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Only in the Academy

By Abigail Thernstrom
Posted Monday, Dec. 14, 1998, at 10:02 AM ET

Dear Steve:

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Well, I give up. We had a pact not to talk about impeachment. But, let's face it, we're hooked, just as we were in 1974. God, I remember 1974 like yesterday--you sitting in your study writing your American history textbook, but listening at the same time nonstop to the hearings. And me--full-time mom in those days--sneaking in and out when I could.

We were elated then; I'm not elated now. The die-hard Clintonistas think the rest of us are out to "get" the President, and always were. We did want desperately to "get" Richard Nixon, but my feelings about Clinton are more complicated. Perhaps I'm just older (wiser?).

On the other hand, by this time I wouldn't mind drowning a few of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. They bring out all my anti-lawyer passions. But in truth, I can't decide who's worse: the lawyers or the professors. And the group I know best is the more bewildering. Why are most members of the academy so screamingly politically predictable, so totally programmed? And why is their view of the presidency so loony?

Do you recall that little conversation I had about five years ago with a distinguished scholar who will remain nameless? The President reads books, he said, looking positively dewy-eyed. I didn't say a word. One doesn't argue with a man in love.

And surely you remember that colleague of yours on the Harvard faculty who described Reagan's mind as a "file card," while Clinton's was a "CD-ROM." And then there was the senior White House aide who has since returned to the university. Clinton is smart--as smart as anyone I have ever known--he said.

Oliver Wendell Holmes's description of FDR keeps running through my head. "Second-class intellect, first-class temperament."

High IQ as relevant to the presidency? As Orwell so delightfully noted, there are some ideas so dumb that only an intellectual could possibly embrace them.

I don't mind that so many in the academy seem to lack even a modicum of political common sense; they don't run the country, thank God. But I do mind the fact that universities are places where independent minds are stifled and fresh thinking dies. A few brave political souls have come before the Judiciary Committee to testify on the expectations of the Framers and the history of impeachment. I do admire them; I can just imagine how they are shunned on the campuses where they teach. But I'm not convinced they have been of much use. Any more than I think Alexander Bickel was of use in helping the Supreme Court decide Brown v. Board of Education. He was Yale's great constitutional scholar to whom the Court turned in its quest for the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment; he gave them the answer they didn't want to hear, and they rightly ignored him.

In fact, this is a topic that bothers me a lot. The uses and misuses of history. And I bet you have loads to say on the subject.

Abby