Article: 31961 of alt.conspiracy
Path: cs.utexas.edu!news-is-not-mail
From: lwb@cs.utexas.edu (Lance W. Bledsoe)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,tx.politics,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.mindcontrol,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Please Tell the Truth, Mr. President!
Followup-To: alt.conspiracy
Date: 19 Aug 1993 10:29:53 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
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Xref: cs.utexas.edu alt.conspiracy:31961 alt.activism:50225 tx.politics:17689 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:59969 alt.mindcontrol:138 alt.privacy:8301 talk.politics.guns:68495

                 A distinguished columnist's somber warning:

                    PLEASE TELL THE TRUTH, MR. PRESIDENT
                           by Robert J. Samuelson

                               Readers Digest
                               September 1993
                                   page 47

                     Condensed from The Washington Post


As often as not, a President's political problems begin with himself. When 
something is wrong, the answer is usually to look in the mirror. If David 
Gergen -- the President's recently appointed counselor -- has any advice to 
offer his boss, it ought to be this: tell the truth.

Clinton lies. I could put it more delicately, but that would miss the point. 
Sometimes the lies are blatant untruths. Sometimes they are artful 
distortions, technically true but misleading. But the effect is the same.  
They destroy public trust in the President and his Administration.

We see the pattern constantly. The President's February I7 budget speech to 
Congress was brilliant, a tough attack on budget deficits.  Unfortunately the 
actual program barely resembled the one he described. It included $338 
billion of increased spending from 1993 through I997, as estimated by the 
Congressional Budget Office. No major spending programs were eliminated.

Of course, all political rhetoric exaggerates, simplifies and distorts.  And 
our President isn't the first politician to overpromise. But he has gone to 
excess. His distortions are brazen, unrelenting and unusually specific. The 
press doesn't quite know how to deal with what Michael Kelly of the New York 
Times terms Clinton's "incredibility factor."

Go back to the campaign. It was full of half-truths. In one debate Clinton 
was criticized for supporting tougher federal regulations requiring improved 
automobile fuel efficiency. Not true, he said. He supported the "goal" of 
increasing fuel efficiency from the present regulatory standard of 27.5 miles 
per gallon to 40. But he "never said" -- and "I defy you to find" where -- he 
gave unqualified support to increasing the statutory requirement.

How about page 9o of " Putting People First" -- his campaign's manifesto -- 
which explicitly endorsed the tougher standard without qualification?

Clinton indicated that college students should be able to help repay tuition 
loans with two years of "national service." Sounds great for the hard-pressed 
middle class. But, in actuality, the President's proposal envisions national 
service for only 150,000 students annually by 1997.  To enable even half of 
each year's two million college graduates to repay their loans fully with two 
years of national service could cost the federal government tens of billions 
of dollars annually.

Clinton also said universal health insurance could be provided without a new 
payroll tax. Now he is considering just that tax. His campaign budget (the 
one promising a middle-class tax cut) said that an average of $11 billion 
would be raised annually by stiffer tax collections from foreign companies 
with offices in the United States. Nothing like that appeared in his actual 
budget, because the figure was wildly unrealistic.

What was blatant in the campaign has continued in more muted form since. 
Clinton was -- and wasn't -- responsible for the tragedy in Waco, Texas. He 
was -- and wasn't -- responsible for the mishandling of the White House 
travel-office staff firings. No single incident is critical, but the 
cumulative impression forms of a man who must forever explain himself because 
he's temperamentally incapable of starting with the unvarnished truth.

The President thinks he can talk his way around almost any problem or 
inconsistency. Believing this, he often says one thing and does another.  
Sooner or later the inconsistencies are discovered and turned against him. He 
retreats, and no one is sure what he stands for.

A President can make mistakes and recover. But once he loses his reputation 
for integrity, it is hard to retrieve.  All of Bill Clinton's great strengths 
-- his fine command of language and detail -- could become great weaknesses 
if no one believes what he says.

The country needs candor.  Americans are disaffected with politics, in part 
because they've been repeatedly promised more than government can deliver. 
President Clinton cannot satisfy everyone, but he can present himself as a 
leader of genuine conviction. We have had enough of overpromising.


-- 
(c) 1993 by Lance Bledsoe. All rights reserved. No part of this post may
me reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechnical means, including 
information storage and retrieval systems, photocopying, recording, or by
any other means, without the explicit written permission of the author. :-)