Scott Tibbs
Caught with his pants down
By Scott Tibbs.
Published in the
Indiana Daily Student, February 2, 1998
It's easy to get caught up in the President's latest scandal involving his alleged affair with the 21-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. With the possibility Clinton encouraged Lewinsky to lie under oath, the cloud of impeachment again hangs over our president. If the allegations are true, one has to question President Clinton's intelligence. If anyone should know better than to engage in this sort of activity, especially considering his past, it is Clinton. But as Rush Limbaugh said, Clinton does not look at things through a window of "Is this right or wrong?" He looks at his life through a window of "Can I get away with this?"
But the current scandal should come as no surprise to those who have followed Clinton through the years. In the five years since he took office, there have been four major Clinton scandals -- the White House Travel Office scandal, the FBI files scandal, the campaign-fund raising scandal and the Lewinsky sex scandal. Three of these, if the allegations are true, contain potentially impeachable offenses. These include the FBI files scandal, where Clinton allegedly used the FBI to compile information on prominent Republicans; the campaign fund- raising scandal, involving numerous possible violations of law; and the Lewinsky scandal, which might involve perjury.
That's not even counting the Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones scandals, which took place before Clinton took office. The FBI Files scandal alone should terrify Americans of all political stripes because if the allegations are true, Clinton used the trillion-dollar juggernaut that is the federal government for his own political purposes. This is exactly what would have gotten Richard Nixon impeached and is by far the most serious of the Clinton scandals.
Each scandal meets a predictable Democratic response: Kenneth Starr is a tool of the Republican Party and is trying to topple Clinton for political purposes. Since the GOP can't defeat Clinton at the ballot box, tarnishing him with scandal is the only option it has. Never mind that in 1992 and 1996 more than 50 percent of the American people voted against Clinton.
Hillary Clinton's Jan. 27 attack went even further, to the point of being amusing rather than informative. On NBC's "Today" show, she claimed the president was the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to tarnish his reputation.
OK, Hillary, I admit it. The IU College Republicans are just the local arm of this vast anti-Clinton conspiracy. We fly black helicopters over the White House every day to keep tabs on you. In fact, I was just meeting with representatives from the Trilateral Commission the other day on how your husband is in the way of our attempt to implement the New World Order. "Zippergate" is just our latest attempt to get him out of our way. Lewinsky is one of our agents.
But we can't just look at one scandal at a time in an attempt to get a good view of Clinton's character. We must look at the big picture, including all the scandals, not just one "explainable" incident at a time. Looking at the big picture, with all seven major scandals, it is clear Clinton is the most morally bankrupt president in American history. You cannot tell me all seven scandals were the result of Republicans trying to tarnish the president. With all the allegations and all the major scandals, there should be little doubt in any reasonable person's mind that Clinton is guilty of at least some wrongdoing. The allegations are too vast and too numerous, and there is too much evidence for them all to be a part of one big "right-wing conspiracy."
I doubt this latest scandal will lead to impeachment or resignation. But the latest wave of scandal to hit the Clinton White House should, if anything, let people know character does indeed matter, and we should take that into consideration the next time we select a president.
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