I believe the president. I have always believed him. I believed him when he said he had never been drafted in the Vietnam War and I believed him when he said he had forgotten to mention that he had been drafted in the Vietnam War. I believed him when he said he hadn't had sex with Gennifer Flowers and I believe him now, when he reportedly says he did.
I believe the president did not rent out the Lincoln Bedroom, did not sell access to himself and the vice president to hundreds of well-heeled special pleaders and did not supervise the largest, most systematic money-laundering operation in campaign finance history, collecting more than $3 million in illegal and improper donations. I believe that Charlie Trie and James Riady were motivated by nothing but patriotism for their adopted country.
I believed Vice President Gore when he said that he had made dunning calls to political contributors "on a few occasions" from his White House office, and I believed him when he said that, actually, "a few" meant 46. I believe in no controlling legal authority.
I believe Bruce Babbitt when he says that the $286,000 contributed to the DNC by Indian tribes opposed to granting a casino license to rival tribes had nothing to do with his denial of the license. I believed the secretary when he said that he had not been instructed in this matter by then-White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. I believed him when he said later that he had told lobbyist and friend Paul Eckstein that Ickes had told him to move on the casino decision, but that he had been lying to Eckstein. I agree with the secretary that it is an outrage that anyone would question his integrity.
I believe in the Clinton Standard of adherence to the nation's campaign finance and bribery laws, enunciated by the president on March 7, 1997: "I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution." I note with approval the use of the word "evidence" and also the use of the word "solely." I believe that it is proper to change government policy to address the concerns of people who have given the president money, as long as nobody can find evidence of this being the sole reason.
I believe the president has lived up to his promise to preside over the most ethical administration in American history. I believe that indicted former agriculture secretary Mike Espy did not accept $35,000 in illegal favors from Tyson Foods and other regulated businesses. I believe that indicted former housing secretary Henry Cisneros did not lie to the FBI and tell others to lie to cover up $250,000 in blackmail payments to his former mistress. I believe that convicted former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell was not involved in the obstruction of justice when the president's minions arranged for Hubbell to receive $400,000 in sweetheart consulting deals at a time when he was reneging on his promise to cooperate with Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation.
I believe Paula Jones is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Kathleen Willey is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Monica Lewinsky is a cheap tramp who was asking for it.
I believe Lewinsky was fantasizing in her 20 hours of taped conversation in which she reportedly detailed her sexual relationship with the president and begged Linda Tripp to join her in lying about the relationship. I believe that any gifts, correspondence, telephone calls and the 37 post-employment White House visits that may have passed between Lewinsky and the president are evidence only of a platonic relationship; such innocent intimate friendships are quite common between middle-aged married men and young single women, and also between presidents of the United States and White House interns.
I see nothing suspicious in the report that the president's intimate, Vernon Jordan, arranged a $40,000-per-year job for Lewinsky shortly after she signed but before she filed an affidavit saying she had not had sex with the president. Nor do I read anything into the fact that the ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Lewinsky at the Watergate to offer her a job. I believe the instructions Lewinsky gave Tripp informing her on how to properly perjure herself in the Willey matter simply wrote themselves.
I believe that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR are all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Especially NPR.
Michael Kelly is a senior writer for National Journal.
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Wednesday, August 19, 1998; Page A21
Well, now we know exactly what it takes to get our president to approach the act of telling the truth: a federal prosecutor and a posse of deputy prosecutors, a grand jury, the Supreme Court, the confession of his chief co-conspirator, the testimony of a couple of dozen other witnesses, the urging of his lawyers and his advisers, the ministering of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and, one assumes, the possession by the FBI of conclusive physical evidence.Michael Kelly is the editor of National Journal.Bill Clinton went on television Monday night and admitted that he had "misled people," and had given "a false impression" in his seven months of public denial of a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Because, you see, he did, actually, "have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate." And, actually, this was not a good thing to have done: "In fact, it was wrong." And Clinton was "solely and completely responsible" for it.
Certainly true. You see, the president really sort of did give a false impression when, on Jan. 26, he wagged a scolding finger and said: "I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." He really kind of did mislead people when he lied under oath, lied on camera, lied in private, lied in public, lied to the nation, lied to his wife, lied to his friends, lied to his Cabinet, lied to his staff, lied to his party, lied to the world, and sent out his staff and surrogates to lie on his lying behalf.
And, now that he mentions it, I guess our Bill really did do something a little bit wrong in exploiting a silly and star-struck young female employee as a sexual service station. And he maybe shouldn't have encouraged his girlfriend to join him in perjury. And he maybe also shouldn't have obliged Vernon Jordan and Bill Richardson and Betty Currie and Bruce Lindsey and the rest of the gang to help him hide his bit of Oval Office fun.
And it probably wasn't the perfectly moral thing, knowing that he was lying through his teeth, for the president to countenance a long and vicious campaign by his henchmen to savage those who were telling the truth. And it wasn't 100 percent appropriate to force all those innocent people to suffer through grand jury inquisition, and to trash the presidency, and to make fools out of Al Gore and Madeleine Albright and Paul Begala and James Carville and Mike McCurry and Ann Lewis and everyone else who insisted for seven months that the perjurer-in-chief was telling the truth. And, oh yes, groping Kathleen Willey when she came to the Oval Office to ask for a job was probably not a good thing to do. Maybe it wasn't right to lie about that also, and to sic the smear team on Kathy. Ditto Paula, ditto Gennifer. Sorry about all that.
No, not really. Our Bill has never really apologized for anything in his life, and he didn't now. He never used the words "I'm sorry," and he acknowledged "regret" only glancingly and euphemistically. Indeed, as he made quite clear, he wasn't sorry, except, as all adolescents are, for getting caught. His passing imitation of an apology lasted for all of one sentence. By contrast, he devoted nearly nine full paragraphs to offering excuses for his actions, to once again attacking Ken Starr and to urging that the mess he had created be put aside -- without, of course, any punishment for himself. The poor boy, he let us know, has suffered enough. This speech wasn't a mea culpa. It was an everybody-else culpa. It was an insult. It was pathetic.
And it was a lie. Even in confessing his lying, Clinton lied. He said that, in the Paula Jones deposition that started it all, he had given answers that were "legally accurate," but that he did not "volunteer information." What he was referring to was his answer to one question about sex with Lewinsky -- sex as defined in narrow and confusing terms by a legalistic definition. In denying sex-as-defined, he may have managed to stay just barely inside the borders of what was "legally accurate." But Clinton was also asked a question in which sex was described in commonly understood language, not in legalese: "Did you have an extramarital sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky?" To this, the president simply and perjuriously replied: "No."
This man will never stop lying. To borrow a hyperbolic description of another of the century's historic prevaricators, every word he utters is a lie, including "and" and "the." He will lie till the last dog dies.