Watching the Clinton e-mail scandal unfold, I can’t help but think about the old Southern Methodist football scandal. For my non-American readers, this was a scandal surrounding the football (American football) program at Southern Methodist University in 70’s and 80’s. The people running the program broke every rule on the books at least once and most several times. They seemed to relish their outlaw status so no amount of warnings deterred them.

Finally, the governing body of college sports, along with their envious competitors brought the hammer down on them. For the first and only time, the “death penalty” was handed down and the program was shuttered for two years. The program never recovered and has been an afterthought ever since. A UK analog would be Chelsea being shutdown for two years and then relegated to second division permanently.

The intent of the punishment was to stand as a warning to others. If you did not respect the rules, the punishments would be severe. If you kept breaking the rules, the punishments would be draconian. The funny thing is, the results were something entirely different than expected. The fallout so frightened all of the other football playing universities, they decided that punishment should never again be used.

The result over the last thirty years is a decreasing ability of the sports playing universities to police themselves. The punishments have become ornamental and the investigations take so long no one remembers why they are on-going most of the time. The University of North Carolina, for example, was found to be faking classes and grades to keep players eligible. That was five years ago and nothing has come of it. the investigation is “on-going.”

Now, what does this have to do with the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics?

In the American system, impeachment and removal from office is the political death penalty. A judge, Secretary or executive that is deemed unacceptable by the legislature can be removed from office. In the 1970’s, the Liberal Democrats were prepared to use impeachment to remove Nixon. He resigned before it got to that point, but only because he knew he could not win at trial. The die was cast so he resigned.

The fallout was not what was expected. The Liberal Democrats were sure the Republican party would collapse. Instead, the party surged to majority status over the next two decades and the Liberal Democrats have never fully recovered. The Republicans, for their part, discovered a similar lesson twenty years later when they tried to impeach Bill Clinton. They stopped short, claiming to have made their point.

The point, however, was that the death penalty, so to speak, was forever off the table. By refusing to resign, Clinton exposed what everyone suspected, but preferred not to admit. That is, the American Congress no longer had the will or ability to enforce the rules on the executive. In one of life’s great ironies, the Nixon impeachment was about reigning in the imperial president. That led to the Clinton impeachment, which solidified the imperial presidency.

Like the SMU scandal I started with, attempts to enforce the rules ended up exposing the deep rot within the system those rules were supposed to protect. The greatest irony of all is that Hillary Clinton worked on the House Watergate committee as a young attorney and was fired for unethical behavior. What she learned, it seems, is that Nixon should have fought a little harder as there was simply no stomach in the ruling class for enforcing their rules.

The 1990’s will be looked upon as a seminal period in American history. The Clinton’s willingness and ability to corrupt the political system and their brazen disregard of the rules set a dangerous precedent. Obama is now issuing edicts as if he is emperor. Meanwhile, the Congress cowers in fear. This e-mail scandal shows quite clearly that the political class is broken.

If you doubt it, look at the facts. Clinton had this private e-mail system setup. It is against the law to mishandle government documents and the mere existence of this private e-mail system is more than enough to suggest that happened and happened deliberately and with malice of forethought.

The Congress can issue a subpoena for the physical server, all written documents related to it or having originated from it, all of the people who had access to it, etc. E-mail is a two-way street so all they need is one e-mail from the government to this domain to justify their actions. That would take a competent tech about an hour to find. The claim of destroyed hard drives could easily be proof of improper use of confidential information.

In other words, the Congress has a lot of power and they could come down on Clinton if they are inclined to do so. If Clinton refuses to comply, the Constitution gives Congress the power to arrest her and bring her in to testify. If she refuses, she can be imprisoned in the Capitol jail. In other words, this whole charade could be settled by the middle of summer and it would be the last time someone tried a similar stunt.

Of course, that’s not possible. The political class is paralyzed, incapable of enforcing its own rules. That leaves the field open for rogues and criminals. In another time, Congress would have been shuttered and its members executed as the most powerful political clans closed ranks. Today, we just have the current chaos.

There is a Faulkner quality to this. The grubby, grasping Clintons are the Snopes clan, slowly subverting the Compsons, in this case the American Republic. I would like to say that Obama is Benji, but the analogy really does not work, even though it makes me laugh.