Hey Michael,
You're absolutely right that one's party affiliations doesn't take away from Clinton's actions. I'm just a little tired of the assumption voiced by some here that anyone who believes Clinton should not be impeached is on the payroll of the Democrats. I actually like reading people's intelligent thoughts regardless of their party affiliation.
If this was Reagan would you honestly be so forgiving? Or maybe a better word (accepting). :-)
If Reagan had an affair with an intern, I honestly would smile and snicker at this family-values guy getting a hummer from a 21-year-old in the White House. "It figures," I would laugh. I would bring it up in jokes and chide my Republican friends about it and leave it at that.
If Reagan had lied about a sexual affair as a result of fending off a series of legal attacks from the Democrats, initiated as a result of say, the Iran-Contra or HUD scandals, I would scowl at the DEMOCRATS, not the Republicans, and say, "Is that all you could get? Idiots!" And leave it at that. If I wanted someone to go down, I would want him to go down for something substantive, not some tripe. That's why I was so dismayed by the Clarence Thomas hearings. I wanted Democrats to go after him because his IDEAS, IMO, were bad, not because he was kinda kinky. I would have loved to have seen Reagan go down for Iran-Contra, if they could prove it was part of a wider pattern of foreign policy abuses run out of the White House in defiance of Congress. But to undo an election is a serious matter, and to do so for something as trivial as trying to cover up an affair--rather than showing a pattern of demonstrable offenses that make the president unfit to govern--is setting a really bad precedent. You'll see the results of this precedent the next time Congress is Democratic and the president is Republican.
Let me state that I would not have minded seeing Clinton go down as a result of using the White House to cover-up Whitewater, if you could show that the Clintons used the White House to cover over other dirty secrets from their Arkansas past, or filegate--should it have led to the uncovering of a secret White House character assassination team, or better than everything--for campaign finance abuses. As I predicted many months ago, the Republicans would never go after Clinton on campaign finance--because they're all guilty of the same things. |
