So this was the man who supposedly went on a witch hunt fueled by his personal vendetta against the president? This was the man who was said to have wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars while mercilessly browbeating witnesses and obsessing over personal indiscretions that are none of the public's business?
The world may have expected Frankenstein to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Instead, it got Joe Friday. Just the facts, please.The contrast between the independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr that testified on live television and the gruesome monster the White House and its lawyers made him out to be was telling. Starr remained calm and affable through most of a 12-hour ordeal that easily would have snapped most people's patience. More importantly, he showed himself to be competent, reasoned and passionate about the justice system and the rule of law.
If there were monsters in the room, they were the unreasonable ones who insisted on interrupting Starr before he could answer questions; who accused him of improprieties or labeled him a perjurer without giving him either details or the chance to reply; and who seemed to make the hearing an investigation of Starr rather than of the president. To even a casual observer, this absurd exercise in verbal cluster bombing was shameful. Starr came loaded with irrefutable facts. His critics chose to ignore those facts and attack him.
Starr may not have been perfect in the way he conducted his investigation, but he is credible. Where he found no cause for impeachment, as in the Whitewater, Filegate and Travelgate matters, he did not seek to invent charges. But where he found evidence of criminal action, he provided thorough and corroborating details. And the evidence he laid out is impressive.
To those who have followed this matter closely, Starr didn't reveal anything new on Thursday, but his concise recounting of the facts was a helpful refresher. As he noted, the president faced several opportunities where he had to choose between telling the truth and telling a lie, and evidence shows he decided to lie each time. That, not Starr's methods, ought to be the focus of the impeachment hearings.
Unfortunately, it won't be. If Thursday's hearing demonstrated anything, it was that partisan politics is destined to carry the day. Opinion polls and election results have sent Democrats flocking to the president's side once again, and even many Republicans are wavering. If not for the persistence of committee chairman Henry Hyde, who is showing himself to be a politician of rare character, the matter may already have been dropped.
As Starr made clear, he did not seek the job of independent prosecutor. He was asked to do it by Janet Reno and a three-judge panel. Given the choice, he would rather be doing something else. But duty is important to him, and he appears to have done his duty well.