By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
It's hard to believe that only a week has gone by since Bill Clinton's extraordinary speech to the nation following his grand jury appearance on August 17, 1998. In one four minute speech their aging golden boy, who, they have been telling us for years, was totally innocent of any flaws and was merely the victim of a right wing conspiracy, an "out of control" Kenneth Starr, and an extremist opposition, appears to have yanked their rug out from under their feet.
Last night Larry King talked with several of his most devoted apologists - but the fire seems gone. Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary of the Clinton White House, finally admitted they all had ample warning.
"With his use of language he would get himself into trouble, and then with energy and empathy sort of talk himself out of trouble and we saw that with Gennifer Flowers and we saw that with how he handled the draft. He answered questions very carefully. He said what he meant, but ONLY what he meant."
Translated that means, apparently, that if he could deceive the people, the "trouble" no longer existed. There is no rejection of the candidate because he could lie his way out of responsibility for his actions.
But, sadly, his friends thought he was smart enough not to get involved with an intern, in the Oval Office, after "he came to the White House with a reputation," Dee Dee continued, "but I thought that he believed if he was caught doing anything like his past suggested he had done, that it would potentially cost him his presidency - if not in throwing him out of office, by rendering him ineffective. I didn't think he would ever take that risk. I didn't think he would take that risk with his own legacy and I didn't think he would take that risk with the lives of those who worked so hard to support him."
What, pray tell, ever happened to integrity? Forget Bill Clinton. Whatever happened to the integrity of all the many enablers around him who helped him totally deceive the American people in one issue after another?
Bill Clinton had to surround himself with people who would package his lies. As I have said before, in the great debate over balancing the budget, legislation Clinton vetoed twice, he, Democrats in Congress who followed his lead and the dominant media all were complicit in the deception. Day after day Democrats rose to their feet in Congress daily and repeated what Bill Clinton first said, "This Balanced Budget plan is a huge tax break for the wealthy!" That was a lie. Bill Clinton knew it was a lie. The Democrats in Congress must also have known it was a lie, but it was repeated over and over until most of the nation believed the lie. The only huge tax break written into the Republican bill was a $500 per child tax credit for parents of America.
He vetoed the bill, not once, but twice, which caused the government to run out of money, and then successfully blamed the Republicans - which he and the Democrats not only are still doing, but threatening to do again before the November elections since is worked so well in the election of 1996! He sold that bald-faced lie with the assistance of newspapers which claim in their motto to tell the truth or to "print all the news that's fit to print." That was not news. The Democrats knew it was not news. The newspapers in our metropolitan centers knew it was not news - but lies, yet they printed it without telling what we now discover they have known all along.
They printed, without question, make-believe "reports" that claimed the Republican Welfare Reform Bill would put "a million children on the street." It didn't, of course. In fact, it clearly has improved the lives of the children of AFDC mothers, as they have learned how to work and become productive members of society, rather than parasites living off the labor of others.
Not only has the economy boomed since those Republican bills passed - both of them finally with a veto proof majority which prompted Clinton to sign them, rather than to look defeated - but have you noticed that there has been a drop in the crime rate since those bills were passed? Many of the people affected by welfare reform are still poor. However, their poverty is not leading to as much crime in their neighborhood.
Why would that be? It's a phenomenon that no one has really looked at. As one with many years experience in the inner city, my own guess would be something my mother used to say, "The devil makes use of idle hands." People who have no constructive work to perform have the time to cause trouble. Most downtown areas in our metropolitan cities are busy places during the day, with thousands of people hurrying around working on one thing or another, and there is little crime going on.
When the office workers and shopkeepers go home at night, usually to the suburbs, out of the cracks and the holes in the wall, it seems, comes a totally different group of people - a group of people who do not work for a living, and who tend to sleep-in while workers are underfoot. These are the people who make their living very often either through crime or from checks in the mail from the government. When they are moved from a non-working tax supported culture to a working, tax paying culture, it's amazing how different the world looks.
In the early 1980s I had my office on the 17th floor of a building across the street from the capitol building in Sacramento. During the day the street was full of men in suits and ties and women in attractive dresses. At times I would work until late in the evening and discovered that along about 10:00 PM the street became busy again with a totally different group of people - people who seemed to walk, not ride, to the capitol center - and who were bent only on having fun and dealing drugs.
Eventually, the City embarked on a redevelopment program that turned old rooming houses into offices, lured working people back downtown for evening fun with new restaurants and shopping malls. It was a multi-million dollar effort to accomplish what putting the loafers to work would have accomplished more effectively.
So, the Democrats' program of institutionalizing and protecting the notion that, if people don't work, others have to pay to feed, house and clothe them, has had an impact on the American culture that has never been even challenged, much less truly evaluated.
Perhaps while America is engrossed in a discussion of Bill Clinton lies about Monica Lewinsky ...and Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, etc. - it's time to examine the silly notion that a man can rule a nation with honor, while being a total liar in his private life. Bill Clinton as a sexual predator has ignored the welfare of his family, repudiated core principles of his religion, betrayed and made fools of his friends, made the White House into a Whore House, and the Nation the laughing stock of the world. How can that be called a "private matter?"
After Dee Dee's devastating comment, Larry turned to Mandy Grunwald, a staunch Clinton supporter and Democrat political policy guru and asked, "Mandy, can he ever be effective again?"
She replied, "I don't know. I think we have to be very careful here about the difference between flaws and crimes."
Actually, Mandy, the behavior you would dismiss in Bill Clinton as "flaws" is far worse than the technical crime of perjury under oath or obstruction of justice which appears to have accompanied his "flaws." The "flaws," tell the story of a 52 year old man who has no self-discipline. Great men, men like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, are men in whom there was a commitment to true principles, combined with personal self-discipline. Clinton lacks both commitment to true principles and self-discipline.
Some of the great stories of the Bible illustrate exactly that. Samson seemed to have everything that would make him a great leader - good parents, good principles taught to him, great physical strength ...yet, his passion for Philistine women destroyed his ability to organize and lead the people of Israel to liberty.
Clinton, like Samson, may have been blessed with many talents and even superior intelligence. However, like Samson, who ended up in chains, enslaved and blinded by the Philistines, Clinton's chance to lead is gone, destroyed by his own lack of self-discipline.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com