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Jewish World Review / August 20, 1998 / 28 Menachem-Av, 5758

Don Feder

Time to move on -- to impeachment

YOUR PRESIDENT HAS DECIDED to finally tell the truth -- so to speak -- about his 18-month office romance. And all it took was four hours of grand-jury grilling, a grant of transactional immunity to Monica Lewinsky, the testimony of Secret Service agents, taped messages, White House logs and other physical evidence.

Makes you proud to be an American.

This was a confession? "My answers (in the Paula Jones deposition) were legally accurate." This was an apology? "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate."

Still, even Clinton's half-hearted attempt at honesty (loaded as it was with lawerly evasions) should destroy the illusion in the minds of the credulous that he is other than a liar and a cheat, a man without honor, scruples or the least degree of self-control.

In January, this president stood before the American people and told them, in a voice laden with feigned emotion, that he did not "have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

That was after he had lied to his Cabinet, lied to his staff and lied under oath in the Jones deposition.

Question from Jones' lawyer: "Did you have an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky?" Answer by the president: "No." Follow-up question (just in case "extramarital affair" was too vague): "Have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky?" Answer: "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky."

His answers weren't "legally accurate." They were bold-faced lies. The question then becomes: What else did Clinton lie about?

Did he lie about not trading missile technology to China for campaign contributions? Has he been less than candid about Filegate and the White House travel-office massacre?

Did he lie about sexually harassing Paula Jones and sexually assaulting Kathleen Wiley? Did he deceive us about his Whitewater investments? Can we put any credence in what he's told us about avoiding the Vietnam draft and youthful dabbling with controlled substances?

Clinton said that in the Lewinsky affair he lied "to protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct." Fair enough.

But wouldn't public knowledge that the president was a party to fraudulent banks loans, used FBI files to dig for dirt on political opponents and compromised national security as a favor to his friends in China PAC embarrass him even more?

In a 1996 Esquire interview, Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey remarked that Clinton is "an unusually good liar."

That doesn't mean he lies credibly, but that he will fabricate a story and stick to it, even when it's totally improbable and clearly contradicted by the evidence at hand.

Take Clinton's original Lewinsky lie, the one he clung to for seven months. There was no sexual relationship between them, he told us. There was nothing compromising about Lewinsky's more than three dozen visits to an area of the White House where Clinton worked, after she was transferred to the Pentagon.

It was just a coincidence that U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson and presidential fixer Vernon Jordan would interest themselves in the career of an ex-intern.

Only an unusually good liar could, with a straight face, claim that there was no connection between $2.5 million contributed to the Democratic Party by the high-tech firms Loral Space and Hughes Electronics since 1991 and his decision to retroactively approve the companies' contribution to upgrading Chinese missiles.

And only an unusually good liar could imply, as the president did again Monday evening, that Whitewater is a tempest in a teapot, when four of his close friends have gone to jail for activities related to his "private business dealings 20 years ago."

As Ann Coulter notes in her just-published book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, truth is the foundation for trust.

Coulter's book includes the following quote: "Every time (the president) talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The very idea that the word 'trust' could ever come out of his mouth after ... the way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system." So said Bill Clinton of George Bush in 1992.

Now, Clinton says it's time to move on. On that we agree. It's time to put this sordid episode behind us -- and to begin a frank discussion of perjury, obstruction of justice, sexual harassment, financial fraud, illegal campaign contributions, compromising national security and other impeachable offenses.