Once a Liar, Always a Liar?

Camille Paglia: "This kind of partisan rancor and mutual recrimination are the sad legacy of two self-destructive administrations in a row. Bill Clinton's lies about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky paralyzed the government and tainted his legacy, while George Bush's poor judgment and managerial ineptitude have mired us in an endless, brutal war with little chance for a happy ending."

Ah yes. Lying about an affair is the same as lying about a war. So a pox on both their houses!

Look, I'm not enamored of the Clintons. Hillary is not my first (or second (or third)) choice. But this ridiculous attempt to paint them as somehow morally equivalent to Bush is absurd on the face of it.

Not that this idea isn't starting to jell in people's minds (both in the public and within the beltway, on both the left and the right). The elite media's acceptance of President Hillary as a distinct possibility may simply be because of a false belief that she will be the competent George W. Bush. The dirty secret that few of them want to admit, but it leaks out in all their discussion of "how things should be", is that the they generally approve of the political philosophy of Bush. They just think he is a moron who couldn't fight his way out of a paper sack.

In Clinton they (think) they see someone who is a fellow traveler with Bush, but who (at least through osmosis with her husband) may actually be able to govern.

I honestly don't know if they are correct in this assessment. That lack of certainty on this is one of the big reasons I am so uncomfortable with her. Hillary may indeed have some of the same flawed ideas as Bush about how America should project its power in the world. But I've seen little evidence that she would follow the same course of lying-to-us-for-or-own-good.

And to suggest that Bill's lying about an affair is evidence of such a tendency is, again, absurd.