Mr. Clinton left his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to repair his image.
His first public appearance since his televised confession of an affair
with one of his interns was in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he talked
about juvenile crime and school safety. He chose this venue carefully — a
union hall in the state that re-elected Barney Frank after one of Frank’s
boyfriends was caught running a male prostitution ring out of his
residence.
After telling us that he only lied for the past seven months to protect
his wife and child, Mr. Clinton is hiding behind other people’s children.
It’s the oldest political trick in the book. Hitler did it. Stalin did
it. Every two-bit dictator who ever ruled a third world country has done
it.
While Clinton didn’t kiss any babies, he was kissing the hands of the
members of two groups of his most loyal supporters — the unions and the
gun control crowd — in relative safety, daring reporters to throw out
embarrassing questions within earshot of so many young, sensitive ears.
Clinton and his strategists have a lot of nerve! Can this man seriously
be portrayed as the protector of the nation’s youth? The young people who
greeted Clinton on this day would have learned a lot more about safety from
Monica Lewinsky than they did from this disgraced president. Never trust a
stranger, even if he is a symbol of authority and respect.
Monica technically had crossed the legal threshold between adolescence
and adulthood when the affair began. However she still was under the
protective care of her parents and our White House. Is there any real
difference between a young woman a few moments before her 21st birthday and
a few moments after? Of course not. Just as there is no real difference
between the baby in the incubator and the baby with her tiny head lodged in
the birth canal who is fair game for an abortionist with a surgical
scissors. These are legal distinctions, not moral distinctions, and an
American president should not be able to hide behind legal loopholes to
cover his moral failings.
James Madison, the principal architect of our Constitution, said that
its “first aim” was to ensure that men with the “most virtue” would lead
this great country of ours, and the impeachment process was created for
“keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
The notion that the office of president would be weakened if Clinton
were forced to step down is ludicrous. Our Founding Fathers envisioned
that the men who would serve as president would be trustworthy, and when a
president ceased to be trustworthy, the people we elect to be our
representatives in Congress would have the moral underpinnings necessary to
take the action to remove him.
