Word: morale
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Indifference? That's one theory. Another is--imagination. Imagination, after all, is our basic moral gauge. If you can imagine yourself doing what someone else has been caught doing, it's hard to recommend the death penalty...
...expansive moral imagination has much to recommend it--including the endorsement of Jesus Christ. (Among the tactical advantages of Clinton's prayer breakfast was getting reporters to quote clergy quoting Scripture: "He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone.") Still, however humane a generous imagination may be, it poses a problem: Once started, where does it stop...
...course, as a practical matter, we have to send people to prison. So the moral imagination, followed to its logical conclusion, short-circuits, becoming its own reductio ad absurdum. It begins by extending our empathy to Clinton but in the end leaves us weighing his fate without dwelling on his frailty, because if human frailty were an excuse, the streets would be full of robbers...
...this Philosophy 101 really worth the trouble? After following our moral imagination to its bitter logical end, don't we find ourselves forced to do what so many opinion leaders have been doing all along: judging Clinton without pity...
...return for some protection against prosecution once he leaves office. Selling that deal would have to involve the help of the permanent graybeards on both sides--men like Bob Dole, who has put in a call to Clinton already, Bob Strauss, Colin Powell, George Mitchell--men who have the moral horsepower to haul their crankier colleagues along...