DeLay Steps Up Personal Attack Against President

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) sharply escalated his attacks against President Clinton on Friday, declaring that the president “seems to have no shame, no integrity, no dignity.”

DeLay was the first member of the Republican congressional leadership to abandon a cautious approach to the sex and perjury controversy when he made a speech on the House floor last week rebuking the Clinton administration for a lack of honesty. Friday he went much further, attacking Clinton in very personal terms.

“When you have a president that in my opinion has cheated on his wife, he will cheat on the American people. When you have a president that can’t tell the truth about his mistakes and own up to them, he won’t be able to tell the truth to the American people. And he hasn’t,” DeLay told reporters.

Clinton aide Paul Begala countered: “People are telling him [DeLay] to leave the president alone, and yet he persists. . . . even Mr. DeLay admits that in those [anti-Clinton views], he is out of step with his own district.”

DeLay, asked if he is prejudging Clinton, said: “I am elected to judge. . . . and with what I’ve seen so far, I have made the judgment about this president that I’ve outlined.”

DeLay flatly declared, “I believe Kathleen Willey,” a campaign and White House volunteer who claimed on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that Clinton fondled her in 1993 outside the Oval Office.

The majority whip said he was appalled by Gloria Steinem’s contention in a New York Times column that Clinton’s behavior, even if accurately described by his accusers, is crude but not illegal because the president would stop when told no.

DeLay extended his critique to Clinton’s comment during his current Africa trip that Americans “were wrong” to benefit from the slave trade:

“Here is a flower child with gray hair doing exactly what he did back in the ‘60s: He is apologizing for the actions of the U.S.”

DeLay, who made clear that he does not approve of slave trade, said that Clinton “didn’t quite apologize for the chieftains in Uganda that were selling blacks to the slave traders, did he? He didn’t talk about Idi Amin, who killed 500,000 people in Uganda. . . . He’s very quick to apologize for other peoples’ mistakes and he can’t apologize for his own.”