MISSOURI WATCH: THE DEADLY DESCENT OF DECENCY

The principal byproduct of the American political system in the Year of Our Lord 1997 seems to be sleaze. This is a strange result in a nation that was founded on the highest moral principles, one that early on decided to emblazon "In God We Trust" on every piece of silver it coined.

From Washington to Jefferson City, politicians are displaying a warped sense of morality that has become so prevalent that any sign of honesty and good manners somehow seems incongruous to public governance. The constant - drip, drip, drip of scandals, double-dealing and duplicity appear to have created a public trance, a numbing of once-prevalent citizen righteous anger. But even a priest, after long years of hearing confessions of human frailty, becomes inured.

Once upon a time, Americans expected their political leaders to be, if not guiltless, at least exemplars of middle class morality. Turn back to the 1930s, an era of economic depression and some would claim moral repression, but it as also a time that drove Americans to their knees...in prayer seeking fiscal deliverance.

It retrospect, it is unlikely Franklin Roosevelt would have served more than one term had his sexual dalliances become news. Jack Kennedy enjoyed the same anonymity and escaped public wrath. As for Richard Nixon, the man didn't have a prayer---the public, once convinced of his culpability, demanded a first-ever resignation while some clamored for nothing less than impeachment. The backlash of Gerald Ford's totally appropriate pardon of the disgraced president cost him the election in 1976.

America's morality was still intact.

Consider what has occurred since then. Somewhere between Jimmy Carter, a most moral if not completely enlightened man, and Bill Clinton, the moral expectations of John Q. Public seemed to diminish. What connection is there between Truman's cronies, Ike's vicuna coats and Reagan's Iran-Contra? None that comes to mind, but in that spread of years, America started receiving less and less moral leadership and more and more political showmanship. Elections became exercises of form, with less and less substance in sight. Campaigns were hatched on Madison Avenue, financed in back alleys and waged on television.

Bill Clinton can be blamed for much, but he didn't start this age of sleaze. He merely inherited it, then stamped it with his own particular Arkansas-vintage touches. They weren't even innovative. Shady deals, womanizing, lying to the public were invented as long ago as Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire of the Caesars.

Tracing our democratic roots back to Runnymede and the Magna Carta in 1215, America was supposed to be different. We were to become a republic of the people/ for the people and by the people. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and even Thomas Paine before them, declared that America would be different.

But it isn't. The bloody executions performed by Constantine in order to establish Christianity in the Fourth Century gave rise to more governmental immorality; the so-called Age of Reformation was more confirmation of the divine right of kings than moral awakening. America was to be different. King George, be damned. With colonial blood shed for freedom and independence was written a new declaration of the rights of the common man. Rights for the common woman, of course, took a little longer. One hundred and forty-four years longer to be exact.

Today's polls report Bill Clinton's approval rating is above 50 percent, with another 10 percent venturing the thought that, as tainted as his character may be, he's not bad as a president. We suspect a forthcoming grand jury somewhere in his native state may hold a somewhat different view.

Our two political parties pimp for cash in the same way their street-corner brethren do it. Elections have become farcical, going to the highest bidder. Here in Missouri a legislative leader "loses" a fortune in bookkeeping miasma. The corruption of organized gambling is just starting and before it's over will drown countless Missourians. The body count has already begun.

Jefferson, Adams and Jay insisted America's strength rested in an informed citizenry. They overlooked something: What happens when an informed citizenry simply no longer cares?

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.