The Choice to Resign

Not such a long time ago, we liked Bill Clinton. Twice, this page endorsed his candidacy for the highest office in the land. For the last six years we have stood by his agenda. And it is because we still stand by that agenda--because we still care about things like poverty and child care, affirmative action and gay rights--that today we call for Bill Clinton to resign.

Immensely intelligent, full of charisma and riding a crest of economic prosperity, Bill Clinton has had a golden opportunity to fix this nation. And now it is gone.

Clinton has demeaned the office of the Presidency. He has blatantly, repeatedly, disgustingly lied to us. He has made those of us who once supported him feel a deep sense of betrayal and we have had enough.

The President should resign because nobody--not members of Congress, and not the citizens who elected him--can or should be expected to take his cue anymore. Clinton the man is incapable of carrying the Clinton agenda. On the international scene the situation is equally dire. The only superpower in the world has been reduced to a laughing stock, where extramarital oral sex is the only affair of state. And our foreign policy is nonexistent as a result: We sit idly by as Saddam Hussein builds an arsenal of weapons and Russia crumbles.

There has been much talk about the instability that might arise should Clinton resign and pass the reins to Al Gore '69. But we're willing to take the risk. Little could be less stable than the current frenzied atmosphere in Washington. And, despite a brewing campaign finance inquiry, Gore seems to possess the integrity and decency to restore American's shaken faith in their government.

With each passing day, the President faces increasing pressure to resign. Should he do so before impeachment hearings begin--as now seems likely--he might salvage a bit of a positive legacy for himself. Clinton's resignation might force us to reconsider fundamental questions of presidential privacy and of the proper limits to a special prosecutor's investigation of a sitting president.

Indeed, while Clinton has dug his own hole, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has had far too much leeway in his investigation, and has set several potentially dangerous legal precedents in the process.

But little can or will get done until Clinton goes. By dint of his own choices, the President is no longer capable of doing the job we elected him to do. It is time for him to make one final choice for the good of the nation: the choice to resign.