The Sins of Presidents

A Sordid Sexual Encounter

One of these days, when I get a round tuit, I’m gonna write the definitive post on this Democrat’s perspective on the Clinton era. I mentioned it, in passing, in another post and one of my favorite people in the whole world responded as follows:

"Clinton did not have "an affair" but a sordid sexual encounter with a girl a few years older than his daughter. I heard Larry king on CNN say " we do not do this..this is our daughters...we tell them to go home , behave...etc.... A few nights later Larry King came out with the same Liberal spin that it was a "private behavior" etc, etc. If this had been the very same "private behavior" by Republican President... the press would have put him out of office

I listened to Clinton yesterday...his entire speech. He is a gifted speaker and politicalan but i will never again vote for him or any of his cronies. I also listened to Barbara Boxer yesterday. I listen to both the "liberals" and the "conservatives," If one listens only to the liberal press and CNN, (or only to conservative radio) they get a warped view of what is going on now... We are in real danger and we have senators more intersted in trashing Bush than in truth."

I love that reader of Alone On A Limb!! I have practically worshipped at her feet. She had the courage to take up for Martin Luther King at a time in the early sixties when that was very unusual for a white person in Georgia. She has been an articulate proponent for women's rights in the church. She is a loving and eloquent pastor, parent, poet, and friend. She always voices her opinions in loving and polite ways. I hope I can do as well in voicing mine.


I agree that Clinton's private behavior was abominable. I wish it were only a "sordid sexual encounter": it was a least a series of them -- an affair.

But, affair or encounter, it was private behavior between consenting adults (chronologically speaking).

• Clinton was not sending us to preemptive war.
• Clinton was not intimating a correlation that did not exist between a tin-pot dictator and a terrorist attack on America.
• Clinton was not lying to us about aluminum tubes in Iraq.

Clinton was lying about what most any other person, foolish enough to be in such a predicament, would lie about: stupid and boorish and unethical and “sordid sexual" behavior.

In the most powerful office in the world I will choose Clinton and his typical Baby Boomer irresponsible let's-feel-good-now unethical personal behavior over Bush's irresponsible unethical official behavior any time.

William Jefferson Clinton deserved his embarrassment. The United States of America did not deserve the disastrous change of power that would not have happened had Clinton behaved. George Bush should never have been selected President; but the Court would not, I believe, have had the opportunity to select Bush had Clinton behaved responsibly in his personal life.

Republicans should give Bill Clinton some sort of honorary membership in their party.


--------

A little more spin from the limb:

• Warped views: I watch some C-Span and CNN. I listen to NPR in the mornings. I catch a little blather on Fox and the other TV “news” sources. I rarely watch network or local TV news. I read the Rome News and the AJC every day, and Time every week. I read news that catches my eye on several websites. I read several blogs, conservative, moderate, and liberal.
  
• Bush-trashers in the Senate: They are out-numbered: may their tribe increase. Lately a few Republicans have begun to show a little ethical backbone in the face of the Bush/Rove machine.
  
• Truth: If the unvarnished indisputable version of that ever comes out, Bush, Cheney, Rove, and DeLay, among others, will be in big trouble.
• Liberal Spin: The Republicans, while our planes were in the air, accused Clinton of political motives in attacking Saddam Hussein. I wonder what they would have done had Clinton lied about issues of war (aluminum tubes?) in his State of the Union speech.