THE CONSPIRACY OF TRIVIA

It's often said, in trying to sort out the rights and wrongs of some public controversy, that the scandal isn't the illegal behavior--the scandal is what's legal. The press understandably tends to concentrate on whether laws were broken. This is a bright line that relieves journalists of the need to make (or, worse, be seen making) moral judgments. But in this world of sinners, the fact that some people choose to cross the line is less interesting and important than the question of where society chooses to draw the line.

Campaign finance is a perfect example. To be sure, it's bad when people break the law--especially high government officials. But as many have noted, the real scandal is how much sleazy fund raising the law allows.

There's a corollary to the notion that the scandal is what's legal: what's illegal--or arguably illegal--isn't necessarily scandalous. The press's obsession with the issue of legality can be unenlightening in this way as well, and campaign finance once again is an excellent example. Republicans and journalists are frustrated by the public's failure to rise in outrage at the daily drips of evidence that Clinton Administration figures may have broken various interpretations of the law. Maybe one reason is that these laws attempting to prevent political activity by politicians in political institutions, at least as interpreted by those flogging the scandal, seem to be a strange stew of unenforceable ideals and pointless distinctions.

How much does it matter whether the Vice President made a phone call from his office or from a hotel room? Whether he put the arm on somebody personally or let an aide do it? Whether a check was mailed or handed to someone in the White House? What is the difference between inviting contributors to the White House before their contributions and after? Between holding a political strategy session in a West Wing office and holding it in a place called the Ward Room (O.K., for some reason, since the Ward Room is near the White House mess)? The Clintonites insist that they stayed on the right side of these bizarre lines. Their critics say otherwise. It's hard to care.

C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel in the Bush Administration, has become a sort of Greek chorus of the Clinton fund-raising scandal. He pops up in the newspapers after each new revelation to intone self-righteously, We never did that in our day. This generally turns out to mean, We never did exactly that. There were cocktail parties for contributors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but "the White House per se was not used." Clinton "is giving these hour-and-a-half klatches...We would never have allowed people to pay for this kind of time in the West Wing."