Big Head DC reminds us of the back-story behind the first line of former Illinois lawmaker Henry Hyde’s epitaph. Hyde, who passed away last night at the age of 83, is best known for leading the 1998 impeachment of former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
The battle, as we all remember, was largely about stained dresses, cigars, and “that woman,” Monica Lewinsky. And Hyde prosecuted it vigorously, despite his own marital infidelity. A blockbuster Salon.com essay, published in the middle of the whole impeachment mess, detailed Hyde’s five-year affair with another married woman.
Hyde, hypocrite, excused his own adultery as a “youthful indiscretion” but threw lots of stones at Clinton’s glass house.
R.I.P. Henry Hyde.
You miss the point with Henry Hyde. He was not prosecuting for sexual indiscretion. He was prosecuting for lying to a Grand Jury. No adultery is good, but adultery that occurs in high places is bad because it opens a government official to the possibility of manipulation by others. It is one of the favored ways that covert intelligence is gained for hundreds of years. Get a powerful figure in a compromising situation and then you can have them do your bidding because they don’t want to be found out. A president who lies about this will lie about other things for convenience sake. A president can lie to a grand jury with no punishment. What reason do any of us have to tell the truth if the executive branch does not.
No question about it Adultery is adultery. But Hyde was doing his duty to prosecute Clinton and there is nothing hypocritical about that. I might need to lose ten pounds but there is nothing hypocritical about me advising someone to lose 50 lbs for health reasons. They are the same and yet they are not.