The Character issue is used as an excuse by the American people to hang their leaders.

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.

See also a Whitewater Timeline and opposing editorial.

by John Affleck

published September 9, 1996

Freelance Author