UNFAITHFUL SERVANT

8/20/98

First of all, I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, I even worked for him and dared to hope that for the first time in a quarter century, there would be a President I could be proud of. I did not vote for him in 1996, which gives you a good idea of what happened to those hopes. Don’t get me wrong, if the election had been close, I would’ve held my nose and voted for him, since the alternative was Republican control of government, which actually frightens me, but as long as it didn’t matter, I could withhold my vote on principle.

I’ve been of two minds toward him. I like Bill, the good father, the guy you could kick back with, have a beer, watch the ballgame, and ogle the hot babes in the stands. President Clinton, on the other hand, seems a man of little principle, standing for nothing except his own election. He has decent instincts, understands minorities in a way few Presidents have, but the thoughts rarely coalesce into policy he will go to war over. And most important, he has no sense of loyalty to those who serve him.

That lack of loyalty, of concern for people who have committed to him, is what sickens me over l’affaire Lewinsky. Of course what he did was distasteful, but I’m tired of hearing how she was a 21 year-old girl. She was a woman, capable not merely of making her own decisions, but from everything we’ve heard ("going to get my Presidential kneepads"), young Monica knew what she wanted when she headed east.

What is distasteful is using his staff, his cabinet, and worst of all, his wife, to cover his tracks. Lying to the American people is bad, letting your Secretary of State, your closest friends, and your wife make fools of themselves based on your lies is disgusting.

This isn’t the first time being a "friend of Bill" has cost people. Obviously, all those Arkansas people have ended up in jail or even dead because they were his friends. None of those Whitewater investigations would’ve happened were he not President. Those weren’t his fault, but it should trouble him a little. I wonder if it does.

This isn’t the first time he’s shown little loyalty to those who did his bidding. Let’s go back to 1993, his first budget. Remember the BTU tax? I’ll bet there are any number of Congressmen who do. More likely they’re former Congressmen, since they voted for a tax which was roundly hated, which was pure fodder for their opponents. Clinton swore it was a key component of his plan, that he was going to fight for it to the end. He fought for it until Senators Boren and Breaux told him not to. Did this result in the Democrats losing control of Congress? Hard to tell, but it sure didn’t help.

Then there was the case of George Mitchell. He was the Majority Leader of the Senate, although there was a general attitude that he was about to become Commissioner of Baseball or a Supreme Court Justice. Both jobs were available during the last year of his term, but Clinton asked him to stay and fight for NAFTA. Now this wasn't a happy task for a Democrat, since most of the party was opposed to it. Yet he fought the good fight and got it through. His reward? In Clinton’s second administration, the jobs of Secretary of State and Defense were available. Most observers assumed he would be Secretary of State. When the dust settled, Clinton had selected William Cohen, the other Senator from Maine, a Republican, to be Secretary of Defense. This meant he couldn’t give State to Mitchell, since he was also from Maine. Thanks for the help, George, be sure to write.

And now this. We remember the four cabinet Secretaries, standing outside the White House on a cold January night, telling about how they believed the President. Ann Lewis, former DNC Chair, was paraded to all the news shows. Her quote: "I know these charges aren’t true because the President of the United States told me so and I believe the President." Lanny Davis, one of Clinton’s closest allies, fought the good fight on the basis of a direct lie. If you saw him on TV this week, he was visibly shattered.

The worst, of course, was Hillary. I never thought he had lied to her about this. I assumed she went into this war with her eyes wide open. Perhaps his philandering has been a source of constant pain for her, but this is beyond anything I can understand. She went on every news show, backing up his lie, and all those tapes now mock her. As late as last week she was talking about how they were under attack because they were from Arkansas. How can any decent person let that happen to someone you care about?

Notice that most Democrats on the hill are not exactly racing to his defense now. He lied to them, as he has before, and that’s the worst thing a politician can do. You can lie to your constituents, you can lie to the press, but you can’t lie to people whose votes you need to pass bills. They know that, but somehow, he doesn’t.

What do I want from him now? For me, nothing. He doesn’t have to apologize to me for his "inappropriate" behavior with the bimbo. But he has to go to his people, the staffers who trusted him, the cabinet members who have stood up for him, and the wife who has stood by him – even Tammy Wynette didn’t have to put up with this much humiliation. Perhaps he should put his fate directly in the hands of the party leaders, let them decide whether he should stay or go.

I don’t really want him to resign. I don’t want to see Starr, Lott, Gingrich, Limbaugh, and rest of those lowlifes having a party, finally succeeding in their goal of undoing the people’s will of the last two Presidential elections.

I don’t want to have to support him either. Yet because the other side sickens me so, I can’t ally myself with them. So I sit and watch the self-proclaimed "most ethical administration ever" disintegrate with scandal upon scandal embarrassing the executive branch. The "Bridge to the 21^st Century" is as shaky as the builder’s ethics.

Thank you, Mr. President.