BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Maybe it will be on Larry King, or maybe one of those "All Monica, All the Time" cable channels, but it will happen. Soon.
One of those talking heads who flutter around Bill Clinton like mosquitos circling a backyard bug zapper, will start sputtering, stammering and smoking from the ears. Then, ZZZZT! -- fried like a bug by 220 volts of spark-throwing contradictions.
I admit that's not a charitable fantasy. But I'm fresh out of patience with the swarm of parasites who spread deceit like yellow fever, spawned in some fetid White House swamp of delusional denials. It will be a welcome relief when their insinuating buzzing stops after the first hard frost. And it will come, as sure as fall follows summer. The weather is already changing. Look at the signs.
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist hardly needed a coffee break to shoot down the president's latest urgent request for an imaginary "privilege" to silence incriminating testimony. Mr. Rehnquist's unspoken message was as clear as a billboard in floodlights: "You must be joking. Time's up."
Last week, White House sources insisted the president would stick to his story that "I never had sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky" -- unless maybe the FBI finds "smoking gun" evidence on Ms. Lewinsky's blue dress. In that case, White House sources said, his story could change as fast as his neckties. Does that sound like someone who has been telling the truth all along?
The hive of Clinton defenders is thinning out. The smart ones are now adding fine-print qualifiers and disclaimers, trying to slowly edge out of the group picture like a wanted man at a class reunion.
The latest Clinton strategy: Dig up President Eisenhower, to use the WWII hero's affair in Europe as a body-shield for a draft-dodger caught with his pants down in the Oval Office. That's desperate. No wonder Democrats have quit hatching excuses and have gone into early hibernation.
I have to confess, I'm enjoying this.
Not because I want to see Bill Clinton's presidency destroyed -- because I want Bill Clinton to stop destroying our presidency. Not because I'm part of some vast right-wing conspiracy -- because I'm sick of his vast conspiracy of sexual harassment, coverups and obstruction of justice.
Not because I hate Bill Clinton -- because I hate what he has done. I use the word "hate" with reluctance. It's a low-calorie profanity that I'm trying to delete from my vocabulary. But it's a label that has been used recklessly by Mr. Clinton and his defenders to turn criticism of the president into a "hate crime." It has been especially effective to ridicule anyone who has the stomach to sort through his scandal dump -- as if you must be nuts to look for a chicken bone of truth in his landfill of lies.
But someday, the Clintonites who scold us about "declining civility" as they make cruel jokes about Paula Jones, Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky, will have to look at themselves in a mirror. Someday, the people who have lied to themselves and the rest of us will have to face ugly reality.
Which is: Bill Clinton is contagiously corrupt. He not only makes others lie for him; he has managed to get most of America to buy the lies -- that it's only sex, that perjury doesn't matter, that whatever he does in the Oval Office with a 21-year-old intern is none of our business.
Even those who know better still awkwardly try to maintain the dishonest pretense that he's not guilty -- because he has not been convicted yet.
His legacy should be: "He brought out the worst in us all." A caller I know as "Wildcat" (loves UK basketball) said, "I wish they'd do a poll and ask, "Would you hire this man to teach your children?' I doubt if he'd get a job."
He's right. A groper who would be fired if he managed Hooters in Toledo is running our country, and we're supposed to look the other way. America is living a lie -- and it can't end too soon.
Then we can get on with raising the standards that have been dragged sewer-low. Americans will decide character counts -- with a vengeance. And when it's all over, we can thank our judicial branch for holding strong, unswayed by gale-force politics, hurricane media-spin and blowhard intimidation -- just as it was designed by our Founding Fathers.
It won't end with a bang, or even a ZZZZT! of blue sparks.
Bill Clinton's presidency will slowly dissolve like dirt in a gentle rain of truth.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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