Word: culpa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wish this was over," the President said. "after I leave this place, I never want to see it again." Bill Clinton on Monday night, after his sorta culpa? No. President Ulysses Grant in 1875, after scandals had smudged his Civil War gloss. Clinton has been reading about Grant, who he believes got a "bum rap." Both men were subjected to all manner of low-grade calumny: mostly financial scandals for Grant, mostly Monica for Clinton. For both, the accusations were constant, painful and irrelevant to a majority of the public. Grant remained the nation's most popular politician even postscandal...
...angry? Too brief? Not repentant enough? Everyone's got an opinion about Bill Clinton's five-minute mea culpa, but a sharp divide is beginning to emerge between outraged pundits and the scandal-fatigued public. "The President was angrier and less contrite than anyone had expected," says TIME Washington correspondent Jef McAllister. "Most commentators were surprised that he didn't really apologize, went out of his way to deny committing perjury and attacked Ken Starr. Many people inside the Beltway will see his performance as almost arrogant, but the public is sick enough of the whole thing to accept...
WASHINGTON: At last, Bill Clinton came out and said it. "Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was inappropriate. In fact, it was wrong." But that was as detailed as the President's five-minute mea culpa was going to get Monday night -- and by all accounts, not even his grand jury testimony mentioned the specifics. He came out fighting too. Attacks on the independent counsel peppered a speech that was "surprisingly defiant," according to TIME Washington correspondent Jay Branegan. "He's daring Ken Starr to subpoena him to get the rest of the testimony...
...That mea culpa would take some of the drama and steam out of the Aug. 17 appearance. It would affect public opinion, which would affect congressional opinion, which would affect the chances for impeachment and possibly Starr's own calculations. If any President has the communication skills to pull off this high-wire act, Clinton does. But that assumes that he and his wife could muster the will to set aside their loathing of Ken Starr long enough to ask for his mercy...
...signal emanating strongly from the White House late Monday, as aides made a concerted effort to quash the near-universal clamor for President Clinton to address the nation on the subject of Monica Lewinsky. Anonymous senior staffers started popping up all over the media, insisting there was no mea culpa in the works -- before or after his August 17 deposition. "Nobody is sitting around here going through his deposition (from the Paula Jones case) and saying, 'We can shave here, and we can switch stories there,'" one told the AP. Despite some polls showing the President's approval rating...