Reality pliable under Clinton
Scott Lange
Assistant News Editor
"We have more than 14 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 24 years, the lowest core inflation in 30 years. Incomes are rising, and we have the highest home ownership in history. Crime has dropped for a record five years in a row, and the welfare rolls are at their lowest levels in 27 years. Our leadership in the world is unrivaled. Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our union is strong." — Bill Clinton, January 27, 1998.
Bill Clinton opened his State of the Union Address with these words. While I am certainly not willing to give the President all of the credit for this state of affairs (Allen Greenspan and Newt Gingrich deserve a much larger share of the credit), he has not been a complete failure as a political leader.
Unfortunately, a strong economy and fairly stable domestic situation are not the sole measures of a President. The President is the Commander in Chief of the country's military. The President is responsible for making treaties and implementing U.S. foreign policy. Most importantly, the President is the person that the electorate chooses as our moral and ethical example to the world and to ourselves.
There is not space in this paper, much less in this column, to catalog the litany of lies, affairs, and scandals that have surrounded Clinton since he appeared on the public stage. Of course, as Clinton's supporters have pointed out, scandal in politics is nothing new. From the XYZ Affair to Watergate, scandal and politics have gone together like Dead Week and Jolt Cola. However, Clinton has brought an entirely new form of moral turpitude to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—he not only lies, he actually acts as though the truth is irrelevant.
The notion that reality is pliable, and can be twisted to a new state at will, is new to the presidency. Presidents have lied to a varying degree for most of the last 222 years, but never before has a President actually concocted etymological loopholes and believed that they relieve him of responsibility.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, reporters asked Clinton if he had ever used drugs. He responded by saying, "I never broke American law." For a time, people naively assumed that the Governor was answering "no." Only later, when someone stopped to pin Clinton down, did he reveal that he actually had smoked marijuana—but it was in England. Furthermore, he assured us that it was perfectly all right since, of course, he didn't inhale.
Also during the 1992 campaign, Clinton assured us that he had a middle class tax cut in his bag of gifts. Instead, his 1993 budget included tax hikes, and no sign of an easing of the burden on the middle class. When the Republicans rolled into Congress in 1994, Clinton licked his finger, held it aloft, and promptly did an about-face. Not only did he suddenly support the Republican tax credits, he actually claimed them as his own! With no compunction whatsoever, he announced that he was in fact fulfilling his campaign promise. Apparently, he was just too busy to get to it in his first two years (when the Democratic majority in Congress was in no hurry to beat him to the punch).
Then we of course come to the most recent shameful spectacle in the White House, the Monica Lewinsky affair. Although the whole story has not yet been revealed, Clinton already seems to be attempting to hide behind wordplay. On the PBS's "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer," Clinton answered Jim Lehrer's question of whether he suborned perjury by saying, "There is no improper relationship."
Lehrer asked what the President meant by that, but Clinton refused to be more specific, again saying that there is not an improper relationship. Lehrer then asked if there had ever been an improper relationship. For a third time, Clinton answered no in the present tense. After a final attempt to cajole the Commander in Chief into answering the question, Lehrer finally moved on with no answer.
In the following days, Clinton went on to clarify just what he meant by saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Reporters have since asked if the President believes oral sex constitutes sexual relations. Not surprisingly, Clinton has refused to elaborate.
The overwhelming evidence of scandal in the Clinton Administration should not be ignored. There is more than enough proof of Clinton's criminal conduct to bring down his Presidency. However, the far more ominous element of Clinton's behavior is his clear conviction that reality is subjective. If the public continues to accept Clinton and his Orwellian efforts to convince the American people that the truth is only as valid as "his truth," it is a grim portent for the future state of the Union.
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