The cartoonists, not the poets, are the new legislators of humanity: In a Toles cartoon an aide speaks to a United States Senator just returning from the August recess: "Welcome back from vacation, Senator. Let's see... we've got campaign finance reform, where you get to either cast the first honorable vote of your career, or continue to rake in the bucks you need for re-election.... Clinton is damaged but still sitting in the oval office with just enough strength left to thwart every project near to your heart... You need to weigh the political costs of trying to impeach him, and oh yeah, the global economy is collapsing. Yes, the first week back is always the hardest."[1]
This is a sermon that did not want to be preached by a preacher who did not want to preach it. But with the nation in crisis, resignation and impeachment in the air, with critical values at stake, I could not simply ignore the issue. In 28 years as your Parish Minister I have tried not to duck controversy. And so I will share with you my own struggle, and in the tradition of the prophet Amos, drop my own plumb line and tell you what I have concluded.
At first I simply ignored the story. Much had been alleged, little proved, in January when the story broke. I even had a certain pity for the man who has been so constantly hounded by his enemies. If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon President for whom all was forgiven (remember the Iran-Contra scandal?), Clinton is the Velcro president, whose every misdeed clings to his coat.
When the president admitted to an "inappropriate affair," adding, "it was wrong," I was overcome by an intense anger. How could he be so stupid as to have had a relationship with a sexually aggressive young woman half his age? Doesn't he learn from experience? Is he sexually addicted? Do we need chaperones or a chastity belt for Bill in the White House to protect him from himself? Inequality of power puts the burden of responsibility on the one in power. My anger seethed when I thought of his marital betrayal. And poor Chelsea.
Then my anger focused on betrayal of his public agenda. I thought his signing the welfare reform bill was the worst thing he had done. Now this. On the issues of reproductive freedom, human rights for gays and lesbians, church/state separation, international family planning, environmental protection and others, for all his equivocation, he is all that stands in the way of disaster. He is the lone tackler as the religious right heads for the goal line with a huge head of steam. Now, he has risked all that, because he cannot control his overactive libido, and has lied to cover it up. In these flashes of anger, I wanted the man to resign!
When I had ventilated that anger, I was taken by a more objective ethical view. Should a presidency fall because of a sexual affair - that included, apparently not intercourse, but oral sex and foreplay, as we read in the incredibly repetitious Starr Report?
I even managed a chuckle at a cartoon showing a middle-aged husband and wife sitting in their living room, talking. She says to him: "You read the Starr Report. What do you think?" He says, "We're pretty boring."[2] I found the report both bizarre and boring.
We are the laughing stock of the world. A French newspaper opined that if this standard were applied there, the French Parliament would be immediately emptied. An Italian paper editorialized: "The real scandal is rooted in the obsession that Americans have with sex, in their Puritan heritage, and, therefore, in their consummate hypocrisy.... Europeans have a thousand vices, infinite weaknesses, but at least I do not remember that we have ever wasted years of our time debating oral sex."[3]
On the other hand, the predilection of male politicians worldwide toward sexual escapades clearly does not justify such behavior morally. While I am angry at Kenneth Starr for overreaching in his investigation which (1) focused not on Whitewater, Filegate, or Travelgate (remember?); and (2) revealed a Calvinist apparently obsessed with unnecessary sexual detail.
And while I am bemused by a Congress, so adamantly against pornography, yet strangely eager to get the report out to everyone who can read or see, the main culprit is still Bill Clinton.
I then moved from thinking about the president's personal immorality to a much more pragmatic assessment of our situation as a people. Resignation or impeachment, especially the latter, is traumatic for the nation and the world.
I tried to recount my feelings about Richard Nixon's resignation - relief and anxiety. I disliked President Nixon, no so much for Watergate as for his Vietnam policy - the Christmas bombing of Hanoi Harbor stands out in my mind. Yet, this was the same President who recognized Communist China, an act I strongly approved. There was relief, but there was also patriotic shame. No one could be joyful then; no one can be joyful now - no matter their political perspective.
Then I thought about a Clinton departure. President Al Gore, with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich a heartbeat away until a vice-president is appointed. And Al Gore may well face an Independent Counsel investigation for campaign fund-raising abuses. We know that an aggressive prosecutor unlimited by time or public money can probably find something embarrassing about Al that could lead to a second impeachment. That greatly concentrates the mind.
But there must be some theological answer to the Clinton character conundrum. As we enter the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I thought of our biblical and religious traditions. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, a time of renewal. Metaphorically three Books of Life are opened before us: a thin book with the names of all the truly evil people in the world; a yet thinner book for all the truly holy people; and a thick book for the rest of us.
In that thick book we no doubt join our president. Sin in the Jewish tradition means "missing the mark," a phrase perhaps not strong enough for adultery and lying, but an indication that most of us do not do evil intentionally, yet we do it.
Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement - traditionally a time for becoming at-one-with God and neighbors whom we have wronged. Our President, after dissembling, or lying, or perjury - take your pick - after a weak-kneed and angry August confession - asks forgiveness. Should we forgive him?
The themes of sin and judgment are expanded in the Christian Gospel of John where Jesus is confronted by those who have found a woman taken in adultery; the punishment is death by stoning. Jesus drew a line in the sand and said "Let he who is without sin among you, cast the first stone."[4] They all left.
This story is of particular significance to three members of the House of Representatives: Dan Burton, a harsh critic of the President, issued a pre-emptive confession about fathering a child out of wedlock; Helen Chenoweth, after declaring in a campaign ad that "personal conduct and integrity do matter," confessed to a sexual relationship with a married man, but God has forgiven her, she says. How do we know if God has forgiven Bill? And in the strangest twist of all we get a story about a 30-year-old affair by Congressman Henry Hyde, who will chair any impeachment hearings. Our nation's capitol now is alive with sexual McCarthyism, witch hunts into the private lives of politicians. To what end?
As one member of Congress put it, "There aren't many people with an ounce of testosterone in them who've had the unblemished record that our fifth-grade nuns would have wished for us."[5] But Bill Clinton can not get off the hook because some of his accusers may be hypocrites.
The critical issue becomes is there a difference between public and private morality? Clearly, we human beings are not compartmentalized into private and public. There is a permeable wall between our private and public behavior. We have a single moral core. But, can a case still be made for a difference between private and public morality.
The great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr suggested that love was the ultimate moral value between persons, but love is not really possible in the public realm. Here justice is the moral end-in-view. It is not possible to "love" every impoverished person in a personal sense, but we can seek "justice" for them.
But is it possible to do good in the public realm and to do evil in the personal? I think of two Unitarian Universalist ministerial colleagues - both extremely talented, both successful ministers, prophetic voices in their communities. One was discovered to have had sexual relations with several women counselees, and lied about it. He was dismissed from his church and defrocked.
Another colleague had a highly-publicized affair with a member of his congregation while both were still married. After much discussion he received a vote of confidence, though a number of parishioners left over the incident. His success in that congregation - following contrition, confession, and forgiveness - has continued unabated. Should he have been cast from our ministry?
Looking to our history, we note that Thomas Jefferson reputedly had an affair with a slave, Sally Hemings, yet we would count him one of our best presidents, perhaps "man of the millennium." If this were true, and scholars still debate the matter, and if there had been electronic media then and a Kenneth Starr, would he have been impeached, or deserved to be? Two of our most decent presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, are thougt to be two of our most ineffectual presidents - a little factotum to consider.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was known not only for his womanizing, but for plagiarism on his doctoral dissertation. Would we have had him removed as the moral leader of the civil rights movement, if we had the power? How about John F. Kennedy, notorious for his indiscretions? Reporters in that day knew about him, but felt it would not serve the national interest to tell. Were they right? Is the nation better off because the the Starr Report?
So where are we? We have learned - once again - that we are all flawed creatures no matter who we are - president or preacher. When we expect sainthood from our political leaders, we expect too much. The line of good and evil passes not between political parties, but right down the middle of each of us, even the President of the United States.
We have learned the exquisite anguish of contrition and forgiveness - how hard each is. Is Clinton sincere? Can we trust him? It is a risk, but based on his public record, is it a risk worth taking?
We have learned that when most Americans say "immoral" they are talking about illicit sexual relations. They apparently don't find poverty or racism or sexism or homophobia immoral - it is only sex. That itself is a travesty on ethical judgment. You may recall that then-Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, an ardent segregationist, was named "Christian Statesman of the Year." Why? He neither smoked nor drank. Remember when Billy Graham became angry with his friend Richard Nixon over the Watergate tapes because Nixon swore? Just how mixed up can we be on the question of moral proportion?
Clinton may be a "moral pygmy," as some have averred, "philanderer-in-chief," and more, in his private life. Without question he has damaged the moral fabric of the nation; he has caused great hurt in our nation. But world peace, economic justice and racial harmony matter more, and here he has done a reasonably decent job, though I fault many of his policies. Ironically, tomorrow, at the very time President Clinton addresses the United Nations on the state of the world, the House will release his video-tape testimony. These events seem somehow strangely out of proportion.
Private morality - the love and respect and compassion we owe one another in our personal lives - and public morality - the justice we seek to approximate in our political life - live in a kind of uneasy tension. As much as I detest the president's sexual exploits, I believe the standard of public morality carries more weight in his case - in the case of any president.
To paraphrase a theologian friend, a person's private virtue or lack of it does not immediately qualify or disqualify one for public office. In deciding on a surgeon to perform a sensitive operation on my child, I am not immediately concerned whether the candidate for the job is an adulterer. I am basically concerned with whether this person is professionally competent, is a skilled and consummate craftsman with the scalpel and knife. Only as one's morality affects and influences one's professional competence does it become a criterion in my selection.
Therefore, I do not believe Bill Clinton's behavior, loathsome as it has been, constitutes what the Founders meant by "high crimes and misdemeanors." His behavior, however repulsive, has not jeopardized the national interest. I believe he should be immediately censured by the Congress and the impeachment proceedings should be dropped. That would punish him, help diffuse our anger and enable us to go on with the business of democracy. We cannot allow the Starr Report to become our equivalent of the bread and circuses which undermined the Roman Empire, distracting us from the momentous issues that face our nation.
I know feelings run high on this issue. I have spoken with Republicans in this congregation who oppose impeachment and Democrats who support it. The issue is not clear-cut - crucial issues seldom are. I have at one time or another embraced each of several options before recommending censure, a position I hold with about a 51% degree of certainty that I am right.
We are a community of moral discourse which will discuss this issue with passion and reason and respect. We expect no less of each other. In these Jewish High Holy Days we all need atonement - to restore community that has become so badly fractured. And so I leave President Clinton with these words - words which all of us might well take to heart from Virgil's Aeneid.
"So easily one slithers down to hell -
By night or day, no matter, one gets in.
But grappling one's way up again to light,
That is the task, the toil. A few succeed,
By Jove's grace or a hero's soaring will."
It is time to grapple our way up again, into the light.
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