No one was surprised when a recent survey of professional historians placed President Clinton at the very rock bottom of all presidents in the category of moral leadership.

Monday, March 27, 2000

No one was surprised when a recent survey of professional historians placed President Clinton at the very rock bottom of all presidents in the category of moral leadership. There have been none worse; he is the worst in history. So, why not consign the fact to the historical records and move on to other presidents? We need to learn that when a public official – even one we much favor – is wrong, we must confront the facts and confront the official with the facts. We dare not hide our heads in the sand and hope the crisis passes by itself.

Bill Clinton is a man of considerable intelligence and skills, but he compromised his greatness by his tawdriness. Despite his frantic effort to create a presidential heritage by which he would be remembered, he destroyed it by lack of self-control. We let him ruin himself, and we share in his guilt. We let him, because too many of us conveniently accepted his lies and pretended we believed him.

What is abundantly clear now to everyone and is now enshrined as historical fact was adequately clear right along. We could have done something about it, but too many took his course of chronic denial. He told bald-faced lies, and people claimed they were obliged to accept the statements of a man out of respect for the office of president. Out of respect for the office of president, we should have rejected the lies and demanded the truth until we got it.

Eventually, some plead, he told the truth. No, he did not. Bill Clinton has never, ever told the truth about his personal conduct. He nervously parceled out true statements, but always after even he could no longer lie about them. All his true statements, however great in number, have never accumulated to the truth. The truth is greater than the sum of his true statements.

Not only did his patrician supporters encourage him in his deceit by irresponsible acquiescence, they hostilely attacked those of us who were trying to get to the truth. The more obvious the truth was about Clinton, the more angry his supporters became at those who dare tell it.

In letters to the editor (which the Herald ethically requires to be signed), private letters (often unsigned) and in phone calls (often attempting to be anonymous, which causes me to hang up), readers accused me of bias against Clinton. Well, yes, there has been bias. When a person has lied and continues to lie about the lie, it is both logical and fair to suspect he might lie again. When he says something that sounds like another lie, we demand evidence. When he lies about the evidence, we recognize the lie and call it for what it is. When it becomes chronic, it is fair to label the lying person a liar.

If I wrote what seems like an excessive number of columns about Clinton’s behavior and his lies about his behavior, it is because his offensive behavior was both excessive and incorrigible. I wrote not nearly as many such columns as the number of times he lied.

None of these readers has said, "You were correct." I have not said, "I told you so." (Except, I suppose, for this moment.) It was not pleasant so to write, and I never enjoyed it. On the contrary, I was delighted to find a number of things for which to commend him and I did.

To a very large measure, a commentator on the news has limited choices. We comment on the news that is there. When a president makes a public statement, that is news. When the statement is true, we commend on its truthfulness. If it is false, we can do no less than expose its falseness.

It is true that for the last seven years, in various newspapers and magazines and on the radio, the only presidents whom I have negatively criticized is a Democrat president. That’s who has been there. But my files of earlier commentaries bulge with material on Republicans. It is just that no president has ever behaved as Bill Clinton has and none have ever lied the way he does.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays