This Lefty Says, ‘Let Him Hang’

Perhaps I really am the last unreconstructed lefty in Southern California, if the pitiful lack of attention devoted to a left perspective on the Clinton impeachment is any guide. My position is that his treachery of even his own watery liberalism is so blatant that if sexual betrayal provokes his downfall, so be it.

The president is devious and dishonest on so many counts that the argument advanced by others on the left that the “blue noses” must not win does not work. The nation will not condemn or condone adultery because the president committed it. But on his abuse of power, allowances are already being made.

White House and Democrat devotion to polls showing 2-1 presidential support come belatedly and self-servingly. The public outpaces the White House and Congress on so many social issues that invoking mass opinion comes dangerously close to the populist response that Washington always seeks to avoid.

Another tactic exposes Clintonian deceit: the private versus public issue. His spin artists have insisted that his sexual escapades are private, and he should be allowed to continue with public business. But how much of our time was wasted this year with the campaign of public officials (up to the secretary of state) sent forth on the taxpayers’ dollar to lie on the zippermeister’s behalf?

Bill Clinton’s blurring of private and public goes back to the provision of an Arkansas government job to Gennifer Flowers, when Arkansas state government had no vacancies for a torch singer. Yet had he acknowledged his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky in January and added: “But it’s my private problem and none of your business,” public and press would have been forced to leave it at that.

Like the CIA, Clinton has always preferred “plausible denial” over the truth, something that should have been apparent before his election. Indeed, the pundits still insist that we knew he was a philanderer but chose to ignore it. More important was his history of abusing his office, again going back to Arkansas days. More alert and less sympathetic media could have done more to cover that beforehand.

The Clintons’ eager embrace of “business” in Little Rock with a larcenist such as the late James “Diamond Jim” McDougal and his wife Susan, in a state notorious for free-wheelin’ attitudes to finance, also should have provided earlier warning.

The Clintons represent the worst in modern American politics: ruthless ambition over a desire to serve; preoccupation with political funding over a fair system; opportunism over principle; betrayal of any cause or policy over taking a stand; and a desperation to gain and keep office over any obligation to honor its responsibilities.

Let him hang.