One of President Clinton's main arguments why the American people should forgive him for his "inappropriate" relationship with Mrs. Lewinsky was that a president is entitled to a private life, and thus what he does with his interns is none of the concern of the general American public. Now, although I happen to agree with him, I just thought I would validate the other side for a moment.
What makes it wrong has nothing to do with the fact that he’s being two faced or whatever, because not cheating on your wife is not one of the platforms that presidents run for. In other words, I don’t think it’s hypocritical to be an amazing leader and then go home and cheat on your wife, because that doesn’t interfere with your leadership abilities. Plenty of people that I’ve never met cheat on their wives, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. So it doesn’t bother me if Bill Clinton cheats on his wife either.
A stronger claim that can be made against cheating on your wife while in office is the fact that being the president is a full time job. If there’s an emergency at three o’clock in the morning, we expect the President to get his tuchus out of bed and deal with it. In other words, our tax dollars are paying him to be on duty 24 hours a day every day for the duration of his term. So now, if you look at it that way, the President was engaging in an activity that he himself called inappropriate while we, the American people, were paying him with our tax dollars that we worked hard to make.
So from that perspective, I can understand why someone would care that the president cheated on his wife while in office- because essentially, we were paying him to commit a morally reprehensible act. We don’t care what the Bill Clinton does with whoever he wants to do it with; we do, however, care what President Clinton does while we are the ones paying him to do it.
Interesting take. Being the president is certainly a full time job, and while what Clinton did does bother me, i dont judge his presidency on that. It bothers me because i feel it is wrong, but it doesn't mean you are a bad president or leader. Sadly, many people do cheat on each other, and although as i said, i feel its wrong, it doesn't really bother me that much. So if you wanna say Bill Clinton is a bad person, i don't care, long as he's a good president. And that's a whole other debate...
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you playing devil's advocate, and it appears as though you would side with that approach. However, I still don't understand why people separate actions of an individual. If a man cheats in his personal life, what makes you certain that he won't cheat in his professional life? You have to look past the act itself and focus in on the principle of the matter. He's a cheater. He believes he can go behind people's backs without them realizing, and act in his own interests. From your perspective, Clinton's mistake was that he got caught, and we cared about it. From my perspective, his intentions from the outset are to be questioned.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting line- "We don’t care what the Bill Clinton does with whoever he wants to do it with; we do, however, care what President Clinton does while we are the ones paying him to do it." Besides for Americans "paying him" , I think that Americans like to be able to look up to the President as a role model, leader, etc and clearly these acts were not something to look up to.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting about this debate is how we all interpret Clinton's behavior through our own lenses. People inclined to support Clinton believed in the public/private distinction you've made, but Republicans were less likely to draw the line (as we saw in the article we read about the Lewinsky scandal).
ReplyDeleteI agree that the President is entitled to his private life like you mentioned. I'm sure it is not easy to always be in the camera's view and there are boundaries within the press and the president. However, people who play the "private life" line must remember that when a politician runs for President he knows what the job entails, and that includes a LOT of media.
ReplyDeleteMy big deal with Clinton is not that he cheated, though I am not justifying his actions, rather like you said, he cheated while in office, at a time when he was our leader and was representing the people. That is what bothers me.
His actions not only tarnished his own career, but the reputation of the American people as well.