Just apologize

In today's society, we don't hold politicians accountable, we just
let them apologize. An apology has become the accepted way of being
punished. Remember back in 1998 when everyone but Hillary knew that
Clinton had lied to the American people and many months later he finally
took to the airwaves to explain. His explanation was an angry one. He
blamed everyone but himself. His supporters immediately went on the
offensive, saying that unless he apologized properly -- an apology with
real remorse, to the American people -- he was in real trouble.

Weeks later Bill Clinton tried again. He must have apologized
properly that time, because Sen. Joe Lieberman, who had condemned
Clinton from the floor of the Senate, and a majority of the United
States Senate let him off the hook and voted not guilty. Everything is
forgiven as long as the errant politician says, "I'm sorry" and really
shows he means it. After all, Bill and Joe's friendship goes back some
30 years when Bill lived in Joe's hometown of New Haven, Conn., and
helped Joe win his first election. Political friendship is thicker than
moral values.

This fall election season there are more apologies floating through
the air than brightly colored leaves. Up in New York State it's
Hillary's turn to apologize.

After she and Bill invited their "many friends" to come and stay
overnight at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she sent them Christmas cards
paid for by taxpayers' dollars. Then she proceeded to use her Christmas
card list to send fund-raising letters to all her many friends. Hillary
Clinton Esq. somehow did not know or wasn't informed that using a
government list to solicit campaign contributions is against the law.
But it's OK. Hillary has apologized and said it was just a clerical
error -- an "oversight."

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This is a woman who went to Washington in 1974 to join John Doar's
staff in the House of Representatives' Watergate Committee, a group that
was preparing President Nixon's impeachment and a staff that we now know
had an agenda to impeach Nixon from the very beginning. Hillary worked
tirelessly on two projects for the committee. The first was to draw up
the rules of procedure that the Watergate Committee would use. Hillary
and her mentor, Bernard Nussbaum, who would become White House Counsel
in the Clinton White House and then leave after his unprofessional
handling of the Vincent Foster suicide, developed the restrictive and
prejudicial rules the Committee was to use in the impeachment
proceedings. Rules that included denying Nixon the right to counsel and
prohibiting the committee members from hearing live witnesses. Her
second project was to oversee the preparation of a confidential history
of the presidential abuse of power. Former White House counsel, Leonard
Garment, has called that study, "a sad example of academic expertise
marshaled for political purposes."

This is a woman who knows and understands the law. She uses it to
her advantage at every turn. She has managed to manipulate most of the
press into believing that she couldn't possibly do anything wrong and
therefore is innocent. In addition she apologizes for any inadvertent
error, making everything OK.

New Democrats seem to always be reinventing themselves; maybe that's
why they are "New." Bill Clinton has done it countless times and so has
Hillary. From a Daddy's Goldwater girl to a Marxist at Wellesley, where
her thesis on Saul Alinsky is now "under lock and key." She changed
from a disciple of well-known Communists at Yale Law School to First
Lady of Arkansas. For the past eight years she has been reinventing
herself regularly: the Health Care general, the caring mother, the
author, the victim, and now the Senate candidate. With every makeover
she sheds allegiances as quickly as she changes her hairdo.

Back in the '80s as chairwoman of the New World Foundation she was a
strong supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organizations. In fact
the foundation had given grants to PLO organizations at the same time
that the PLO were the leaders in global terrorism -- committed to the
extinction of Israel and killing Jews from Europe to the Middle East.
In 1998 she publicly called for the creation of a Palestinian state
during delicate negotiation between Arabs and Israel. Only a year ago
she publicly embraced Suha Arafat after she had accused Israel of
poisoning Arab women and children. Now just a week ago she joined a
rally supporting Israel in front of the United Nations.

Even former Mayor Ed Koch questioned Hillary's newfound support for
Israel. According to the

New York Post Ed Koch called the Clinton's failure to veto the United Nations resolution, which blamed Israel for the ongoing Mideast violence, "appeasement." He went on to question Hillary's commitment to Israel by saying,

When a person is running for office in New York, it doesn't take courage to say they're against the resolution. But it takes courage to take on Clinton. What he did was a terrible betrayal to Israel.

Her obvious flip-flop on the issue of Palestine has infuriated her former Arab allies and as the New York Post editorial asks, "Question is, if her Arab-American friends don't trust her, why should Jews -- or anyone else, for that matter?" This is too big an issue especially in New York State for an apology to make everyone happy.

After Al Gore's gross exaggerations in his first debate with George W. Bush, Gore apologized. He said in the second debate, "I got some of the details wrong last week in some of the examples that I used, Jim, and I'm sorry about that. And I'm going to try to do better." But he didn't. According to Dave Kopel writing in the

National
Review, Gore's comment regarding guns and the Columbine High School tragedy were "palpably false." As Kopel points out the young lady, Robyn Anderson, who purchased three long guns in December 1998 at a Denver gun show was a lawful gun purchaser and she could have legally bought those guns from any firearms dealer, even though her subsequent transfer was not legal. But truth has never helped Gore or his anti-gun allies in the fight for more and more restrictive gun legislation.

In the last two debates Gore has had to face revealing his position on the gun control issue. The question was raised by Jim Lehrer last week and on Tuesday evening by one of the questioners. Gore's newest position has changed from the one he proudly held during the primaries when he was trying to "out-gun control" former Sen. Bill Bradley. During the primaries Gore was all for mandatory licensing and training schemes, banning affordable handguns, and assisting anti-gun big city mayors and greedy trial lawyers in their efforts to bankrupt lawful gun makers through reckless lawsuits. Now we have a candidate who promises, "not do anything to affect the rights of hunters or sportsmen. I think that homeowners have to be respected in their right to have a gun if they wish to." His newest position, however, promotes going back to a three day waiting period, licensing and registration prior to handgun purchase, and mandatory child safety locks. Hunters beware -- the devil is always lurking in the details.

So Al Gore has again stretched the truth, but on the issue of gun control I doubt he will admit his exaggeration, let alone apologize.

After Tuesday's debate, however, he may need to apologize again. In that debate he charged that prescription drug companies spend more money on advertising than on research and development. According to the

Associated
Press in 1998 the spending was $21 billion on research and development, while promotion costs ranged from $5.8 billion to $8.3 billion. Gore embellished his plan to rescue failed schools by saying the school turnover would begin "immediately," when he really proposed a two-year changeover. And he also exaggerated his tuition tax credit making it "sound more generous than it is."

In the next 19 days the exaggerations, lies, and flip-flops will be enough to make any voter's head spin. But we should greet anything and everything Hillary and Al say with extreme skepticism. They have proven to be experts at obfuscation, exaggeration, and outright lying. After all, it's part of being a New Democrat -- part of the Clinton legacy.