It is time for Clinton to resign

In a sense, President Clinton wrote his resignation last December when he penned the word "none" on a piece of paper. The paper contained a series of questions from lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing Mr. Clinton for sexual harassment. One of the questions asked how many state or federal employees he had had sexual relations with since 1986. Under oath, Mr. Clinton wrote that fateful single word: "none."

That written lie was among the first in a series of prevarications and perjuries that continue to this day, lasting even beyond his supposed contrition, a series that leads us to call for his immediate resignation. This is the second time in 24 years The Evangelist has had to take this somber course; in August 1974, we called on President Nixon to step down.

That Mr. Clinton is known now as the president who brought fellatio, masturbation and sex with a 21-year-old intern to the White House's Oval Office should be enough for anyone with a moral sense to call for his resignation. But two more reasons are ultimately more important and do not permit his defenders to claim that his despicable actions were only his personal behavior and did not have an impact on his job as president.

The first reason is that Mr. Clinton chose to have sexual relations with an intern. This surely is not his private business at all, but the concern of the people who elected him. Indeed, sexual harassment in the workplace was a notable concern of his, and millions of workers have been trained during his Administration to know that the very behavior he engaged in would result in their being fired. By any measure in the academic, business, non-profit or any other world where employees and employers meet, his reprehensible activities would have merited dismissal and even legal action.

Ironically, President Clinton recognizes this himself; it is why he has not admitted to having a sexual affair with an intern but claims that their fornication began only after she was hired as an employee, a change in status which he believes might insulate him from additional reproach. But this too-neat distinction does not absolve him from the consequences of his action, and the attempt to change the time-line is but one more lie on his part.

The President's continual lying about his misconduct, even after supposed apologies and his claims that he recognizes his sins, demonstrates the depths to which he will sink in order to preserve his presidency. As the Starr Report notes and as we all know now from Mr. Clinton's own grudging apologies, he has chosen to lie at every turn. Within a few days of the news of his sexual misconduct becoming public last January, the President lied to the following: his wife, Hillary; one of his closest friends, Vernon Jordan; his press spokesman, Mike McCurry; his counsel, Bruce Lindsay; his chief of staff, Erskine Bowles; the latter's two assistants, John Podesta and Sylvia Matthews; his advisors, Harold Ickes, Sidney Blumenthal and Dick Morris; National Public Radio; Jim Lehrer of PBS; Roll Call magazine; White House communications director, Ann Lewis; his cabinet members, including Donna Shalala, Richard Riley and William Daley; and the Secretary of State, Madeline Albright.

As Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has rightly noted, these were not the reflexive lies of a guilty person caught by surprise. These were cold-blooded, calculated and continued falsehoods designed to cover up his misdeeds, to obstruct the investigation and to save his political life. They were told with no regard for how the lies led others, even a loved one, into harm's way legally, and with no concern about how his prevarication would damage his relationships with his family, staff, advisors, friends and co-workers.

Those lies, far from being "only about sex" and "not related to his job," as some would have it, directly damage his job performance because they deleteriously affect those with whom he has to work and inevitably weaken human relationships that depend on candor, truthfulness and trust.

Those same noble qualities must exist in another relationship -- the one between the President and the public he is supposed to serve. That 200-year-old connection has a different and deeper quality than the one the public maintains with other elected officials. People do not feel about their mayor, governor or congressmen as they feel about their president. To them, he is not only a government official but also a role model, an exemplar, someone who holds in his hand the banner of the nation as well as its hopes and aspirations. Mr. Clinton, like other presidents before him, recognizes and cultivates that relationship; it is why creating an image is so important to him. Were he only a bureaucrat hired to make the economy run well, he would not kiss babies, walk hand-in-hand with his wife, weep at disaster sites or do a thousand other things that say, "You the People and I are connected."

BY lying to the American public repeatedly through the media and most notably in his shameless and calculated finger-wagging declaration of innocence last winter, Mr. Clinton sundered that relationship irreparably. Instead of serving the people, he asked them to be servile to him. Instead of looking out for 250 million people, he looked out for number one, a choice which has too often summed up his public life.

Even his most ardent supporters must now come to the sad realization that the President resembles too closely a charming con man whose facade conceals machinery that chugs away night and day at one project: the manufacture of whatever it takes -- lies, concealment, obstruction, even the abandonment of principles and positions -- to aggrandize him.

Finally and perhaps most sadly, we come to the President's perjury. Having lied to his family, friends, associates and the public, Mr. Clinton chose to lie to God. In the written answers in the Jones case last December, in his oral deposition in that case in January and in his grand jury testimony just last month, all given under oath to tell the whole truth, the President lied over and over again. He denied meeting Monica Lewinsky more than "two or three" times; he could not recall gifts they exchanged; he couldn't remember being alone with her; and he denied having sexual relations with her.

What is distressing, even maddening, about Mr. Clinton's behavior is that those lies are being repeated even now while he claims to be contrite. Despite his apologies and promise to change his ways, Mr. Clinton continues to send his lawyers out to stand the language on its head and to contort definitions in hopes that he can wiggle out of having to admit the complete and plain truth once and for all.

Mr. Clinton recognizes the jeopardy that perjury puts him in. Besides all but guaranteeing his impeachment, perjury could lead to his disbarment; to reinstatement and possible loss of the Jones lawsuit; and to legal sanctions beyond his presidency, including indictment, arrest and imprisonment. In the face of those consequences, he clings to his lies for the same reason he told them in the first place: His personal fate is more important than what happens to the nation as a result of his actions.

For all of those reasons, it is time for Mr. Clinton to resign the office he has disgraced through his many perversions and endless mendacity. The benefits that would follow are many and obvious:

* He would gain the space and time to begin the psychological counseling that he so apparently and desperately requires. He has asked for forgiveness. Even if we grant the genuineness of that request, forgiveness alone is not a magic wand that heals the harm he did; nor does it cure him of what seems to be a serious sexual maladjustment that is sure to reoccur if he is not finally held responsible after years of being allowed to get away with his misconduct and lies.

* His wife and daughter would be freed from the public spotlight to begin restoring their relationships with him. In particular, Mrs. Clinton, caught between being his wife and his political advisor, would be disentangled from those too often conflicting roles.

* His policies and plans, which he has carelessly put at risk by his actions, could continue under President Gore, who holds most, if not all, of the same positions.

* Mr. Clinton's party would not face ruin in the November elections.

* The American people would be freed from the images that must now and forever leap to their minds whenever the president appears before them -- images of adulterous and squalid sexual activity, and images of the chief law enforcer of the country raising his hand to God, promising to tell the truth, and then lying over and over again.

* Several months of national outrage, dissension and misplaced loyalty would end with a sigh of relief that would allow America to take on other problems, breaking the logjam in Congress on issues which so desperately need to be addressed and are currently being ignored.

With benefits like those to be achieved, President Clinton must do something he has neglected for the past eight months: He must put others' needs before his own and resign for the good of America.

(09-17-98)

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