime?
Arguably, the Articles of Impeachment failed to enact a logic of substitutions. For many readers of House Resolution 611, the words did not seem to correspond with the deeds being described. Nor did they seem to retrieve and bring forth any esteemed abstract qualities such as a higher order of reason. Indeed, one could make the case that the verbs in the Articles seemed to be stylistically excessive, even hyperbolic, and hence dismissible for failing to execute a systematic and neutral method that allowed for the identification of the issues and their importance. And if legal language—that which promises objectivity and equity—can seem excessive, then what does that suggest about the prospect of formalizing abstract conceptions of how to think in other, less narrowly defined contexts?
The Articles exposed a rift between the generalized narrative that depicts democratic inquiry as an act of scrutiny and the specific material practice of scrutiny exercised in this particular case. Many citizens may have wondered about whether this was the kind of look that vigilant citizens should be expected to take when inspecting the comportment of their national leaders. When puzzling that out, they encountered the textual limits to acts of translation, where the implicit rational order arranged through narrative encounters the potentially unwieldy experience of human interpretation. In rejecting the claims of neutrality by those who wrote up the formal charges, there was a simultaneous refusal to see a straightforward connection between the legal language used to name this issue and give it visibility and the enactment of justice.
A number of polls suggested that voters instead read the drive to impeach as political theatre. Immediately following the December, 1998 vote to impeach, pollsters endeavored to register the mood of the citizenry and found expressions of discontent. As put by a headline in USA Today: “Public Likes Clinton More, GOP less in Wake of the Vote.” The article cited a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll that showed “public support for Clinton jumped to a personal high of 73 percent” and that “fewer than one in three has a favorable view of the GOP, its lowest since 1992.” Other polls concurred. A CBS-New York Times poll taken after the vote to impeach found that sixty-six percent of those polled said that Clinton should not resign; thirty-one percent said that he should. In an NBC poll, seventy-two percent of respondents approved of the job Clinton was doing, while twenty-five percent disapproved. Sixty-two percent maintained that Clinton should complete his term, a number that had risen eleven points from the previous Tuesday.18
Because the charges were not demonstrably valid, they appeared to be baseless and hence the case itself was “logically” dismissed. This, of course, was a relief to those of us who viewed this event as a journey into the land of the surreal. But that response did not contend with the problems of representation that impeachment discourses otherwise raised. Embedded within purported explorations of “the facts” of criminality was a speculative question about how discursive practices manifest intangible qualities such as guilt. Arguably, the possibility that ambiguities are embedded within speculations about how language communicates meaning was exactly the point of contention within impeachment debates. Any exploration into the guilt or innocence of a person charged with lying under oath raises a philosophically opaque conundrum about whether it is ever possible to tell the difference between “the spin” and its presumed opposite.
Given that the vote to impeach Clinton was rejected because, to those polled, the charges seemed to be excessive, then it is possible to conclude that style plays a formidable role in determining representational legitimacy. Rather than clarify why Clinton deserved to be impeached for an aberrant act of speech, arguments that called for straight talk instead illustrated that a strange doubling accompanied public discussions about crime and representation. The strange part included the sense that a principle of negativity permeated the presentation of the issues, wherein the style of pro-impeachment arguments promising to deliver straight talk seemed instead to call out its absence. Every attempt to establish an indisputable “reality” about Clinton’s criminal activity or the authenticity of the impeachment inquiry
