Word: oath
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Bill Clinton took the oath, but exaltation is not his style. He has polled us and tested us and talked to us until he's hoarse and spent, and we know so much about him, right down to his choice of underwear, that he made it hard for us to hold him to a higher standard. So instead his allies defended what was worst in him by appealing to what is best in us. How could we not be generous and forgive him? Has he done anything that many of us have not done ourselves? Are these not private matters...
...called what he did "straying," said he had "sought spiritual counseling," and "received forgiveness" from his family. Sound familiar? Lest this remind anyone of you-know-who, he asserted, "These indiscretions were not with employees on my staff, and I have never been asked to testify under oath about them...
...case, this is the kind of legalism we hate Clinton for, and it misses what matters. The worst part of cheating on your spouse is what it does to your marriage, not what it does to your oath taking. To take such an important aspect of yourself and give it to someone else is to live the biggest lie imaginable, whether or not it's repeated in court. Lately there's been a terrible tendency to dismiss adultery lightly if no official lying is involved. Henry Hyde describes a long affair with a married mother of three as a youthful...
...rule for Republicans seems to be that lying under oath about things other than adultery is not actionable. Hyde explained this standard best when excusing lies in the Iran-contra affair. It did not make sense, he said, to "label every untruth and every deception an outrage...in the murkier grayness of the real world, choices must often be made." Ronald Reagan could remember very little about his efforts to arm the contras, but when confronted with facts indicating that he'd been told about it, he insisted his "heart and [his] best intentions" proved otherwise. After Ollie North bragged...
...gave Starr's office on July 29, saying it might be soiled with evidence. The dress presented prosecutors with a choice: the office could keep secret the results of its DNA analysis until after the President's testimony, or it could tip off the President before he swore his oath. Clinton knew Starr had the dress, of course, and could have surmised what the test results would show. But Starr wasn't legally bound to inform him. And if Clinton's grand jury testimony stuck to the story that he had not had sexual relations with Lewinsky and Starr then...