Bob Barr

Too Much Drama over T.V. Show
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

September 13, 2006

Perhaps nothing so vividly illustrates the wasted legacy of the administration of William Jefferson Clinton than the incessant whining of its participants about the ABC television show The Path to 9/11.

Granted, the so-called docudrama did not go out of its way to paint the prior administration in the most favorable light possible. However, the spectacle of a former president of the United States spending his time, and squandering the prestige of that high office, carping about a made-for-TV movie and how it unfairly portrayed him strikes many as demeaning.

That the Clinton administration folks believed it necessary to send their former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, out on the interview circuit to defend its national security performance, exactly one year after Berger was sentenced in federal court to community service and probation for stealing classified documents from the National Archives, was perhaps the ultimate irony.

Still, the uproar surrounding the ABC "miniseries" says much about the larger picture that is public debate in America in the early 21st century.

At a time when we should have been debating crucial issues of national security and civil liberties lost, the fact that countless hours of airtime and bloviating by pundits was spent debating a TV show speaks volumes about the level of public interest in, and awareness of, fundamental public policy issues spawned by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Washington's well-known penchant for finger-pointing notwithstanding, whether ABC and its entertainment-industry benefactors concluded its ratings would be boosted marginally by criticizing or by praising the Clinton administration will make not a scintilla of difference in whether America succeeds in thwarting future terrorist attacks. No movie—made-for-TV or otherwise—will affect whether we preserve or surrender the very civil liberties those Sept. 11 terrorists apparently hated.

Sadly, largely as a result of the media's decision to focus so much of their massive resources on a fictionalized account of events leading to Sept. 11, it is a certainty that many Americans are more cognizant of the merits of this "docudrama" than of the truly important matters working their way through the Congress. In ways most Americans never dream of, this legislation will deeply affect how much freedom they, their children and grandchildren will enjoy.

For example, how many Americans have even a passing awareness that very shortly Congress may very well pass laws that will allow secret evidence to be used to convict those accused of capital offenses, and that would authorize this and future presidents to tap into their phone and e-mail communications without fear of interference by the courts?

How many of those who watched The Path to 9/11 know that a battle of historic proportions is brewing in the federal courts, pitting a lone judge against the weight of the presidency and probably a majority in the Congress—a dispute that may very well determine whether future presidents will have to abide by the laws of our land or can with impunity ignore them?

Aside from these and other issues involving the loss of civil liberties here at home as a direct result of the federal government's grab for post-Sept. 11 power, there are legion questions of importance to the American homeland relating to our true preparedness to discover and fend off future attacks by those employing tools of terror.

Lost in the brouhaha over a television movie, for example, was the opportunity on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 to focus a real public debate on the true state of our foreign intelligence apparatus. When all is said and done, the government's foreign intelligence operations will have more to do with whether we ever have to face another catastrophe such as that visited on us five years ago, than 100 made-for-TV movies will.

That former President Clinton chose to use his still-considerable prestige to complain petulantly about how he was portrayed in a made-for-TV movie, rather than constructively add to the debate over these and many other substantive issues, is a sad testament to the self-centered nature of his personality.

That the American public did not and still does not demand more of him and other public officials—or of the media outlets that pander to such narcissism—is much more troubling.

Mr. Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.