Former US News political correspondent Roger Simon has been re-posting some of his old columns on his Web site, and I greatly enjoyed this one dealing with Bill Clinton's loss of his Arkansas law license:
Bill Clinton, as you may remember, lied when he said under oath in a deposition that he never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.I don't have an actual transcript handy but I think the deposition went like this:
STARR: Did you have sex with Monica Lewinsky?
CLINTON: Which one was she?
STARR: Intern. Chubby. Brought pizza to the Oval Office. Flashed her thong.
CLINTON: What was on the pizza?
STARR: What difference does that make?
CLINTON: I am trying to remember if she was the chubby intern who flashed her thong and brought a pepperoni pizza or if she was the chubby intern who flashed her thong and brought the half-sausage, half-green pepper pizza.
STARR: (exasperated) Did you have sex with either of them?
CLINTON: Define sex.
STARR: Define sex?
CLINTON: Define pizza.
STARR: Did you have sexual relations or not?
CLINTON: With the intern or the pizza?
STARR: The intern!
CLINTON: Nope, never, uh-uh, no way, negative, not.
STARR: Are you lying?
CLINTON: Define lying. Define are. Define you.
In any case, Clinton says he was not lying when he said he did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky because in his mind sexual relations is a home run and he got only to third base.
The American people apparently found this a very convincing argument, because opinion polls show that Clinton is the most popular president in history ever to get to third base with an intern in the Oval Office. While on the phone.
Remember when this was the most important political issue facing our nation? Remember when the entire nation was engaged in a raging debate over whether the president should be removed from office for porking an intern? Wasn't life a lot more fun in 1998? I miss it.
Posted by Mediocre Fred at January 18, 2006 08:22 AM | TrackBackI'm convinced that even if the rest of the Democratic Party gets that dumb, no one from the Clinton White House ever will suggest impeaching Bush II.
It's not because they were so hurt by Clinton's being impeached. It's because the Republicans were so hurt by it. Scandal, special prosecutor, congressional hearings, handwaving and moralizing = up in the polls. Actually threatening to remove the president from office = '98 midterm elections.
The Dems can fire up their base and pull some of the more libertarian middle by talking up the president's violations of privacy in violation/ absence of authorizing statute, just as the GOP could do the same (with the social conservative middle rather than the libertarian) by whining about the dignity of the office. Impeaching the president for actions taken in pursuit of terrorists, however, is going to be even less popular with the average person than impeaching him for an affair was.
Posted by: PG at January 18, 2006 12:31 PM