What Clinton must do

In the matter of U.S. President Bill Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the problem for the oil and gas industry is not that the President lied. It is that he lies.

His televised confession last week fit a pattern. Earlier in the year, he sternly denied having had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Then she, pressured by a determined independent counsel, reversed her earlier denial of the affair. So he, unable to skirt the allegation with claims of privilege and after testing public reaction to several versions of the story, recanted.

Avoiding perjury

Of course, he didn't admit to having done anything constituting "sex" as narrowly defined by the judge before whom he once denied having had "sex" with Lewinsky; such an admission would expose him to a charge of perjury. And the real problems, according to subtexts of his speech, are an overly aggressive independent counsel and intrusion into private, White House lives.

Wrong. The problem is a President too willing to manipulate to his personal purposes the law he is sworn to execute and too unwilling to confront objective truth. The problem is a President who lies.

This is the President who campaigned as a new Democrat, one who would spurn the tax-and-spend tendencies of his party, then who immediately upon taking office proposed a huge tax increase and the effective nationalization of medicine.

This is the President who once declared the end of big government, then laid state claim to tobacco company assets in the name of keeping cigarettes away from teenagers.

This is the President who once called for a national dialogue on global warming, then signed a treaty embracing an extreme position in the controversy while officials of his administration called dissenters names.

This is a President unable to subordinate himself and his aggressive national agenda to concepts, such as law and truth, that govern most people.

Should he be impeached? Unless independent counsel Kenneth Starr scores something more than last week's maudlin television performance, calculated as it was to dodge a perjury charge, probably not. Despite questions about his character, Clinton has been elected twice.

Yet how can he govern for 21/2 more years? He isn't President just of the Americans who voted for him and those who excuse his behavior as long as the economy grows. He also governs a great number of Americans who doubt his fitness for office. If he is to restore legitimacy to his presidency, he must give antagonists reason to take him seriously.

He can start by telling his handlers to quit sloughing off disagreement, even questions about character, as evidence of personal hatred. Most detractors don't hate Clinton; they just don't trust him.

On issues important to the oil and gas industry, the President should make room for real debate over global warming, which may require that he lock his vice-president in a closet. He should repeal the move by the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten pollution standards for ozone and small particles. And he should block the misguided effort by the Minerals Management Service to overhaul royalty administration for oil and gas.

These initiatives all represent errant lurches flowing from an activist sense of moral purpose to which the Clinton administration cannot lay claim.

The example

Last but not least, Clinton and his underlings should quit basing their aggressive governance on the interests of children. Youngsters learn from examples set by adults. The example Clinton set with a 21-year-old intern shamefully repudiates all pretense that officials of the state should play some supplemental role in parenthood.

Lying about a sexual fling without technically committing perjury, however large a pattern it fits, may not warrant impeachment. But continuing to justify initiatives by what they do for "our children" would, in a nation witness to Clinton's shenanigans, amount to unendurable hypocrisy.

Copyright 1998 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.