After yesterday's lecture, I think this video is appropriate. Clinton defends himself and his administration for their reputation for poor moral authority.
President Clinton is correct about the level of legal and journalistic scrutiny that his administration was subjected to from day one. It was completely unprecedented. Furthermore, fact that Kenneth Starr's investigation was initially about the Clintons' real estate investments (Whitewater) and ended up being devoted to ferreting out the details of Bill Clinton's sex life for public consumption, indicates that it combined the the worst elements of a prosecutorial "fishing expedition" and a media circus.
And yet, for all that, Clinton must still bear a great share of the responsibility for the compromised tone of his presidency. He could not have reasonably expected that the same standards of media scrutiny had been applied to public figures such as Gary Hart and Clarence Thomas would not be applied to him. Whether these standards were fair or not is beside the point; they were part of the political landscape of the country in the 1990s and a President who hoped to be effective would have to deal with them. Because of the choices that Bill Clinton made in the White House, he handed enormous opportunities to his political opponents that he could not have reasonably expected them to pass up. Given the fact the issue of sexual harassment had been used against both Justice Clarence Thomas and Senator Bob Packwood (R, OR) in the 1990s, it could not have been surprising to Clinton that the Lewinsky matter, which involved sex with a subordinate in the workplace, perjury, and suborning perjury, would be used against him. The Republicans clearly overplayed their hand when they attempted to make this grounds for impeachment, but Clinton had to expect that they would exploit this scandal to advance their own agenda at the expense of his, because that's how both parties, for good or ill, had been operating in Washington for over a decade.
I think that Clinton is correct to defend his Presidency in this case. While he may have made one personal immoral mistake, many of his foreign policy decisions were, in fact, moral and saved many people's lives. For instance, what we spoke about today, his interventions in Haiti, Serbia and Bosnia helped many people.
I think that the media circus that followed the Lewinsky scandal was very unnecessary. Whether it should have continued after Clinton's presidency is a matter to consider, but I do believe that it was unnecessary to combine his personal problems with something so large as the Presidency of the United States. But to those who argue that Clinton was immoral, I ask you this- was it moral for the victims of 9/11 to die if, in fact, the Supreme Court should have been focusing on the foundations of that attack while they were debating Clinton's case? Was it moral to consume the Supreme Court's time and energy while more pressing things were occurring in the United States?
Why can Clinton's moral judgment on these sex scandals be compared to Reagan's moral mistake? I believe that they are two different things and Clinton has every right to defend his presidency.
I'm not one to usually rush to Clinton's defense, but I am with him 100% here. To be told that you're ranked 41st of all presidents in "moral authority" because of a mistake you made in your personal life must be infuriating, especially when you consider some of the other "moral" mistakes that previous presidents have made.
I know that every error should be examined in the context of it's time, so Clinton should know that his behavior is not as easily dismissed as Kennedy's for doing the same thing, but what about other much more significant moral mistakes presidents have made? James Polk lied to get us into a territorial war with Mexico, FDR sent Japanese Americans to concentration camps, Hoover sent the military after veterans who were suffering through the depression. You can't tell me that the "sexual relations" Clinton had with an intern is morally inferior to the relations Jefferson had with his underage slaves.
I don't mean to sound bombastic or unreasonable, those times were very different, but I can understand why Clinton has that "you've gotta be kidding me" demeanor when presented with that statistic.
And as we spoke about today, not only were many republicans guilty of the same actions they were so righteously condemning Clinton for, but they were focusing so much on oral sex, that they ignored threats to America. Sean Hannity called the bombing of Al Qaeda training camps "Operation Monica Distraction" and then attacked Clinton in 2001 for not doing enough to address the growing threat of terrorism.
All of that, combined with the complicity and perpetuation of this atmosphere by the mainstream media, make Clinton's obvious frustration more than justifiable. For such a diplomatic guy, it was good to see him call Jennings and his network out as accomplices in this nonsense. I think Jennings was a good reporter, but he was tied up in a larger culture of the 90s that deemed this stuff "news" while much more significant stories were going unreported.
Clinton showed an awesome balance of composure and indignation in this clip. He just went up a few notches in my book.
3 comments:
President Clinton is correct about the level of legal and journalistic scrutiny that his administration was subjected to from day one. It was completely unprecedented. Furthermore, fact that Kenneth Starr's investigation was initially about the Clintons' real estate investments (Whitewater) and ended up being devoted to ferreting out the details of Bill Clinton's sex life for public consumption, indicates that it combined the the worst elements of a prosecutorial "fishing expedition" and a media circus.
And yet, for all that, Clinton must still bear a great share of the responsibility for the compromised tone of his presidency. He could not have reasonably expected that the same standards of media scrutiny had been applied to public figures such as Gary Hart and Clarence Thomas would not be applied to him. Whether these standards were fair or not is beside the point; they were part of the political landscape of the country in the 1990s and a President who hoped to be effective would have to deal with them. Because of the choices that Bill Clinton made in the White House, he handed enormous opportunities to his political opponents that he could not have reasonably expected them to pass up. Given the fact the issue of sexual harassment had been used against both Justice Clarence Thomas and Senator Bob Packwood (R, OR) in the 1990s, it could not have been surprising to Clinton that the Lewinsky matter, which involved sex with a subordinate in the workplace, perjury, and suborning perjury, would be used against him. The Republicans clearly overplayed their hand when they attempted to make this grounds for impeachment, but Clinton had to expect that they would exploit this scandal to advance their own agenda at the expense of his, because that's how both parties, for good or ill, had been operating in Washington for over a decade.
I think that Clinton is correct to defend his Presidency in this case. While he may have made one personal immoral mistake, many of his foreign policy decisions were, in fact, moral and saved many people's lives. For instance, what we spoke about today, his interventions in Haiti, Serbia and Bosnia helped many people.
I think that the media circus that followed the Lewinsky scandal was very unnecessary. Whether it should have continued after Clinton's presidency is a matter to consider, but I do believe that it was unnecessary to combine his personal problems with something so large as the Presidency of the United States. But to those who argue that Clinton was immoral, I ask you this- was it moral for the victims of 9/11 to die if, in fact, the Supreme Court should have been focusing on the foundations of that attack while they were debating Clinton's case? Was it moral to consume the Supreme Court's time and energy while more pressing things were occurring in the United States?
Why can Clinton's moral judgment on these sex scandals be compared to Reagan's moral mistake? I believe that they are two different things and Clinton has every right to defend his presidency.
I'm not one to usually rush to Clinton's defense, but I am with him 100% here. To be told that you're ranked 41st of all presidents in "moral authority" because of a mistake you made in your personal life must be infuriating, especially when you consider some of the other "moral" mistakes that previous presidents have made.
I know that every error should be examined in the context of it's time, so Clinton should know that his behavior is not as easily dismissed as Kennedy's for doing the same thing, but what about other much more significant moral mistakes presidents have made? James Polk lied to get us into a territorial war with Mexico, FDR sent Japanese Americans to concentration camps, Hoover sent the military after veterans who were suffering through the depression. You can't tell me that the "sexual relations" Clinton had with an intern is morally inferior to the relations Jefferson had with his underage slaves.
I don't mean to sound bombastic or unreasonable, those times were very different, but I can understand why Clinton has that "you've gotta be kidding me" demeanor when presented with that statistic.
And as we spoke about today, not only were many republicans guilty of the same actions they were so righteously condemning Clinton for, but they were focusing so much on oral sex, that they ignored threats to America. Sean Hannity called the bombing of Al Qaeda training camps "Operation Monica Distraction" and then attacked Clinton in 2001 for not doing enough to address the growing threat of terrorism.
All of that, combined with the complicity and perpetuation of this atmosphere by the mainstream media, make Clinton's obvious frustration more than justifiable. For such a diplomatic guy, it was good to see him call Jennings and his network out as accomplices in this nonsense. I think Jennings was a good reporter, but he was tied up in a larger culture of the 90s that deemed this stuff "news" while much more significant stories were going unreported.
Clinton showed an awesome balance of composure and indignation in this clip. He just went up a few notches in my book.
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