Ms. Baby...
...or may I call you Surf?
It's not worship per se; it's the tantalizing opportunity to make our civic life better for everybody gone begging.
Richard Nixon was prepared to fight it out no matter what to hang on to power (sounds familiar right?) but the GOP fathers, Barry Goldwater among them, went to the Whitehouse and firmly told him it was over.
This cost power in a broad sense for the GOP, for a while, but it was the right thing to do and it serves as a symbol that no one is above (totally) the law. It serves the idea of equal under the law.
Nixon became a sort of elder statesman many years later and it was only possible to look upon him as human and weak along with his accomplishments, in other words accept him as part of our shared culture BECAUSE he did the right thing, he gave up everything that was precious to him. He did the right thing (albeit under pressure) for the nation.
Clinton(s) on the other hand, never gave up the fight. They never took responsibility. Never will, it seems. The power was/is EVERYTHING and the cowards who lead the Democratic Party would not stand up to him. The price here is that he kept what he wanted and the party looks like what it has become; his personal doormat.
The problem is that democrats in general and liberals in particular are just so deeply invested in Clinton(s) that they refuse to cash in their chips; there is the constant attempts at revision to validate themselves and their investment in them. It MUST just be about sex or else. That is frightening.
I'm invested in Reagan in the same manner but for different specifics; I believe firmly in market generated economies over governmental generated ones (supply side, or "voodoo" economics). And I believe the Iran/Contra thing was done for the benefit of others, the Contras and the hostages and their families at nothing but the expense of Reagan. He couldn't possible get anything out of it for his own desires short of doing the right thing and that's noble.
Everything with the Clintons is all and always about them and that's ugly.
That's just how I see it.
The RIGHT thing to do would have been for the democratic leadership to toss Clinton over the side. The Democratic Party stand against a powerful man for using his power to objectify women? Imagine!?
These are the people who ran John Tower out of town for pinching a butt and ditched Bob Packwood for coming on to his secretaries and tried to lynch Clarence Thomas for talking about porn to a woman.
Clinton could have gone to Nixon land convicted of denying due process in a court of law to a woman along with perjury and whatever else and started working on rebuilding an image. The myriad other offenses, the FBI files, campaign scandals, Lippo, etc, etc, etc would have gone away and Gore would have become President, been able to have the understanding of the nation and probably be serving his second term now. But, the party took its values and credentials and said, as one…”it’s JUST sex!!!”
That serves me in no way personally for my politics, but it would have re-established the Democratic Party as the one of right and that would have been good for the nation as a whole.
