Fair-Weather Friend
At Sen. Lieberman made it clear when speaking during the Clinton impeachment scandal, real friends always have your back.
Whether he or we think it fair or not, the reality is in 1998, that a president’s private life is public. Contemporary news media standards will have it no other way. And surely, this president was given fair notice of that by the amount of time the news media has dedicated to investigating his personal life during the 1992 campaign and in the years since.
But there is more to this than modern media intrusiveness. The president is not just the elected leader of our country. He is as presidential scholar Clinton Rossiter (ph) observed, and I quote, “the one man distillation of the American people.” And as President Taft said at another time, “the personal embodiment and representative of their dignity and majesty.”
So, when his personal conduct is embarrassing, it is sadly so not just for him and his family, it is embarrassing for all of us as Americans.
The president is a role model. And because of his prominence in the moral authority that emanates from his office, sets standards of behavior for the people he serves.His duty, as the Reverend Nathan Baxter (ph) of he National Cathedral here in Washington said in a recent sermon, is nothing less than the stewardship of our values. So no matter how much the president or others may wish to compartmentalize the different spheres of his life, the inescapable truth is that the president’s private conduct can and often does have profound public consequences.
In this case, the president apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family — particularly to our children — which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.
Is it any wonder why the people on Connecticut don’t think Sen. Lieberman is willing to defend their interests?
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If Clinton was an embarrasment to the American people, we should be at the point of suicide over Dubya
Comment by Jackie — July 31, 2006 @ 9:07 pm
I was recently cold-polled (on my cellphone, no less). The girl with the sweet-sounding southern accent asked me which of the following 4 issues were most important to me. I don’t remember them all, but the Iraq war wasn’t among them (social security, minimum wage, blah blah blah). I told her that without resolution in Iraq, the rest of it really didn’t matter. score one for “none of the above.” Of course as she’s talking, I’m starting to get suspicious. The second question - are you going to vote in CT’s primary? “Oh yes.” And will you be voting for Lieberman or Lamont? As I said to her, “I don’t vote republican so I’m voting for Lamont.”
Now normally I wouldn’t have answered the questions, but.. the poller had a southern accent, The War wasn’t on the table, and she wants to know who I’m voting for. Those sound like Republican tactics - obviously this was a Lieberman poll.
If he runs as a “Democratic Independent,” as he swears he will if he loses to Lamont, I hope someone is there to record the swishing sound of his political career going down the toilet.
Comment by FreedomByChoice — August 1, 2006 @ 12:19 pm