1998-09-12
Let's see. There was an election for President in 1992. George Bush ran against Bill Clinton and lost. Then there was another election in 1996. The Republicans trotted out Bob Dole and once again, Clinton was victorious. The Republican's had a majority in Congress though, so they tried to thwart Mr. Clinton at every opportunity. Still, the nation, in poll after poll, told everyone that they liked Clinton, they thought he was doing a great job, and Newt Gingrich should go suck a lemon.
Kenneth Starr, you might not remember, was appointed to investigate Whitewater. He spared no effort or expense, but found nothing. He asked for permission, from a judge, to investigate other things, while he was at it. Again sparing no effort or expense, he could find nothing. Clinton may well, to that point, have been the cleanest President the U.S. has had in 90 years. As friends and acquaintances of the Clintons have been saying, consistently, for years, the Clinton's really don't care much about money.
Finally, Kenneth Starr stumbled into Monica Lewinsky, through the good offices of the despicable Linda Tripp.
Monica Lewinsky was a young, naive, White House intern. Starr had the FBI seize her, without necessarily following correct legal procedure, and threatened to lock her and her mother up if they didn't come clean. Lewinsky was terrified. Finally, she agreed to testify in exchange for immunity. It is now obvious that Starr asked her incredibly intrusive and mostly legally irrelevant questions about the details of the sexual encounters. And now he has made them public for everyone to drool over.
I don't know if Starr really thinks what Monica and Bill did is an impeachable offense. They had consensual sex and lied to prevent people from finding out about it. If he does, he is a fool. More likely, he, like the rest of the Republicans, despises Bill Clinton for political and cultural reasons, and finally found something he thought could make a lot of trouble for him. Unlike the members of Congress, Starr is virtually answerable to no one. With impunity, he is able to dig up the most intimate details about this sexual relationship and make them public. When Clinton attacked Starr's tactics, the Republicans rose up as one, an enormous repressed Greek Chorus, and screamed bloody murder. They have the advantage of not being personally accountable for the disclosures, while hoping to cash in the on the political fall-out. The general public is not fooled: given a choice between impeaching Starr or Clinton, there is no doubt, at this point, that they'd rather impeach Starr.
© Copyright 1998 Bill Van Dyk