In the future when historians recall the years 1992-2000 it will be
recalled as the most Perfidious Administration. In the past there have
been corrupt administrations, illegal activities, and unsavory
characters, but none of them came into power promising an administration
with a "higher ethical standard."
That higher ethical standard started low and has continued to sink.
It has not only been lowered by Cabinet Secretaries, White House
Counsels, presidential advisers, but also by the president and first
lady repeatedly. Even the London Times in 1995 said that Clinton's
"administration has presided over an extraordinary amount of corruption
and an unprecedented number of high-level officials forced to resign in
disgrace."
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This degradation of our public persona has been aided and abetted by
the national media. The same ones who go to jail to defend their First
Amendment rights by not revealing sources have forgotten that they must
try and be educators for truth, responsibility and accountability. Yet
they are blinded by liberal biases.
The time has now arrived for our newspapers to publish their
endorsements for public office. Although several newspapers already
took advantage of this past Sunday, most of the rest will appear on the
next two Sundays -- their biggest circulation day. Their gnashing of
teeth and wringing of hands as they dole out the media version of a
campaign contribution would be funny if it weren't so predictable.
TRENDING: The blinders are off
The Washington Post took the bull by the horns last Sunday and
endorsed Al Gore. The way it got around the issue of Gore's duplicitous
stand on campaign fund raising is instructive. The Post wrote,
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- Although Mr. Gore is as complicitous as anyone in this sordid
game, he unlike Mr. Bush has at least recognized it as a problem and
pledged to work toward reform. That by itself is a major factor in our
choice. ...
So according to the editors of the Washington Post, it was OK
for Gore to solicit funds at a Buddhist Temple, then to excuse the
blatant illegality by saying there was "no overriding legal authority,"
because he now campaigns ferociously for campaign finance reform.
The Post even acknowledges that it is "by no means blind to the risk
of a Gore presidency" by saying "His defense of President Clinton's
indefensible moral and legal lapses, and his own role in the fundraising
excesses of 1996, move into the realm of understatement." Yet, in the
end the Post acknowledges that it made the "choice without hesitation."
On Tuesday the Letters to the Editor section of the Washington Post
contained seven letters about the endorsement. The ratio was 6 to 1
against the endorsement. One writer called the endorsement, "completely
dishonest but utterly predictable." Another wrote, "What is surprising
about The Post's endorsement of Al Gore for president is its display of
amnesia of the past eight years." The letter that hit the nail squarely
was the one that said, "The editorial cites his 'superior' foreign
policy experience, yet in 1992, The Post supported a little-known
Arkansas governor whose foreign policy experience was nonexistent. His
opponent, however, had a long, active, distinguished, successful foreign
policy record, which in large part The Post supported. ... Could it be
that the party affiliation of the respective candidates both now and
then was the real motivating factor behind The Post's decision?"
We can expect the New York Times to follow suit next Sunday. After
the 1996 New York Times endorsed Bill Clinton but expressed reservations
about his "resoluteness and sensitivity to ethical standards in
government," Ross Perot (1992 and 1996 Reform Party candidate for
President)
asked, "How can you even consider voting for someone for president who has huge moral, ethical and criminal problems facing him?"
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Moral, ethical, or even criminality doesn't appear to matter to those editorial page editors. They have zero tolerance for those that disagree with their liberal point of view. They rail from their ivory tower perch about other people's indiscretions, but when their favorites can't tell truth from fiction or cover-up their illegal activity, they are forgiven and given license to do it all over again.
The New York Times endorsement of Hillary Clinton is just another example of this type of biased illogic. As
Bill O'Reilly put it, "For a prestigious newspaper like The New York Times to endorse a candidate it freely admits is dishonest and ineffective in the hope that she "grows beyond" her past actions is mystifying to say the least."
But, Bill, it's not mystifying. It's the way the liberal press takes care of its own. We have seen it time after time. The New York Times has been a leader in discovering corruption in the Clinton White House, yet in the end they and the rest of the liberal media fall way short of demanding that those responsible be held accountable. Maybe that's why they won't endorse Bush. After all he has repeatedly called for responsibility and accountability.
We can expect the last 12 days of this campaign to get nastier and nastier. After all during this two-year campaign most of the media has put its pro-Gore, pro-Clinton spin on the news and it still hasn't accomplished its objective. Here's hoping that over 50 percent of the American voters want to end this Perfidious Administration and restore decency, responsibility, and accountability to the White House.