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Hail
to the Chief
At
the bottom of the executive, gratitude for change at the top.
By Jack Dunphy*, an officer of the Los Angeles Police
Department
January 22, 2001 11:35 a.m.
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 here was no inaugural
revelry for Dunphy this weekend. No clinking of cocktail glasses
with Lowry
and
Goldberg, no lighthearted exchange of bons mots with O'Beirne, and,
most sadly, no celebratory swirl across the dance floor with Coulter.
There were only the abbreviated views of events afforded by television
between tours along some of the more unglamorous streets of Los
Angeles in a conspicuously adorned Ford sedan.
Yet, despite my remoteness from the celebration, no one was more
gladdened than I to see a decent and honorable man assume power
from one so manifestly otherwise. For it is out on those unglamorous
streets — of Los Angeles and every other city and town —
that police officers stand as the nation's most visible symbol of
executive power and government authority. And it is out on those
streets that such lofty governing principles as the rule of law
can take on life-and-death meaning.
We have now seen the passing of an administration that for eight
years turned the rule of law on its head. Mr. Clinton and his adherents
by turns subverted, debased, or simply ignored the laws to suit
their needs at any given moment. Then, when the House Republicans
had the impudence to hold the president accountable for his misdeeds,
these same praetorians stood shoulder to shoulder to proclaim that
it was they who were defending the rule of law and the Constitution.
These actions have consequences. The ripples of Clintonism are yet
traveling to the far edge of the pond,
| “The
ripples of Clintonism are yet traveling to the far edge
of the pond.” |
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and
we can only pray that Mr. Bush can begin to avert their corrosive
effects. As was so vividly demonstrated in Los Angeles a few years
ago and on the national stage during the operatic throes of impeachment,
the simple truth can be trumped by a clever tongue in a sharp suit,
and a criminal can be embraced as a victim by people so comfortably
cloaked in the mantle of their own victimhood. May Clinton's presidency
one day be seen as the high-water mark for such thinking.
I do not claim to have any powers of clairvoyance, but I predict
with absolute certainty that when Mr. Bush leaves office, be it
four years hence or eight, it will not be under the shadow of a
plea bargain. And there will be no presidential pardons for friends
whose silence has kept him out of the dock. In Mr. Bush and those
he has appointed to serve under him, we at long last see the ascent
of men and women who acknowledge — indeed who celebrate —
that our nation's Founders were men whose genius has been unsurpassed
in the history of the world, and that we would do well to once again
abide by their enduring instructions.
Godspeed, Mr. President. Let the repairs begin.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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