The 'Presumption of Guilt' Culture
by TChris
After enduring eight years of (mostly) unwarranted attacks against President Clinton – every new scandalous allegation reported with utter conviction on the right wing airwaves – it is easy to feel a not-quite-guilty pleasure in the accusations of misconduct directed at Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, and every other miscreant in the reigning Republican government. They might all be innocent, but it is difficult to sympathize with those who built their careers by denouncing the invented transgressions of their political enemies.
Lanny Davis (quoted in this NY Times article) is correct that a “presumption of guilt culture … has come about in Washington in the last 10 or 15 years.” A presumption of guilt culture extends across the entire country. The presumption of guilt has been nurtured by the “get tough on crime” crowd, a movement spearheaded by right wing politicians, although plenty of Democrats have played along. It isn’t fair, but it isn’t unique to this administration. Accused Republicans may feel their guilt has been unfairly presumed, and maybe it has, but they played a part in building a culture that condemns on the basis of accusation, without awaiting due process or the testing of evidence by confrontation and counter-evidence.
Here’s Davis talking about his experience in the Clinton administration:
"It's hard to imagine how bad it is. You sit at your desk and you know what the facts are, but you can't get them out to the public because the lawyers tell you you can't - or if you can, the noise from the presumption of guilt culture overwhelms the facts."
That may have been true in the Clinton administration, but today’s Republicans have learned the value of the preemptive strike. DeLay’s supporters attack the accuser, buying TV time to condemn the prosecutor. While his lawyer might be telling him to zip his lips, DeLay is happy to blame a vast left wing conspiracy for his troubles. Rove is making a seemingly desperate return to the grand jury, perhaps to “clarify” earlier errors or omissions in the hope that one last spin will create reasonable doubt and avoid an indictment.
Perhaps DeLay and David Safavian will be acquitted, or the charges dismissed. Perhaps Frist and Rove and Scooter Libby will never be charged. They are all presumed innocent, and no writer at this site ever forgets that even people who clearly deserve our scorn are entitled to a fair trial and to the protections of the Bill of Rights.
To the extent that serious accusations of wrongdoing are supported by evidence rather than chatter – a distinction lost on much of the mainstream media during the Clinton years – they nonetheless deserve public scrutiny. And if that scrutiny produces in observers from the left a small measure of satisfaction, a sense of karma, or a reaffirmation that (as Last Night in Little Rock observed here) “what goes around comes around,” the Roves and Frists and DeLays have only themselves to blame. They and their ilk share responsibility for this culture; now they must live in it.
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