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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (4648)	9/22/1998 12:16:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

BILL'S ONLY SORRY HE GOT CAUGHT By DICK MORRIS PRESIDENT Clinton's revolting and arrogant grand-jury testimony makes one thing abundantly clear: He is not truly sorry for either having had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky or for repeatedly lying under oath in two separate federal judicial proceedings. Instead, he persists in a state of angry, self-righteous denial - angered that he was caught, denying the truth about what happened, and still blaming others (especially Kenneth Starr) for his own misdeeds. Nothing better underscores his state of denial than that he had sex with Lewinsky, lied about it on a videotape before a grand jury, and then has the chutzpah to blame Starr for releasing his scandalous testimony about his scandalous behavior to the public that elected him. The president's false friends will help him continue to avoid facing the reality of who he really is. His true friends will reject his choreographed contrition and insist on holding out for the real thing. The problem is that there is nobody around Clinton to tell him the truth, to face down his anger, to contradict his denials, and to make him face his worse half without blinking or turning aside. Those who help shield Clinton from himself do him no favors and merely open the door to his continued self-destruction. Clinton can appeal either to our sense of justice or our sense of mercy. He'd better try mercy. Justice will clearly show that he committed perjury both in a deposition and before a criminal grand jury. He obstructed justice, he tampered with witnesses, he suborned perjury. It is only through a sense of forgiveness and mercy that we can even consider letting him stay in office. But his conduct defies our inclination to forgive. Those who genuinely seek forgiveness do not hire private detectives - his secret police - to dig up dirt on the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee and feed it to the media. All the while, Clinton adviser Rahm Emanuel piously claims that the White House would never use personal material to besmirch a critic. Where has he been? How can we give mercy to one who argues legal distinctions which insult our intelligence? A man who says that oral sex is not sex and that being alone doesn't mean being alone is lying. Clinton's evasive, convoluted, circuitous answers show that he just hasn't gotten the point that he has to come clean to expect our forgiveness. When Clinton says he is heart-broken because of the pain Lewinsky is going through, are we to forget that he lied to his closest advisers and supportive Democratic senators - saying that she was a stalker who had to be removed from the White House and that she had threatened him with blackmail unless he yielded to her sexually? The opposite of remorse and contrition is self-righteousness and blame. When Clinton blames Starr for his troubles - and not himself - and says that it was pressure from Starr that led him to seek comfort from Lewinsky, we see the exact opposite of genuine repentance. Clinton's blatant attempts to hide behind the cloth of the clergy in publicly announcing a panel of ecclesiastic baby sitters to keep him straight won't wash with the public. A genuine search for spiritual values is done in private and a real attempt to cope with addictive behavior involves experts, with clerical collars and without. Hillary's conduct is equally phony. Wives whose have been cheated on (and exposed to public humiliation!) by their husbands don't go cooing with them - or dancing with them a few weeks later to the strains of Mustang Sally at a state dinner. The process of forgiveness is a serious one that takes time and commitment, not a few photo ops. Hillary's - and her husband's - arrogant announcement that they have both refused to read the Starr report is a defiant act of denial. After years of denial, they won't even read the truth when it is delivered to their doorstep. Over the weekend, Larry King Live had a circle of so-called Clinton intimates as guests. Leon Panetta, Mandy Grunwald, Lanny Davis, David Gergen and former Hillary press secretary Lisa Caputo all agreed that Clinton was going through hell, wretched, in terrible pain. I believe they are all wrong. They don't know Saturday Night Bill. Clinton is feeling no anguish. He feels only fury at being caught, embarrassment at being exposed, and fear at being punished. He lashes out at his accusers, continues to practice a pitiful form of deception, and is determined to tough it out rather than reform. Surrounded by detectives, lawyers and press spinners, he is focused solely on making it through with as little real change or real contrition and as much pompous dignity as possible. So far, it is unlikely that what we have seen will prompt Clinton's removal from office. But there is more - much, much more - coming. By the time the evidence in Whitewater, Castle Grande, Filegate, the Travel Office firings, the Kathleen Willey affair, and the use of Linda Tripp's personnel file is all fully exposed, this president will be battered, wounded, bleeding and, very possibly, impeached. This is the time for him to learn what he did wrong. It's time to confront a lifetime of denial and of a split personality and reform himself. He needs to rise above his wife, his staff, his press people, his detectives - enablers all - and face himself in the mirror and change. If Bill Clinton doesn't get it - and he certainly gives every indication that he does not - he will be ruined, personally and politically.