Editorials: Vichy Democrats/Pants Off
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Vichy Democrats When I recently saw Senator Barbara Boxer (DCalif.) defending President Bill Clinton, I thought back to last September when...
...Absolutely nobody buys that—not the president's defenders nor his most virulent critics...
...Even in former Senator Dale Bumpers's C) (D-Ark...
...Read RET's editorials every week...
...His legal team went right to work even as he publicly admitted his "sins" and begged forgiveness...
...it is precisely America's weakness, in fact, that may make détente necessary...
...pronounced that "Congress has a duty to move swiftly towards impeachment proceedings, and a conviction by two-thirds of the Senate is a possibility...
...defending President Bill Clinton, I thought back to last September when his lechering and lying were so luridly exposed to the American people...
...Congressman Henry Hyde sputters...
...Other Democrats called the behavior deplorable and disgusting...
...White House aides report that since he stopped wearing his pants to the office President Clinton has become much easier to get along with...
...said the American people would not be impressed by "the fine distinction of a legal argument but [by straight talk and the truth...
...Nonetheless, neither gentleman believes that the president's behavior rises—as the phrase has it—to the level of Impeachable...
...As Vice President Al Gore has said, Bill Clinton is "one of our greatest presidents...
...Admittedly this would be unusual, but is it impeachable...
...Senator Harkin—being a liberal —can imagine that the day may come when for a whole array of healthful and ecologically congenial reasons men might take their trousers off at work...
...Perhaps other members of the staff will be allowed to work with their pants off—another Democratic innovation...
...But for now he is keeping his pants on...
...saying, "I think it's a very self-destructive point for the president to argue the legalisms...
...Director of Oval Office Operations Nancy Hernreich tells ABC's Cokie Roberts, "He has not had a tantrum since the new policy...
...After all, it is not like he is appearing in public with his pants off...
...Only the Clinton-haters would deem it impeachable...
...The protests of the Democratic leaders have evaporated...
...The Republicans are just going to have to live with it...
...Does this mean that aside from these terrible transgressions, an errant president will be allowed to go scot-free...
...They insisted that technically the boss had not lied or obstructed justice, and the sex was not really sexual sex but the other kind...
...Several Democratic congressmen suggested that the head of their party resign...
...Not now, when he can sit there in the pant-less comfort of his own office...
...but neither man feels right about working pantless...
...Now stop and think about it...
...Besides, the president is not wearing briefs, but rather modestly cut boxer shorts—cotton...
...And, incidentally, what is the point of the president wearing uncomfortable pants when he addresses the nation from behind his Oval Office desk...
...The behavior, the dishonesty of the president is unacceptable...
...This president is going to stay the course—no pants, no hassle...
...He [the president] had, as he concedes, a sexual relationship that was undeniably wrong, and he didn't tell the truth about it...
...The National Federation of Republican Women squawks...
...At the Senate trial the president's legal team has continued to argue that the lies were not lies, the obstructions were not obstructions, and the sex was...
...and the garters holding up his socks...
...These facts notwithstanding, such moral and intellectual colossi as Senator Tom Harkin and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz argue that the president's behavior has been Unimpeachable...
...And his pants are off...
...Collaborators on that report were Bill Clinton's first White House counsel, Bernard Nussbaum, and Hillary Rodham...
...He wears a coat and tie, but no scratchy pants, unless he is meeting foreign dignitaries or appearing in public...
...Lacking the military superiority over the Soviet Union we once had, it seems that our best lever over Soviet actions is no longer so much the threat of force but that of breaking off the economic benefits of détente the Russians genuinely seem to want...
...They remind Dee Dee Myers of the jogging shorts that the president and the vice president used to be seen wearing during their first months in office...
...President Clinton is the first American president ever to go about the people's business in his undershorts...
...He used to get excited when he read reports of the North Koreans lobbing a missile over the Sea of Japan...
...Well, what if upon being acquitted President Clinton decides that his trousers are "scratchy...
...Last September he confessed, "We're fed up...
...President Clinton, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, his pants neatly folded on the seat behind him, can still order bombs over Iraq...
...Many leading Democrats agree, and it is not partisanship that moves them to this regimented consensus but simple common sense and human decency, the latter being the Democrats' forte if they do say so themselves...
...There is a basic understanding of the standard of truthfulness that the president has failed to meet...
...Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich...
...Bribery also constitutes an impeachable offense according to our nonpartisan Democrats, and also this very horrible-sounding offense:"crimes against the state...
...All agree that the president's actions were not impeachable...
...The seven months of deception, and perhaps even perjury, by the president are impeachable offenses...
...Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D...
...Ah, those were the good old days when a president who bemanured the White House, lied about it, and conspired to get others to lie and obstruct justice, could still be adjudged "indefensible," "unacceptable," and impeachable...
...But as with the "wrong" and "indefensible" behavior by the president that the Democrats are now defending, so with the "legalisms...
...No big deal," she quips...
...So if lying and obstruction do not constitute impeachable deeds, what does...
...Senator Harkin and Professor Dershowitz are not suggesting that they take their pants off at work...
...he orchestrated a scheme to obstruct justice...
...This is our first 1960's-generation president...
...Historians are digging up more evidence all the time that the French left got along swimmingly with the Nazi invaders and with the French right...
...Who wants an irritable president near the nuclear trigger...
...Boy was President Clinton ever in trouble...
...Back then Senator Boxer called the President's behavior "wrong" and "indefensible...
...In fact, they too might take their pants off while meeting with him —very relaxing, very human...
...Yet such contradictions are not unheard of...
...It is rare to have so many politicians so blatantly contradicting themselves in so short a time...
...The Clintons will soon be calling the writing of history a hate crime...
...Some like Francois Mitterrand even maintained friendships with Vichyites throughout the postwar period...
...It is even rarer for a politicalfigure to be defended by people who have so recently condemned him...
...Certainly there are other instances of such bold hypocrisy in other countries...
...now Senator Schumer, added, "To me it is clear that the president lied when he testified Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...It brings much needed informality to the White House, and in the summer the air conditioning will not have to be turned up so high...
...Congressman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y...
...before the grand jury...
...It is a cultural clash...
...William Kristol Kissinger: Portrait of a Mind MARCH 1974 6 16 March 1999 • The American Spectator back of one's mind that is always saying, "Don't be a creep...
...Then the Rodino Committee reported that a president could be impeached for "behaving in a manner grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office...
...Certainly neither Senator Harkin nor Professor Dershowitz approves...
...I certainly agree with those who have grown impatient with hair-splitting over legal technicalities," he fumed...
...That did not go down well on Capitol Hill, especially with the Democrats...
...He decides that he is more "productive" working at his desk and in the White House west wing with his pants off...
...Members of the White House staff love it...
...The lawyers were not so apologetic...
...If a president were exposed as a British agent the Democrats would bite the bullet and impeach, then convict...
...In response, the White House lawyers have displayed their usual energetic cunning...
...was even more emphatic...
...Call them old-fashioned, if you will...
...And when on one of the Sunday morning talk shows I saw Senator Fritz Hollings (D-S.C...
...An indication of how the Democrats have succeeded in silencing conscience can be gained by comparing the president's "indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless" behavior with the grounds for impeaching a president written up by them in 1974...
...Hillary has not objected, nor any members of his spiritual therapy team...
...Lying under oath, obstructing justice, and partaking of the mysteries that Our President partook of with his intern might be deplorable...
...Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y...
...Visit TAS Online at www.spectator.org 1 8 March 1999 • The American Spectator...
...Pants Off T he House managers arguing the case for convicting the president on two articles of impeachment have presented a formidable case...
...Senator Patrick Leahy chimed in on Senator Daschle's behalf, as did Senator Richard Bryan (D-Nev...
...Finally, and entre nous, he needs to develop more wholesome work habits...
...Senator Harkin tells us that treason would not go down well with his Democratic colleagues...
...Professor Dershowitz, as a matter of fact, has very shapely calves...
...blustering in his nearly unintelligible corn-pone drawl that the Boy President's behavior was not impeachable, I thought of his earlier bluster...
...What the president does is his business, and there is no evidence that the president's effectiveness in office has been impeded by his unusual practice...
...It is avery big desk...
...culminating argument C at the Senate trial, the president --- heard himself being denounced for behavior that was "indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless...
...Relaxed, his legs free of those "scratchy" wool pants, he reads the morning intelligence reports from the CIA, free to contemplate serenely each threat to world peace...
...After World War II they all confected lovely stories about how they had opposed the Nazis and the Vichy fascists, though now we know that they were for the most part collaborators...
...Lanny Davis reminds Chris Matthews that "what the President wears in his office is his business...
...To be able to contradict oneself as rapidly as the Democrats have is a simple matter of slaying that little voice in the 25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator It is true that the policy of détente is, in a way, a policy of weakness...
...The French center-left politicians emerging from World War II did the same thing, and almost as blatantly...
...oh, no more talk about sex...
...In all instances, however, one element is necessary: a complete liquidation of conscience...
...And even when he speaks from behind the podium's presidential seal no one outside select members of his staff is likely to see his hairy legs...
...declared that "the President's behavior was clearly reckless and immoral...
...Still, the facts tower above the pettifoggery: The president lied under oath...
...House Minority Leader Richard...
...Apparently so...
...Gephardt (D-Mo...
Vol. 32 • March 1999 • No. 3
