Clinton’s Reelection

I have been trying to wrap up the campaigns in my mind. Your Nov. 6 editorial tells it like it is--on both sides. Democrats mocking George Bush and Dan Quayle for pushing family values suddenly value the family unit, are keenly aware of keeping the defense budget and are interested in the environment, drugs and crime. Republicans tried to bond with the middle class, court minority groups and lower taxes.

However, as the editorial points out, Bill Clinton was quicker and smarter in his “quick ability to reevaluate and readjust.” With Clinton moving from left to center, Bob Dole from right to center and all candidates jammed together in the middle, it put voters in a quandary. I am not certain whether we have elected a Repubocrat or a Demopublican. Only time will tell.

DIANE MACFARLAND

San Marino

I am a Republican. I voted for Clinton simply because he is the more moderate of the two major candidates. The Republicans once again went more and more conservative, just as they did in 1992, and again lost. I’m a Republican, but I’m also a moderate and pro-choice. Ultra-right-wing candidates will not get my vote.

In the 2000 election? Maybe Colin Powell, Pete Wilson or Jack Kemp? Moderates. Get the hint, Republicans?

DAVE FELT

Sierra Madre

To those who are still wondering how Clinton could win the presidency despite his ethics record: It’s because the American people would rather have their civil rights protected by a scoundrel than trampled by an honorable man.

ERANN GAT

Pasadena

I am truly horrified that 50% of those Americans who bothered to vote cast their vote for a man as morally bankrupt, as criminally corrupt, as Clinton. He is an empty vessel, a cipher, with a talent for the cheap rhetoric that has come to characterize political campaigns, but who is without substance beyond his pathological need to be liked.

As a Democrat I am ashamed that my party has put forth and supported a candidate so beneath the standards that once defined the office. Any one of the potential and eventual candidates who sought office would have brought some level of wisdom, grace and class. Clinton represents the nadir of political vacuity and moral deterioration of American society.

PATRICIA McCARTHY

Burbank

Over the next four years, the majority will get what they deserve. Sadly, I will also be getting what they deserve.

FRANCIS V. SEE

Santa Barbara

Dole and Kemp were very gracious and a class act in their concession speeches Tuesday night. They were formidable nominees for the Republicans, but they deserved a better party.

Both were embarrassed by the booing that went on by their “supporters” and probably demonstrated to them that they were a few years too late to represent the Grand Old Party of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

The meanness of spirit that the current GOP represents was aptly apparent in this juvenile behavior Tuesday night and also by shutting down the government this past year.

SANFORD DUROFF

Tarzana

An unfunded 15% tax cut? More money for the military? A huge missile defense system? Amendments to the Constitution regarding abortion, flag-burning, school prayer and a balanced budget? Slash-and-burn gutting of social spending here at home? Well, now we know what doesn’t work (for the second presidential election in a row). Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich and Ralph Reed, are you listening?

BRYAN HAYS

Saugus

Considering the big fuss over projections before the polls close, why don’t we all just make the polls close later at the exact same time? Are time zones really more important than fairness and equality among American citizens?

RAY YANG

Los Angeles

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr did the nation a disservice by not announcing before the election whether or not he had enough evidence to ask a grand jury to indict Hillary Clinton and/or Bill Clinton for alleged perjury and/or other felony charges.

Now we are faced with a reelected Slick Willie who may--as Ross Perot said--be spending the next two years or more giving more time to the courts than he will to the nation as president.

Richard Nixon was also reelected in 1972 by a landslide. The problem is that we didn’t know much about Watergate before 1972. Before the 1996 election, we knew too much about Whitewater, Filegate, Paula Jones, etc. Obviously, character and morality mean nothing today to win political office.

WILLIAM C. JOHNSTON

Pasadena

Much like the scenario expounded by the Christian Coalition, I was on my way to vote for Dole, Susan Brooks, et al., Tuesday when, because of reading the ultra-liberal press during the past three months, I lost control of myself and ended up voting for Clinton and Jane Harman. I hate when that happens!

JIM HARRIGAN