I'd like to share my thoughts on what it means to be President of the United States. A President should serve as an exemplar of dignity, integrity, honesty, and a lot of other Republican catch phrases that aren't in Article II of the Constitution.
Oh heck, let's stop kidding ourselves once and for all: the office of the President has been an object of ridicule off and on since it was created, and nonstop since the early 1970s. Hearing Nick Morinigo tell it in his January 22 Point/Counterpoint, however, it would appear that William Jefferson Clinton is solely responsible for the association of the words "President" and "scandal." We could even go so far as to accuse Clinton of being entirely motivated by popularity and re-election. We could. But we'd be describing a different President altogether.
To describe the memory of those who agree with Mr. Morinigo requires one word: "convenient." Like Ronald Reagan, we can conveniently forget the actions of a man whose identity we'll conceal in the abbreviation "Richard N." This "Richard N." actually did scheme to control public opinion and stopped at nothing to get re-elected. Asserting that Clinton's motivations were the same is pure conjecture, just as is the catchy myth that Hillary is a power-hungry witch with her eyes set on the White House.
That brings me back to these catch phrases. Republicans love catch phrases. There are only two types of catch phrases: bad ones and good ones, and the latter is debatable. Bad ones, or at least really bad ones, are epitomized by the words of our new President. Whether it's his "Compassionate Conservatism" or his being a "Uniter, not a divider" (for some reason, MS Word's spell-check can't find "uniter" in the dictionary), nobody really knows what the heck Bush is talking about. It sounds good, but it means nothing. It's jargon. Like when Mr. Morinigo says that a "normal politician" would resign in the event of a sex scandal. Yeah. Just like Bob Packwood did.
How about good catch phrases? There must be a few. I suggest Sen. McCain as an example here. When he started talking about restoring integrity to the White House, even those of us who disliked his politics had to respect his message. Then again, he was just cleverly playing on the underlying assumption that Clinton disgraced the nation as President. True, his actions were morally indefensible, but there was a much larger disgrace in that sordid series of affairs. Maybe we should stop judging what is or is not a disgrace based on what the Republican Party (a pillar of respectability indeed) thinks, but maybe somewhat on what the rest of the world thinks. Ask pretty much anyone in Europe, and you'll learn that the real disgrace was the wholly partisan investigation that wasted millions of dollars just to find a technicality to impeach Clinton on, and the subsequent trial.
I'm sick of these catch phrases. I'm sick of the Republican Party chanting "Four legs good, two legs bad," waving the "stained dress" Mr. Morinigo referred to just like the proverbial bloody shirt that kept them in power for 50 years after the Civil War. The only reason the Clinton administration might be remembered for the Lewinsky affair is because Republicans keep harping on it. Or maybe it's partially the fault of that "liberal media" of ours (another insulting conservative catch phrase). Outside of the United States where there are no Republicans, Clinton is given the respect due to a great leader.
My problem with the United States is not, however, about evaluating Clinton as a President, or Bush as a candidate. One could certainly make a case that Clinton's policies failed, and that Bush's will succeed. What troubles me is these mumbo-jumbo catchphrases. I think that if anything has been revealed in the past couple of years, it's that too many Americans are easily swayed by rhetoric, and follow appeals to their "American" pride like sheep. Before we decide that a candidate is too wooden to lead our country, we should realize that we are the most hopelessly image-conscious society on Earth. Furthermore, we should be a little more open-minded about taking ideas from other nations. We have some funky remnant of the red scare that immediately rejects any idea seen as too "leftist" or "socialistic." The word "liberal" itself is often used to be derogatory.
Fellow students, we who pursue and believe in higher education have the right and the power to demand more of our politicians and our media. Whether you're as liberally biased as I obviously am or far on the other end of the spectrum, please try to get beyond the latest party propaganda wars. Every influential position in Washington is held by a politician, and they're all after publicity, and in a way, they're all power-hungry and manipulative. They have to be. Politics is a game of statistics, and it isn't going to change as long as we use our votes to say that we buy into that game. America isn't going to stop buying that game as long as its intellectual leadership is.
