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The Character issue is used
as an excuse by the American people to hang their leaders.
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America, I am convinced, hates its presidents. Not only its current
president, but at least every president since 1860 when Lincoln
won a very close election, and then the southern half of the nation
seceded. Five years later Lincoln was dead from an assassin's bullet,
as were nearly a million Americans who had killed each other in
the War Between the States. Since Lincoln, four other presidents
have been shot (three died), one was impeached and one forced to
resign. Those presidents who escape these fates have perhaps the
worst fate of all: the American public begins to raise questions
of "character."
That the "right to judge character" is not in the Bill
of Rights does not stop them. That the men who wrote the Bill of
Rights were hardly saints themselves does not concern them. That
nary a single American public life is completely without spot or
blemish, not even the legendary lives of characters like Jefferson,
Lincoln, Kennedy or Reagan, is conveniently ignored. Each day, a
million court rooms are in session all over America, in coffee shops
and barber shops, living rooms and restaurants, where the juries,
of America sequester themselves to hear and discuss stories of the
most personal nature concerning their current president. They determine
the "character" of their president from the details of
his life: did he inhale? Did he dodge the draft? Did he have an
affair? What is the real story with Whitewater?
Has political commentary become a gossip column?
Have presidential elections become contests of piety?
Perhaps we should simply watch who casts the first stone.
Unfortunately, Americans today can hear anything they want to
hear. Americans like to hear everything they can about the private
lives of public officials, and the free press is happy to oblige.
This is no indictment of the free press, but rather of the captive
minds of many Americans. It would be of great comfort to me if the
American public would use the wealth of information available in
this "Information Age" to make informed voting decisions
rather than to image the leader of the free world as an adulterous,
corrupt junkie. I would prefer that Americans would concentrate
their efforts upon understanding the workings of the American government
rather than complaining that it does not work. I would like to see
Americans afford their representatives in office a degree of respect
fitting not their "character," but their very position
as public servants.
"Character" is a difficult and dangerous thing to judge,
and the repercussions are historically tragic. On two notable occasions
have Americans entered real courtrooms to indict the "character"
of other Americans. In 1692, a group of impressionable young girls
in Salem, Mass., accused several older women of the community of
"witchcraft." The girls supported their own claims with
fits of hysteria when the "witches" came near them. The
paranoia of the Puritans caused three hundred men and women to be
tried and twenty to be put to death, including one minister who
recited the Lord's Prayer as he died.
In 1950, during the hottest part of the Cold War, Senator Joseph
McCarthy made unsubstantiated statements that the State Department
was infiltrated by Communists. For the next three years the press
allowed him the spotlight while he accused high-ranking and famous
politicians, artists, actors, writers and businessmen of "anti-American
activities." How many lives he ruined, how many "characters"
he irreparably damaged, is impossible to say.
I would like to think America has learned its lesson. The Puritans
had it in front of them every day in their Bibles. It's still there,
Matthew chapter 7: "Judge not," Christ said at the Sermon
on r Mount, "that ye may not be judged."
In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National C President
Clinton vowed not to engage in attacks upon the character of his
opponents, but to engage in constructive discussions concerning
the future of America. I suggest America follow the lead of her
leader. He has dropped his stone and extended an empty hand of partnership
to any and all willing to take it. Perhaps that is "character."
I'm not the one to say.
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