I never liked her perm anyway...

You know what? You did it, you convinced me. I concede. Millions of dollars spent pursuing an "innocent" man; it knocked the important issues of the day back to page 3; dragged the nation through a year of saturation over every detail; and in the end not a single conviction attained.

So let me be the first to say it - Marcia Clark, we have a bone to pick with you!

I'll get to your Newt vs Clinton moral "superiority" question, but last in this post. I'm afraid you'll be on copilot through the rest otherwise. By the way, this entire thread has got me feeling like I should be catching the newest episode of Friends, and popping in my cassette of Ice, Ice Baby.

Look, I'm not overly passionate about this Ken Starr issue, so don't get too worked up. I just find it laughable is all. You know what, strike that. That's the wrong word. The right word is "hacky." I mean "blame Kenn Starr", really? Did that Golem in glasses Carville really get to you back in 98? Convince you Starr was a wild eyed head hunter whom sacrificed goats and small children in his basement? I know you blamed Clinton too, but honestly, I can't wrap my head around your not blaming him exclusively. To invoke Starr as sharing in the blame is just so surprisingly hacky coming from you.

And this truly isn't about Party affiliation for me. Or Clinton-hating. I sincerely think that you came to the conclusion, back in the 90's, that Starr was a bad guy and partially responsible for the whole mess, and you've never been challenged on that notion. So it became defacto doctrine in your world. I honestly think that's what's going on here. And I'm just trying to unwind that Gordian knot, hoping you'll see how irrational it is.

Let me go at it this way - Richard Nixon, John Edwards, Gary Condit, John Ensign, Anthony Wiener, and undoubtedly the list could go on and on. Save Nixon, each of these men initiated a scandal via sexual misconduct. And to the man had private media hounding them, and federal investigators pursuing them (some still active). And in each instance I lay 100% of the blame at the feet of the man whom created the circus, not the circus.

Why not the same for Clinton?

In the Clinton vs Starr scenario consider this: one guy engaged in questionable behavior (Whitewater) that warranted investigation. The other guy did the investigation. One guy sent out James Carville, without a leash. The other guy got his investigatory expansions granted to him by the United States Department of Justice. One guy committed perjury, the other guy asked the questions. One guy was disbarred from the practice of law in Arkansas, the other guy never a had a single charge of prosecutorial misconduct.

The idea that you would parse out some blame for "the other guy" in this scenario is SO hackish brother.

I keep getting this image in my head of a man caught cheating. And he's yelling at his wife that they wouldn't be dragging their kids through a divorce if she wasn't so damn snoopy, and hadn't ran up one of their credit cards paying for private investigators.

I mean come on buddy, enough. I think if you really sat down and examined this impartially you would see that like Nixon, Edwards, Wiener and the rest, that the millions spent, the headlines, the figurative ring left around the White House bathtub, all these unfortunate facts were 100% Clinton's fault. To arrive at any other conclusion is to, well, blame that poor lady standing there with the maxed out credit card.


****

Between the two of us you have been much more complimentary of Newt here than I. I haven't said one way or another on the man's presidential viability.

I find him extremely intelligent, he's a historian (in a real sense, his PhD is in European History), and he has numerous good ideas, that if nothing else are original, measurable and specific.

In addition, I never, NOT ONCE in my life, have argued that William Jefferson Clinton need be impeached over his sexual misdeeds. My argument for his impeachment/resignation was (is) that he is a fundamentally dishonest man. I'll be more specific - he committed perjury. AND went before the United States public and conducted (not merely participated in mind you, but conducted) a massive lie campaign, a mammoth cover-up, a gargantuan act of profusely misleading the American public.

He went out publicly, over and over, telling lie after lie after lie. And as it unraveled the smarmy maneuvering such as, "it depends what your meaning of is, is", just combined with this massive cover-up to give me the impression of a sociopath, and I'm not kidding Titus. This wasn't simply partisan politics, or wanting the GOP to be in the White House. I am being sincere here in telling you that this was (and is) not a man I could trust, on any level. In fact I felt he had lost the trust of the entire United States. How could anyone take anything he said seriously after that fiasco? Seriously. I still feel that way about him - he is a fundamentally dishonest man.

Peggy Noonan said it a little different (and perhaps better) - "He was a fundamentally unserious man in a very serious office."

I agree.

Now, does being an adulterer mean you're unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief? I'm not willing to say that. JFK was pretty effective, so was Jefferson. If Clinton's dalliances were limited to sexual misconduct I could see people saying "that's between him, his wife, and his God" (assuming Clinton thinks those are separate things, hehe). But the massive campaign of deceit he conducted after the story broke, demonstrated to me that the man was incapable of honesty, a borderline sociopath that would, in every instance, put his own political fortunes ahead of the needs of the country.

Had Newt done that as well, I would feel the same about him, and could never support him for office. As it is, he did not. Now you can claim that it's because he wasn't in office when the stories about him emerged. But you don't know that. What I mean is, you don't know how he would have conducted himself had the details of his infidelity broken when he was Speaker, and to simply say "he would have lied too" is guess work.

I don't have to guess on Clinton - after the Lewinski story broke he convinced me (and anyone bothering to pay attention) that preserving his personal power was more important than preserving the nation.

To put it simply, I didn't trust him to put the nation ahead of himself. And I don't think there's evidence to warrant saying that same thing about Newt.

Do you not think that's a legitimate take on the matter?