Our Turn To Be Angry

Admittedly, as Republicans, we were unhappy with the results of the past two presidential elections. We were, however, content to remain the loyal opposition, criticizing the president's policies while respecting his right to lead. Yet the events of the past few months have changed our view, causing us to question whether the president should remain in office.

While President Clinton and his legal team continue to make their case in the growing crisis, his supporters are left with few arguments in his defense. Their latest refrain is that now that the President has sincerely apologized, asked forgiveness and taken responsibility for the scandal, the American people and their Congress should move on, recognizing his contrition and appreciating his effort to heal the nation.

However, the Monica Lewinsky-turned-presidential-perjury scandal is not an episode that can be so quickly and quietly forgotten. And the President's recent defense illustrates exactly why this matter is of such grave national concern.

President Clinton lied to the country. We all know that, and we can all remember his January speech in which he defiantly and angrily reacted to the young crisis with his statement, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." But what might be worse than the initial lie is the deceit with which the President exercises his present defense.

Now the President asks us to forgive him. He speaks to the nation with tears in his eyes, admitting that he has caused pain to his family and to the American people. Yet at the same time, he sends his lawyers into both the legal and political arenas with an argument so tenuous and so precise in their hair-splitting that he draws criticism even from the Democratic leadership in Congress.

This latest affront to the nation underscores what has been the president's most important problem in the life of this scandal. He seems to think that he lives above the rules. The president's most honest moment of the last nine months might just have been his Aug. 17 speech, in which his "How dare you invade my privacy?" attitude was on full display.

In his speech that night, the president revealed a man who regretted only that he had been caught and who bristled at the notion that his actions would be subject to review and criticism. His rebuke of the Independent Counsel in that speech was a warning to the nation as a whole.

The president was telling us to stay out of his life; as long we approved of the job he was doing, it was none of our business to interfere in how he conducts his life. The nation reacted with anger to the president's words then, and the nation should react with even more anger now when it examines his defense.

The contribution that the president has displayed rings false when contradicted by his legalistic official defense. The attitude that influenced his August 17th speech is still apparent in the disrespect that he shows the nation with his double-barreled offensive of personal apology and legal denial. The President still operates under the assumption that he can dupe the country, convincing us that he is willing to pay the consequences for his actions while simultaneously attempting to evade responsibility with his legal defense.

His current gamble is to maintain his public support with a series of apologies, so that the retribution that he may face for his actions is lessened by a Congress that is responsive to public opinion. That is his strategy: to use his sorrow to cushion his landing once his case crashes into the impeachment process.

But this duplicitous approach reveals the false-hood of his contrition. And if the nation needs more evidence of how he truly feels, it need only look at his angry treatment of his Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala during last week's cabinet meeting, at which he was supposed to apologize for lying to his advisers for the better part of a year. When Shalala questioned the president's separation of political and moral authority, he reacted to her criticism by turning the assault back on her, further proving that he believes his actions are beyond reproach.

This attitude is not only offensive to the country, but it is dangerous as well. The President acts as if he can outsmart the American people, fooling us with a front of contrition while weaseling out of the consequences that he has brought on himself. This assumption shows the fundamental disrespect that the President has for his constituents and for his office. It shows that he fails to grasp the idea that the American president is not above the law that governs the American people. It shows that he is still not above misleading the people in order to get his way.

The president's actions reveal that he certainly feels that as long as he can provide for the people in his official capacity, he can play by his own rules. For this assumption, our collective outrage should grow every time we see our president apologize in one instance and deny in the next. It is this disrespect for the people that makes the president fundamentally unfit for the high office which has been entrusted to him. And it is for this disrespect that he must either resign or be removed from power so that our nation can take that high office back.

C.J. Mahoney '00 and Noah Z. Seton '00 are co-presidents of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club.