Lives and Lies . . . Public and Private
Impeachable Offences?

Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, October 11, 1998

This is the sermon I promised (or threatened, depending upon your point of view) three weeks ago when I gave my overview of some of the current issues and concerns I felt bore a relationship to our UU principles and values. I said then that to broach this wide topic while specifically ignoring the plight of our President, and the current state of the Presidency, was like trying to ignore a 500 pound gorilla sitting in your living room. This past week the gorilla put on several more pounds as the House of Representatives voted--largely, although not entirely--along party lines to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry into President Clinton based primarily upon the report to the Congress by Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

But before plunging into this morass let me say that I both respect and appreciate the fact that one of the reasons people come to a church--or to any house of worship and reflection--is to get away from a lot of what bombards them on the other six days of the week. I think any time we gather here that sentiment should be honored. At the same time, our calling as a religious community is to be more than a refuge--important as such a function is. Another purpose of our gathering is to look upon the world in which we live, and see the challenges and choices its oftentimes presents us with as we engage ourselves with it. It is with this understanding of why we gather that I'm going to at least attempt today the topic of "Lives and Lies . . . Public and Private."

While I've never had any serious interest in a career in politics for myself, the workings of our nation's political and civic life have long held my interest and occasional involvement. I can remember, at age 7, sitting next to a wheezy radio and listening to the proceedings of the Republican and Democratic conventions for the year 1952; and then taking to the woods behind my grandfather's house to make speeches to the trees like the ones I'd just heard on the radio. You should have heard me; I was quite eloquent in nominating General Eisenhower!.

When, in November of 1992--a full 40 years after my attempts at backwoods oratory--the late night news made it official that Governor Clinton had been elected President, my first thought, which caught me by surprise even as I said it to myself, was "My God, now we're in charge." I felt a generational tie to the new President-elect. Here now was a President whose political worldview and political consciousness was shaped by many of the same events that had shaped my own: The civil rights movement, the Kennedy and King assassinations, Vietnam, the peace movement, Watergate, the Cold War and its end, and the like. The outcome of the 1992 election had a personal dimension to it for me that no previous Presidential election had had: "We're in charge."

Then I surprised myself again a few months ago at how personally I responded to the swirl--make that the maelstrom--of events leading up to last week's House vote. Initially I felt a burst of anger, along with a sense of betrayal, at the President once the nature of his Oval Office activities with his young intern became known. I couldn't help but think of how, over the past 10-15 years, probably a dozen of my colleagues in the UU ministry have lost their churches, and in some cases their standing as UU ministers altogether, due to sexual misconduct on their part involving either members of their congregations or their staffs. One such case, going back at least a dozen years now, involved a married male minister who was, in fact, dismissed from the UU ministry for having a sexual relationship with a woman who was his seminary intern. Their relationship was ostensibly consensual, but he was the head of the church staff and she was a staff subordinate; and largely on those grounds our Association revoked the man's ministerial credentials. In the wake of these kinds of events our minister's chapters around the country have had, in recent years, a variety of seminars and workshops, and guideline writing committees, on the nature of clergy sexual misconduct and what a serious violation of the ministerial office it indeed is.

With all of that in mind, my initial gut reaction to the accounts of the Clinton/Lewinsky encounters was to say, "What private behavior? Why shouldn't the person who holds the Office of the President of the United States be held to the same standards of behavior as my colleagues and I are? He, after all, is expected to embody certain values and principles in his ways of living, due to the position he holds, just as we are. So why should he be any less accountable." In subsequent moments of more sober-minded reflection I have concluded--while freely acknowledging I'm no constitutional scholar--that such behavior on the part of the President is neither criminal nor treasonous in terms of the Constitutional language of, and requirement for, impeachment.

But it is not the type of behavior that can or should be lightly dismissed. It is far more than a private-life indiscretion; it is conduct unbecoming the Office of the President. Mr. Clinton has admitted and confessed as much himself, and I do not question his sincerely in this regard. As I also said a few weeks ago, while I can feel forgiving towards the President, he needs more than forgiveness if he is truly going to heal himself, and the country he has wounded. Whatever his political fate may prove to be, I hope he will seek out, and act upon, the steps he need to take to restore his relationship with his family, and to confront a very broken and self-destructive side of himself that he needs to come to terms with and put behind him. I do not see how persons of good-will, whatever their political persuasion may be, could wish any other for him.

What I'm working towards here is a larger question that unfortunately has gotten lost in the midst of the unnecessarily salacious details of the Starr Report and the procedural issues as to how far an impeachment inquiry should go. The question is how much congruence do we need, or should we expect, between the personal behavior, and the personal failings, of a President and other esteemed public figures, and the public office or station they hold? This was the question I began to ponder once I'd finally tempered that initial anger of mine towards the President. My minister analogy only holds up to a point, I realized, once I stopped taking it all so personally. True, both religious leaders and elected officials (and certain other public figures) must command a requisite level of moral authority in order to render true and effective leadership. The moral authority of a religious leader derives primarily from his or her ability to embody the principles, values, morals, and ethics of the faith he/she represents. The moral authority of a President derives primarily from the sense of trust he (and hopefully someday she) is able to engender of the part of the citizenry--whether they agree with his policies or not--that he acts always with the best interests of the country and its citizens at heart, that he respects the country's institutions, and that he is committed to keeping the country safe and secure. He must also give the sense that he can and does effectively govern. A President's personal failings, weaknesses and shortcomings may will have a bearing on all that--but its not as closely correlated as with that of, say, a minister, priest, or rabbi serving a congregation.

Consider these words by the columnist Russell Baker from last Friday's New York Times (10/9/98):

"It is now said that details about the lives of politicians must be told to all humanity so that the public can make vitally important decisions about their character."
I doubt it. Baker continues . . .
"It has never been clear to me that the sexual adventurings of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, or Martin Luther King affected the creation of the New Deal, the conduct of World War II and the Cuban missile crisis, or the progress of the civil rights movement." Then with his own brand of sardonic humor Mr. Baker adds, "I suspect (had all their activities been known, these folk) would have been so tied up with lawyers that the Nazis would have won the war, the Soviet Union would have blown up the world, and slavery would now be making a comeback."

To come at this from the reverse angle for a moment, while a demonstrable measure of personal virtue is necessary for persons holding public office, it is no guarantee by itself of their effectiveness. I would say that the most morally virtuous President we've had since World War II, and one who truly had the best interests of the country he deeply loved at heart, was Jimmy Carter. President Carter was also summarily dispatched from his office after only four years by the largest vote an incumbent President has ever lost an election by because of his perceived ineffectiveness.

So where do I end up with all this? There is a important truth to be derived from the events of recent months. It is not the kind of "truth" those advocating an open-ended, no time-limit, impeachment inquiry say we need. What these folk are really saying is that we want to pile up as many factual details as we can put on the table about the President's behavior. To which I ask: Just how much more of this kind of "truth" do we need? I think we know by now all we want or need to know about the man's behavior. The real truth, which is already out there for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, is that a very capable, compassionate, and committed-to-his-country individual also has a terribly broken and unhealed side to his character. He has, unfortunately and tragically, allowed this dimension of his character to bring dishonor to the Office he holds. While, as stated earlier, this dishonor is neither of a highly criminal nor treasonous nature, it does, I feel, warrant the US Congress--through whatever means its leaders may devise--to address that dishonor through some form of reprimand or censure. In so doing the members of Congress would be acting on behalf of the wishes of the great majority of the American people and in the national interest as well, which, as I understand it, is what they are elected to do.

I have titled this sermon "Lives and Lies.." so let's move in the direction of the latter for a few minutes. One response to all I've said to this point is, "Well, this impeachment inquiry isn't really about sex and the President's sexual behavior, its about the lies he told and the deception he engaged in to hide and deny that behavior." Indeed; lies and deceptions on the part of public officials--particularly by a President--are very serious moral matters. Some years ago I did a sermon series on a book by Dr. Sissela Bok called Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. I can't rehash those sermons now except to say that her basic point is that lies told by public officials erode and undermine the trust they have to have in order to lead and govern. She is absolutely right. In another area of our public life, this past summer we saw two highly talented columnists and journalists for the Boston Globe, Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle, lose their jobs because of the less than truthful nature of some of their writing for that paper. They were two of my favorite commentators. They also, each in their own way, violated the trust of their readers and it cost them their jobs. Public figures have to have the trust of the public they serve, or address, in order to be effective at what they do. Its hard to argue that point, so I won't.

But what I would argue and ask for, is that if we're going to talk about Presidential lying in the course of an impeachment inquiry, then let's do it with some sense of proportion, and perspective, and precedent. Let's first consider precedent. A couple of weeks ago, also in the New York Times, Father Robert Drinan authored a column in which he recalled his role on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 when it considered the impeachment of Richard Nixon in the wake of Watergate. Father Drinan, writing the piece with former Representative Wayne Owens, recalled that in the course of the Committee's impeachment investigation of President Nixon they discovered that Mr. Nixon, while serving as President, had donated his Vice-Presidential papers to the government, and had deliberately backdated the time of the donation in order to take advantage of a tax deduction. The deduction had actually come to be dis-allowed at the time Mr. Nixon made the donation--which is why he back-dated the thing. The Committee had clear evidence, then, that President had defrauded (that is to say, lied to) the IRS for the sake of personal gain. The 1974 Judiciary Committee, with a Democratic majority, concluded that such an act was criminal, but not a "high crime" of an impeachable nature. They decided it was something Mr. Nixon could quite likely be prosecuted for once he left office. That decision rendered moot by President Ford's blanket pardon of Mr. Nixon once he, Mr. Ford, succeeded to the Presidency. The distinction the 1974 House Judiciary Committee drew was one between a falsehood told for the sake of personal gain, or personal protection, and a falsehood told for the purpose of undermining the institutions and processes of government itself. Its a telling distinction, and one the current Judiciary Committee should bear well in mind.

But when I speak of proportion and perspective it goes well beyond this kind of a legal precedent. As was the case with my feelings towards President Clinton, it once again gets personal. I think back to the early days of August of 1964 when I was just three weeks shy of my 19th birthday. Our television must have been on the fritz that evening--and I can't recall where the rest of the family was--but my mother and I sat in our living room and listened on the radio to President Lyndon Johnson, speaking in somber and measured tones, tell about an unprovoked attack on American warships in Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin, by North Vietnamese forces. The President went on to say that this attack represented an escalation in North Vietnamese aggression against the United States, and that he was asking the Senate for a resolution authorizing him to take whatever measures he and his military advisors felt necessary to curb such aggression, including the commitment of US troops. A few days late all but two members of the Senate gave such approval to what came to be called the "Gulf of Tonkin" Resolution. I can't remember all of the President's words on that August night in 1964. What I most vividly remember was my mother coming across the room and holding me once his speech had ended. I was, as I say, 18 years old. My mother had already lived through one war as a teenager in England during World War II.

What came out much later, via the Pentagon Papers and books like David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest and Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, was that while there was indeed such an attack by the North Vietnamese, it was largely in response to CIA backed actions in the area by the South Vietnamese forces. It has been further revealed that the so-called "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution had actually been drafted by President Johnson and his advisors many weeks earlier and was being held in abeyance until some incident came up--as one inevitably would--that could be trumped up enough to secure Senate passage. In the massive US troop escalation's that followed, beginning shortly after his election to a full term as President, Mr. Johnson continually used the Tonkin Gulf Resolution as his "permission slip" for taking us deeper and deeper into a war that claimed thousands upon thousands of American lives and bitterly divided the American people. My college and seminary deferments allowed me to avoid military service at that time. Many other mothers were not so fortunate as mine in having to see their sons got off to war, many of whom did not return alive.

I say all this not to trash a former President, who in time I've actually come to admire in certain ways. The landmark 1964 Civil Rights bill would not have passed with his dedicated efforts. I've also come to regard Lyndon Johnson as one of the more tragic American figures of the post-World War II era. But in these past several weeks I have not been able to get the thought out of my head that President Johnson never had to sit for six hours in front of a grand jury, and be grilled by an allegedly "independent" prosecutor, for his devastating deed of deception. No prosecutor ever called him to account for how he and his advisors used deceptions, half-truths, and shadings of the truth as he and they took this country into a folly which cost over 50,000 young American their lives (including a couple of my high school classmates who were not as fortunate as I in avoiding the conflict), laid tremendous waste to an underdeveloped third world country, and inflicted psychic wounds upon this country from which we have yet to fully recover.

What I'm trying to say is this: If we're going to have a debate over the next several weeks--or (God help us) however long it turns out to be--over what kind of falsehoods told by a sitting President constitute impeachable offenses, can we at least do it with some sense of moral proportion? That is to say, with some sense of what the moral outcomes of those falsehoods are? Can we at least remember the prices we've paid as a nation in times past when our Presidents were less than truthful with us? Can we at least try to remember such times while considering the impeachment of a President for the falsehoods he told for the purpose of hiding a personal weakness which, yes, brought dishonor to the office he holds, but which have not exacted the kind of price from the American people as a whole in the way that earlier Presidential acts of deception did?

If I can engage in what I dearly hope is some truth telling of my own right now, I'll say that this is the last time I intend to devote a sermon to this topic. I consider it an issue that needs to be addressed from a pulpit, but not belabored. The impeachment process will go forward. I seriously doubt that any significantly new information is going to come to light at this point, and "getting at the truth" will only prove to be more of the same piled higher and deeper. I believe, as I did three weeks ago, that this President will serve out the remainder of his second term and strongly resist any calls for his resignation. The impeachment process--even still in its earliest stages--has already become so partisan that regardless of what happens in the election on this November 3, there will not be enough Senate votes to remove him from office, should things even get that far. Once our Congressional leaders face up to that reality, they may well then find a way to end this inquiry.

I believe its time for keeping faith; keeping faith with the principles we affirm and the values we share. We should also keep faith with the means by which we govern ourselves, with the democratic process, and not succumb to the kind of cynicism or resignation that events such as the ones we are now witnessing can bring on. I think the worst possible outcome of all these highly troublesome events would be for people of good-will and of a progressive spirit to pull away from the political process and allow the forces of extremism to gain ground.

We still, of course, have our live to lead with as much authenticity as we can. We each have our own wholeness to celebrate. We each have our own brokenness to attend to. We each have our private selves known only to us, as well as our shared selves, our community selves, and our public selves. We seek to respect and nurture each of these aspects of ourselves; we seen continuity and congruity among and between them. May it always be our purpose and our calling as members of this community to be about the discovery of the truths about who we each and all are and about this world in whose ongoing life we participate.

Copyright © 1998 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.