WITH LAWYERS LIKE THESE

Some defense of the president that was! For most of the summer and fall, Bill Clinton's apologists have argued that the case against him boils down to a cultural offensive by the sex-hating Christian Right in league with a censorious hymn-humming prosecutor. THE SCRAPBOOK chalked this up to the politics of division and rhetorical excess, probably originating in a foul-up in James Carville's Ritalin prescription.

But there before the House Judiciary Committee was the lead witness, chastising the president as if he were a wretch at a tent revival: "What he did was sinful." Oddly enough, though, this was the considered opinion not of any of the president's Republican foes but of his defense attorney, Greg Craig.

And things got curiouser before the defense rested, culminating in the admission by Charles F. C. Ruff, the White House counsel, that "reasonable people" might conclude Bill Clinton was a perjurer. There was an intimation, subsequently fleshed out in the House Democrats' censure resolution ("the President remains subject to criminal and civil penalties") that one of these days Bill Clinton may be put on trial for perjury. So of course he has to lie! And he shouldn't be impeached, because he may be prosecuted! Some defense.

Watching this spectacle, Harvard's Harvey C. Mansfield, an occasional and distinguished contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, dashed off a letter to Henry Hyde last week, and he emphasizes to THE SCRAPBOOK that "it's not a considered opinion." THE SCRAPBOOK, however, is of the view that what Prof. Mansfield dashes off is sounder than what the president's defense team had months to prepare. An excerpt:

"Some say that [the president's] conduct does not reach the level of impeachability because a low, sordid act like his does not qualify as a high crime and misdemeanor. But sordidness is no defense! It is, on the contrary, almost an aggravation to the offense. If the president had had a high state purpose, lying might have been excusable, even praiseworthy. But lying to defend a deed of exploitation, done not in the bedroom but in the Oval Office that deserves the highest respect, is a kind of desecration. It is also an act of recklessness, totally gratuitous and even frivolous, that opened the President to blackmail and has deeply hurt the reputation of his country.

"Since impeachment is both legal and political, the standard for impeachment ought likewise to be both one and the other. I find the standard to be met in the combination of illegality in the President's perjury and of disgrace in his sordid conduct."

There you have it: a perfect synthesis of the Craig and Ruff "defense."