It's a moral issue

By publishing his report on the investigation into U.S. President Bill Clinton, special counsel Kenneth Starr has given pornography a bad name. The report combines salacious details of the sexual encounters between Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky with Starr's political agenda, namely to initiate an impeachment process against the president. Pornography in itself is bad enough, but combined with a personal political agenda makes grizzly reading indeed.

Starr has admitted that he included the graphic details to spice up his report in order to make his case for impeachment more convincing. The bottom line, in his view, is the fact that the President of the United States has lied to the public on numerous occasions. Clinton's sexual encounters with Lewinsky are not impeachable offenses and in this respect Starr has refrained from making a moral judgment on the president.

Judging by the opinion polls conducted immediately after the release of Starr's report, Americans too are not particularly concerned that their president was having an affair with a woman half his age while he was leading the nation. Although that did not stop them clamoring to obtain copies of the report detailing the sexual quirks of their leader when it was made available on the Internet. After reading the report, they may have been disgusted or they may have laughed, but the polls still indicate that Americans are not convinced that Clinton should be impeached.

It is interesting to note that in the present age of promiscuity, few Americans have ventured to pass moral judgment on the deviant sexual behavior of those in high office, even when the facts are there in black and white for them to see. Gone are the days when people in high office were thought of as model citizens and expected to observe certain standards of behavior, yet it seems like only yesterday that a U.S. presidential election candidate was forced to drop out of the race as the result of a sex scandal.

Today, few Americans see anything wrong with their leader having the odd tryst here and there. Fewer of them believe that their leader could be compromising his office through these illicit encounters, and only a small minority can see that a leader who is willing to compromise his moral standards, assuming that he had them in the first place, is likely to be easily swayed on other issues and principles.

Past leaders around the world may have been guilty of having adulterous affairs, but they managed to keep them concealed. One exception to this is in France, where many leaders are known to have kept mistresses, but where the electorate could not care less. In Indonesia, past leaders are known to have had affairs, but they avoided reprimand by muzzling the press. Press freedom has closed this avenue of escape and now the media in this country can begin to exert some form of control on the moral behavior of its leaders.

It is sad to see that Clinton has defiled what is supposed to be the most powerful office in the world. It is even sadder, if not perplexing, to see Americans compromising their own standards by allowing a president of dubious morality to stay in office.

In the final analysis, it is not so much the fact that Clinton lied that has undermined his leadership. He lied understandably to avoid the embarrassment he would suffer if his behavior ever became public knowledge. While Clinton's lack of moral principles may not justify impeachment, it has certainly lowered the dignity and respect accorded to his once revered office.