By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
August 8, 2000
Al Gore’s choice of Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his choice as a vice-presidential running mate is a breath-taking political development. It has inevitably brought center stage one of the two 800 pound political gorillas that the Clinton spin-meisters and a very supportive media had kept out of the Year 2000 Presidential politics: The Clinton Impeachment and Clinton’s Bombing of Yugoslavia for a "Genocide" of "up to 100,000 Albanians" that never happened.
Choosing Lieberman forcefully reminds the American public that the socially liberal but morally strait-laced Orthodox Jew from Connecticut was the first to use the floor of the Senate to scold President Clinton for his "immoral" and "harmful" behavior with Monica Lewinsky.
In a sober statement on the floor of the Senate on September 3, 1998, Sen. Lieberman said:
"On August 17, President Clinton testified before a grand jury convened by the independent counsel and then talked to the American people about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. He told us that the relationship was `not appropriate,' that it was `wrong,' and that it was `a critical lapse of judgment and a personal failure' on his part. In addition, after 7 months of denying that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the President admitted that his `public comments about this matter gave a false impression.' He said, `I misled people.'"Mr. President, my immediate reaction to this statement that night it was delivered was deep disappointment and personal anger. I was disappointed because the President of the United States had just confessed to engaging in an extramarital affair with a young woman in his employ and to willfully deceiving the Nation about his conduct.
"I was disappointed because the President of the United States had just confessed to engaging in an extramarital affair with a young woman in his employ and to willfully deceiving the Nation about his conduct. …I was also angry because I was one of the many people who had said over the preceding 7 months that if the President clearly and explicitly denies the allegations against him, that of course I believe him."
Basically, what Sen. Lieberman said in that speech was that he had trusted Bill Clinton, and Clinton had betrayed him and he was mad about it. Clinton had deceived the nation, and it was a serious matter:
"But the truth is that, after much reflection, my feelings of disappointment and anger have not dissipated, except now these feelings have gone beyond my personal dismay to a larger, graver sense of loss for our country, a reckoning of the damage that the President's conduct has done to the proud legacy of his Presidency, and ultimately an accounting of the impact of his actions on our democracy and its moral foundations. The implications for our country are so serious that I feel a responsibility to my constituents in Connecticut, as well as to my conscience, to voice my concerns forthrightly and publicly. And I can think of no more appropriate place to do that than on this great Senate floor.
In retrospect what Sen. Lieberman said seems more significant today than when he said it. We have since that day been treated to almost two solid years of White House and media efforts to trivialize the magnitude of what Bill Clinton has done to our nation and to our children. By choosing Sen. Lieberman as his vice-president, Al Gore appears to be hoping to neutralize the impact of George W. Bush’s vice presidential choice - Dick Cheney - whom he described as:
"a man of integrity and sound judgment, who has proven that public service can be noble service. America will be proud to have a leader of such character to succeed Al Gore as Vice President of the United States.
Yet, when it came time to vote for or against convicting William Jefferson Clinton of the charges against him in the House impeachment, Sen. Lieberman voted to acquit Clinton, even after publicly castigating him for betraying the public’s trust. Shortly before the vote, in a lengthy statement, Sen. Lieberman justified his vote to acquit saying that even though he was
"of course, profoundly unsettled by President Clinton's irresponsibility in carrying on a sexual relationship with an intern in the Oval Office and by the disregard for the truth he showed in trying to conceal it from his family, his staff, the courts and the American people. … I believe, they have failed to cross the higher constitutional threshold of proving that the President has forfeited his right to fill out the term for which the people elected him. They have failed to convince me with the evidence they have presented that his misbehavior, as charged in the articles of impeachment, makes him a threat to the national interest, and that we can no longer expect the President to govern free of corruption in the nation's best interests." "
While Sen. Lieberman made a strong statement in August of 1998 about his concerns that Clinton’s actions had impacted our democracy and its moral foundations, seven months later in on February 12, 1999 the Senator had completely backed down from his concern about both the nation and its threatened moral foundations. Why? He said,
"According to every public poll we have seen, a clear majority of the American people have continued to support the President throughout this ordeal. Nearly two-thirds of them say repeatedly that they approve of the job that President Clinton is doing in running the country, and that they oppose his removal. In my state of Connecticut, a survey done by The Hartford Courant just last week showed that 68 percent of my constituents rate the President's job performance as excellent or good, and a full three quarters of them believe he deserves to stay in office."
So, in the end, Sen. Lieberman appears to have made his decision based on opinion polls. Is this what leadership is all about? Did the Clinton-Gore Administration, in spite of all the oft-touted polls that claimed over two-thirds of the American people "approved" of the direction they were being led, really lead the American people where they wanted to go?
George W. Bush doesn’t think so. He said of them, in his acceptance speech after being nominated at the GOP Convention:
They had their moment. They have not led. We will.Our generation has a chance to reclaim some essential values — to show we have grown up before we grow old.
But when the moment for leadership came, this administration did not teach our children, it disillusioned them.
They had their chance. They have not led. We will.
And now they come asking for another chance, another shot.
Our answer?
Not this time.
If those polls accurately reflected public opinion during and immediately following the Senate trial, what happened to convince the public that THIS TIME they want a president they can trust, who will have integrity and honor? Is it just Clinton fatigue? Or is it something deeper? In a remarkably short period of time we have moved from being told that all the House Managers who managed the prosecution would face an angry public that would defeat them in the next election to a sudden determination in both parties to field candidates who promise not to follow in the footsteps of the president we were told was overwhelmingly popular just a little over a year ago.
Or, is it an indication, as John Adams first said and repeated by one of the House Managers: - John Adams "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Time, and the Fall election may tell us.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to:
Start Your Subscription
