Here is my basic understanding of Clinton's misdeeds:
a) The president had an affair with a subordinate
b) He lied about it under oath
c) Evidence shows he may have tried to use the powers of his office to silence the underling
through the promise of a job.
d) Evidence shows he may have tried to use the powers of his office to cover up the affair in
order to thwart a civil proceeding against him.
e) Evidence shows he may have tried to use the powers of his office to thwart an
investigation by the Independent Counsel into whether he tried to thwart the civil proceeding.
As for all the draft-dodging, pot-smoking, lesbian wife stuff--that's the extreme right's problem with Clinton, not mine. As for the Whitewater, filegate, campaign finances, where the hell is it? Now you have Henry Hyde saying the impeachment inquiry will be focused exclusively on the Lewinsky and maybe the Willey matters. No wonder Suck.com has christened the 1990s the decade of Penis!
As for the lack of outrage part, I never voted for the guy. Never really liked him. But I'm sorry if I can't muster up too much outrage over the above. It's a comedy--a farcical simulacra of a scandal rather than a real one. It's hilarious. Get Clinton on campaign finances, filegate, etc. and I'm all for it. Sex, lies about sex, and lies about lies about sex seems like a joke. When compared, say to Reagan's mining of Nicaragua's harbor-- which the world court in The Hague condemned as an international crime--the above scenario sounds more like an episode of the Dukes of Hazard or Jenny Jones than any high crime and misdemeanor.
Unless someone were already a Clinton hater from day one. Then, of course, they would want to nail Clinton on this--and anything else they could dream up: Bloodgate, cocaine shipments to Arkansas airbases, how about Clinton flying one of the U.N.'s Black Helicopters, swooping down on some God-fearing American's log cabin to take away his collection of M-16's and force him to burn his Bible and let his wife enter the workforce? Wake up people!
If you were one of those impassioned Clinton haters from day one, of course you're going to see this whole thing very differently from the rest of the nation. |
