KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SHOULD LINCOLN HAVE POLLED BEFORE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION?

The problem of the quisling Republicans and the nervous-Nellie jelly-bellies fascinates on many levels. What is heartening, though, is how few of these there are.

A favorite magazine was a special delight with the following excerpt from a Tucker Carlson piece ("The Myth of GOP Defectors") in the Dec. 14 Weekly Standard:

"... Late last month, the Republican Women's Club in (Illinois U.S. Rep.) John Porter's home district issued a remarkably bellicose statement demanding that their congressman `cease and desist your inappropriate interference with the due process deliberations of the Judiciary Committee and recant your premature statements that you oppose an impeachment recommendation.' Several days later, the conservative weekly Human Events ran the pictures of confirmed and suspected anti-impeachment Republicans beneath the headline, `Meet the GOP's Pro-Perjury Caucus.'"

Shortly after, Porter announced he isn't necessarily a vote against impeachment. Ah, yes. "Nothing quite so concentrates the mind," wrote Dr. Johnson, "like a hanging at sunrise." Or again:

"Radio host and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes achieved liftoff, announcing that he planned to `personally join in an effort to make sure that every Republican who votes against impeachment faces a primary challenge that will be well-funded and that will make clear the point that people who act without integrity at critical moments, when our constitutional lives are at stake, cannot be excused.'" Absolutely heartwarming.

Polls? Should Lincoln have polled whether to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, or Truman whether to integrate the Army?

Mark Helprin addressed the polls in this week's Wall Street Journal:

"... Certainly the Republicans fear an electoral debacle when the two-thirds ... commonly cited as opposing impeachment next vote.

"But if the middle third doesn't swing -- as it did, after long delay, against slavery, for intervention in World War II, for universal suffrage, for equal justice regardless of race -- it is because it won't have heard the appeal of those in appropriately high places, that appeal never having been made. ...

"This vote is up or down. It is either one thing or another, pro or con, night or day, freeze or boil. We know very well who the president is ... what he is made of. Of Republicans, however, even Republicans are now entitled to ask, who exactly are you, what do you stand for, what are you going to do?"

"... It is better to fall with the truth firmly in hand than to stand ... the prisoner of one's own ambition. It is ... poor politics to surrender in the face of every difficulty and danger and to stand consistently for nothing but what is safe. That isn't how a political party gains adherents or wins respect. It isn't how a political party wins elections. It is, rather, how a political party transforms itself into a blob ...

"... You must be able to say, when this is done, ~`I was there. I was told that America had lost its will to justice, that the country had changed, ... that it wasn't for me to judge. But I voted otherwise.'"

As Lincoln once put it:

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We ... will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation. ..."

Helprin is right: We know who Bill Clinton is, what he is. But this is about us. Who are we? What are we made of? What kind of country shall we have?

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.