If Tucker is convicted of the charges it will be treated as an embarrassment for Clinton this election year. So a judge who had expressed friendship for the Clintons could be perceived by the public as biased in a trial that the president's political foes expect to use to embarrass the president. That, Judge Bowman said, is intolerable and must be undone. People expressing friendship for the president cannot try a case in Arkansas on the chance Republicans can use the trial to help defeat the president. Such is the majestic state of the law in 1996.
Appearances are indeed a serious matter in dispensing justice.
Confidence in the legal system to dispense it evenly, without favor, must be maintained. The doctrine is not easy to administer. Whether judges are appointed or elected, all have decided political connections. They are expected to put them aside and accord an even shake even to those of a different political stripe or those represented by a lawyer who supported another for the judgeship. Bowman was sponsored for the federal judgeship in 1983 by Sen. Helms, an old friend whose lunch with a District of Columbia judge in 1994 was followed by the appointment of Kenneth Starr, a hot Clinton critic, as special prosecutor.