Communications and Media

The office of the president is a legally created office that is separate and distinct from its occupants. By giving it an owner occupier distinction, the creators of this office have ensured that the office is capable of existing in perpetuity. However, even with those intentions it is still near to impossible to completely distinguish the office from its occupier. Being a juristic legal entity, the office is not expected to have a character of its own. Such aspects are determined by the current occupier. Hence, if the current president has good morals then the office of the president will be perceived as such. Similarly, if the president is morally corrupt, it also follows that the presidency will be perceived to be of the same disposition.

It is for this reason that the law has a framework to protect the presidency. Provisions such as elections, impeachments and resignations are meant to protect the office from unsuitable occupants. In so doing, it preserves the honor and dignity of the office. The countrys history is replete with leaders who have been subjected to the impeachment process, but of these, only three were presidents. The impeachment process was devised as a way of protecting the American public from constitutional office holders, who may (mis)use the security of tenure that comes with such an office. Unlike other officers holding public office, constitutional office holders serve for the length of time prescribed by the acts that created them. Removing them from office is therefore next to impossible for as long as they are still within their terms.

One of the three presidents to have faced an impeachment was Bill Clinton, who was the 42nd president of the United States. He came to power in 1993 after defeating the incumbent President George H.W. Bush in the 1993. His impeachment was the first one in the twentieth century. It also took place during an era when technological advancements had made information transfer very easy and convenient.

Americas position in world politics meant that the whole world was able keep track of the events as they unfolded, thanks to news channels such as Cable News Network (CNN) and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). For that reason, Bill Clintons life and that of his family was a subject of discussion for a long time. This papers objective is to explore how the whole process of impeachment was handled by his office as well evaluate the reaction of the public to the news that their president had committed offenses that warranted such a drastic action.

Genesis of the impeachment
Offenses that led to the impeachment can be traced to late 1970s, when Clinton and his newly wedded wife Hilary Rodham Clinton decided to venture in to real estate to supplement their modest incomes (Maraniss and Schmidt). This noble venture gave birth to Whitewater Corporation. Unfortunately for the Clintons, the venture failed and this led to them having to seek loan capital to keep it afloat. It is in the quest to seek additional loan capital that Clinton is said to have engaged in abuse of his powers. According to (Maraniss and Schmidt), an Arkansas business by the name David Hale claimed that Bill Clinton, while acting as the Arkansas Governor, pressured him to approve an irregular loan to the whitewater company.

These are allegations that led to the whitewater controversy. One other feature of the controversy was the use of an independent counsel to investigate the Clintons. According to  (Yalof), the watergate scandal that had brought down the Richard Nixon presidency had become a case study that proved the inefficiency of lawyers appointed through the justice department to investigate malpractices of the executive arm of the government. Based on that realisation, congress passed an act authorizing the attorney general to cause the appoitnement of an independent counsel that would be responsible for investigating such allegations. That act allowed the appointment of Keneth Starr, to investigate the scandal. Although Starrs initial mandate was to investigate the Whitewater scandal, it was later on expanded to include issues that brought on board matters that touched on the presidents personal life.

What followed the mandate expansion was a thorough investigation that not only led to the unravelling of the Whitewater scandal, but also an extensive scrutiny of the presidents personal life. In fact, it is ironical that much as Starr was supposed to have investigated the Whitewaters controversy, the counsel is more known for the discovery and subsequent publication of the Clinton-Lewinsky romance. The investigation process led to Keneth Starr coming up with a impeachment referral that listed 11 impeachable offenses committed by Clinton. Among these offenses was lying under oath and allegations that he coerced or enticed Monica Lewinsky to also lie.

Public reaction to the impeachment
President Clinton was not the first one to be impeached. The two other presidents to have undergone the process were Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson. Each of these impeachments was carried out based on its own strengths, but it may be of help to try and understand the circumstances surrounding them. The impeachment process is amorphous process that has both legal and political connotations (Bill). It is political in the sense that its parameters are not well defined so that it becomes hard to define what constitutes an impeachable crime and what does not meet the threshold. On the other hand, the process is described using legal terms (Bill). For example, one goes through a trial process in the senate, from which he is either acquitted or convicted.

It is this amorphous nature that raises the issue of public perception in process. A purely legal process does not attract a lot of public opinion because all decisions are based on points of law it leaves little room for discretion. A political process will attract public scrutiny because the decisions are not based solely on facts they have an element of individual discretion.

Andrew Johnson was the 16th president of the US, and was impeached because of his differences with congressmen over the reconstruction process after the civil war. A cursory glance at the contentious matters shows that there might have been a lot at stake for the fledgling nation at the time. Johnsons impeachment may not however present a good yardstick to measure how the public reacts to a presidential impeachment because it happened during an extraordinary period and at the same time this was period when there was limited information flow.

A closer and more comparable event would be the Nixon impeachment. Nixons career was brought to an abrupt end by a Whitehouse sanctioned burglary that led to the Watergate scandal. Nixon, a Republican president met his political waterloo after it became apparent that he had given a tacit support to a burglary at the Democratic Party offices. The intentions of the burglary still remain a mystery to date, but from it, Nixon lost sizeable public support. According to (Cillizza), actions related to the watergate scandal were an affront to democracy as well on the very existence of the republic.

On the contrary, Clintons impeachement was based on matters that did not pose significant threat to Americas founding princples. Most of the crimes that ignited the Whitewater scandal had been committed more than a decade earlier, and therefore, their resurection, even if justified was based on political rather than economic or ethical considerations. Whitewater did of course acquire a life of its own that was independent from its creators such as David Hale. It underwent a metamorophosis and in the end, the matters on which the scandal was initially based on had been completely forgotten. The offenses the president was convicted on were mainly related to his cooperation with the independent counsel on the Monica-lewinsky affair.

As a result, the impeachment came across more as an indictment on Clinton as a person, and not his capabilities as a president.  (Quirk) describes increased scandals in the post watergate era as politics by any means. According to this theory, there has been an increased number of scandals after the watergate scandal because the law has tightened the noose around public office holders. It has therefore become much more easier to accuse leaders for matters that would not have qualified as gross misconduct in the past. 

The substantive accusations against Clinton centered on his affair with an intern, and those are matters of personal character.  (Quirk) admits that Clintons crimes were the affair and lying about it for seven months. The accusations related to impropriety in financial dealings while acting on behalf of Whitewater Corporation appears to have faded in to thin air. That means the initial intentions of the whole process were lost along the way.

The American public was not blind to that fact. This is best captured by subsequent opinion polls that showed Clintons job ratings remaining largely approved by most Americans although their perception of him as a person had taken a nosedive (Bennett). There is a lesson to be learnt here. That the public prefers to separate their leaders personal life from the public life. In other words, the public does not elect a person solely based on his morals. There are other considerations too.  In addition, (Bennett) says that although the public approved of Clintons execution of duties as the US president they wished he were a better person.

It would not be fair for the public to try and regulate the personal conduct of the president. Presidency comes with enormous powers, and that is why candidates for the seat have to undergo a rigorous process for them to be allowed to serve. They have so much power in their hands that it would not be outlandish to say that the destiny of the whole country rests in their hands. Nixon failed to get public support because his actions amounted to an affront on democracy. It may have been intidimidating to the American public to learn that the man serving as their president did not subscribe to ideals espoused by the constituition.

The frivolous nature of the scandal is best captured by the polls conducted at the time on how the public was keeping track on the scandal. The polls showed that even though a vast majority of the American public had their eyes trained on the scandal, most were mainly concerned with the figures people behind it (Bennett). Suffice it to say that the American public was less interested in the subtantial aspects of the scandal. Not many people were asking questions such as the amount of money lost or the laws that were broken. They were more about the sensational aspects of the process.

It is not surprising therefore that at the end of it  (Bennett) paints an American public that is angered by the scandals handling by the releavant parties, starting with the media. The media, in such circumstances occupies a very priviledged position, but should not abuse such a it by reporting on peripheral matters and ignoring the more important facts.  (Quirk) alleges that the initial offenses that gave rise to the whitewater scandal could not have captured the eye of any prosecutor had the suspected offender been a private citizen. An  informed American citizenry should have known of such and that is probably why they never had a keen interest on the scandal. From the onset therefore, the process was politics by any other means as  (Quirk) describes it.

The American publics anger with the media and the whole process must have been informed by this fact. A public opinion poll taken immediately after the impeachment showed that while 45 of theAmericans thought the impeachement was rightly done, another 53 did not approve of it (Langer). In addition,  (Langer) says that the job approval ratings of the president hit the all time high figure of 69 immediately just the impeachment proceedings. Clearly, the presidents public support did not suffer much from from the scandal if anything his ratings appear to have improved.

(University of Louisville) has tried to rank presidential blunders in an attempt to find out the president that had the most blunders in history. Although there was no conclusive answer to the question, Bill Clinton does not appear anywhere near the top blunders commited by a president. Among the top contenders for this are James Buchanan and Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was guilty of leading the country in to the Vietnam war against a dissaproving American Public while Buchanan stands accused of watching the Union disintegrate. In both cases, one gets an idea of what constitutes actions that go against public opinion.

Clintons case may have been sensetionalized by an increasingly visible media at the expense of other important national issues. Although there were some pockets of outrage related to public resources spent on the investigation, the real cost of the scandal was its effect of relegating important issues to the periphery (Quirk). It comes across as the real cost because at the time, the presidents mind was pre ocupied with how he was going to defeat the scandal. Additionaly, the congress could harldy listen to the presidents policy propositions because they were concentrating on the scandal. Of course, these are unquantifiable, but one can only imagine their costs.

Response by the office of the president
The impeachment was passed by a house that was deeply divided along party lines. This gave the president and his supporters an easier time responding to it because they were easily able to paint it as political. On learning of the bills passage, Clinton struck a conciliatory tone. This was informed by his precarious position on the whole matter, which did not allow him to fire any salvos. After the impeachment was passed, Clinton was joined by 100 democrats at the lawns of the Whitehouse for a press conference.

This was a good gesture from his party members because it erased any image of an isolated politician that may have began to form in the minds of the public. In politics, success is measured in numbers. Anything one does should translate to numbers otherwise, one cannot claim to be successful in the art of politics. That is explains why politicians such as Hitler had a fully functioning ministry of Propaganda. Similarly, the presidents fellow Democratic Party congress members having read political mischief in the whole affair must have discovered that their survival was dependent on their unity.

Maximum dividends from this unity could only be ripped if it played out public. It was no longer a war to be fought by the president alone here the future of the Democratic Party was at stake as well. It was in realization of this that two hours after the impeachment 100 Democratic Party members travelled to the Whitehouse to join the president in his reaction speech (The History Place). The president gave his speech flanked by Vice-President Al-gore, his wife Hillary Clinton and the 100 Democrats.

It notable that throughout the scandal, the president crimes appear to have been those committed against his wife and by extension his family. Given that the crux of his accusation stemmed from his denial of the sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky, it follows that he was being punished for going against the tenets of marriage. His accusations were mainly on adultery and lying. Having Hillary stand by his side as he gave his speech was a signal to the American people that in spite of all the differences that had played out in the public they were ready to get on with their life and marriage.

This was a good public relations strategy because it painted the couple as resilient and ready to move on. In addition, since there was a widespread belief that the presidents wrongs were committed against his wife and family, her presence there meant that there was no longer any need for further punishment because the victim was ready to forgive. This is one of the mistakes the authors of the impeachment process made. They concentrated too much on the presidents personal life that they failed to give the process some substance. The president alludes to this when in his speech he asks the political class to eschew from politics of excessive partisanship, obsessive animosity and uncontrolled anger (The History Place).

He captured the mood of an increasingly weary American public that was by now tired of the medias and the houses action that had served to sensationalize a matter that would have otherwise been best left to the Presidents family to handle. Parallel to painting a rosy picture of his family, the president succeeded in showing the American public that he still had the support of the his party. At the time the Democratic Party controlled the house, and their disunity had the potential of giving away the control to the minority republicans.

Flanked by the members of his party the president gave a speech in which he avoided direct confrontation with those who had put him in the quandary instead, focusing on what his administration had set out to achieve (The History Place). He dwelled on matters such as healthcare and education, in the process capturing the aspirations of the American people. He also went ahead and gave his vision and wishes of the American nation. All these had one effect they elevated the president above the partisan politics that played out in the impeachment process.

He made limited references to his lapse of judgment that had led to his impeachment. Going through the speech posted on (The History Place), one only finds one reference to the presidents mistakes. He owns up to whatever he might have done wrong, but quickly calls for all to rise above a partisan politics so that a suitable compromise can be arrived at.

This reaction struck a balance between admitting liability and at the same time getting the public to look beyond the scandal. Clinton was aware that the collective memory of the American people was not going to fade out fast enough for the scandal to be forgotten within his term. It was for this reason that he sought to divert the attention of the people towards matters they held dear such as healthcare and education. It would have been pointless for him to try and urge them to forget the scandal, its frivolous nature notwithstanding.

For anyone watching the press briefing at the time, it was clear that the president was not alone he had the full support of the Democratic Party members. This strategy served two purposes. One is that the whole impeachment process was a political witch hunt. As noted earlier, the impeachment process is not a legal process and neither can it be described as a fully political process. Political processes are subject to public opinions, unlike the legal processes, which are numb to such considerations.

Getting public support during such a process was an important step in damage control because the matter was now headed to congress for a hearing that would result in a conviction or an acquittal. Secondly, the Democratic Party had to send a message to the Republicans that they were united and that their unity would not be broken down by the scandal. So far, the partisan nature of the process has shown that the house is deeply divided along party lines, something that could signal a political struggle by the parties for control of government.  (Holmes) alleges that the republicans, who set off the impeachment process, were aware that they were not going to remove the president from office. Instead, they were only bent on humiliating the president and his government. The message to such agents therefore was that the Democratic Party was solidly behind the president, and any attempts aimed at embarrassing him or his government would fail. Such a message could have had an effect of winning over the few republicans that may have been vacillating between supporting and not supporting the impeachment.

Media handling
Put under the microscope, the medias actions in the periods leading up to the impeachment have not depicted a professional group of people playing their role as bridges of information between the source and destination. As the scandal raged on, there were other issues, which the Americans had an interest in but were give a wide berth by the media. One of those according to (Bennett) was the war that was taking place in Bosnia. Opinion polls showed that most Americans at the time were more concerned with the war in Bosnia than they were of the impeachment proceedings.

The media did not give them much of a choice however because the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal dominated the news. The president and his aides are however not entirely clean when it comes to the excess attention the matter got in the eyes of the public. When the scandal broke out, the first reaction of the president was to haunt for the rest of his term in office. As reported by (bbc) the phrase I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky was to follow the president for the rest of his term as it got played over and over again by the media. In fact, the phrase almost became a signature identifier for the scandal. Matters are not made any better by the fact that the president had to later on retract the statement after the details became all too clear.

It is probable that the president had underestimated the potential of the scandal. His initial reactions suggest that he had actually hoped the scandal would immediately fade away because of the other events such as the war at Bosnia that was taking place at the time. Unfortunately for the president and his handlers, the media picked on the story and created a sensation around it. It would be unreasonable to expect that the president would have sat back and admitted culpability in the sexual liaison with Lewinsky, but he could have taken a less a direct approach to the scandal.

It has been noted that the crimes that led to the presidents impeachment could not have caught the eye of any prosecutor had the president been a private citizen. On that assumption, the president perceived the Lewinsky scandal as one of those sideshows. He was totally convinced that the independent counsels mandate would have concentrated on the Whitewater controversy as originally thought. On this, he was sure he was not culpable for any crimes.

The better reaction came from his wife. The first lady was more or less speaking from a point of ignorance and may have had the advantage of giving a response that directly attacked the authors of the scandal. For her, she did not have to respond to any allegations because the proceedings were not about her she was just an interested party, although at a higher rank than the normal Americans. She is quoted as having dismissed the controversy as a continuing political campaign against my husband. (whorunsgov).  Unlike the president, the first lady never had to retract her remarks because they appeared to have been proven right in the fullness of time.

The first ladys media handling appears to have paid off because as (whorunsgov) reports, her ratings jumped 15 points from 35 to 50 during the scandal period.  (whorunsgov) also reports that the first lady although privately devastated..was publicly forgiving. Had she allowed her differences with the president to play out in the public gallery then the media and the Republican supporters of the scandal would have had a field day playing out the first family drama. Her detractors may have had to eat a humble pie on this because of the decorum and the modest temperament with which she conducted herself with. It is not unusual for a married couple in such times to part ways and wash out their dirty linen in public. The aggrieved spouse will usually determine the direction such a saga plays out. If they approach it gracefully, the media will not have much to feed its morbid curiosity. On the other hand, if they give the smallest hint that they are willing to splash out their misgivings on their spouses then there is a media that is always ready and willing to help them publish their frustrations.

These are scenes that have mostly played out in Hollywood as celebrity couples splash out their million dollar stories. Such couples sometimes appear to communicate through the press. In such circumstances, couples make accusations and counter-accusations via the media, and as they do so more details of their personal lives come out. On this, Hillary Clinton scored highly. She chose to keep her frustrations with her husband private. As (Quirk) contends, scandals in this day and age are not authored for the sake of it somebody must be intending to profiteer from them.

This scandal took an unexpected turn when it began delving in to matters of a private nature.  For one closely following the scandal, the president did not commit crimes that were impeachable as such. One aspect that gives the scandals proceedings an unfavorable standing in the eyes of the public is the blurred line regarding the crimes that the president was being impeached for. It appears like he was being punished for being unfaithful to his wife. Taking this line of thinking, one gets the impression that Hillary Clinton rejected her husbands public lynching for mistakes that related to their marriage.
Similarly, had the president foreseen the potential of the scandal, he would have been better off not issuing direct statement. The scandal appears to have wrong footed the first family. On conclusion, Hillary described Starr as having harbored a personal vendetta against her president. It is worth noting that the first family had been at the forefront, albeit reluctantly, of calling for the appointment of an independent counsel to unravel the Whitewater scandal. What they may not have been unaware of at the time was the subsequent mandate expansion and the direction the investigations were to take.

Corrective action taken
Having made statements that he was to retract seven months later, the president had to ensure that he could stand by every statement he made from that point onwards. Thus, in his subsequent addresses, the president took great care to appear conciliatory but not give too much ground to his foes. It is for this reason that the he admitted liability to the extent that he had lied but did not give in to demands from his opponents that he resigns.

Since his impeachment had centered on issues related to his family and personal life, it followed that the people he owed the most apology was his family. In the speech posted on (The History Place), the president thanks the American people, his Democratic Party members, the Republicans who broke ranks with their fellow party members and also acknowledges his lapse of judgment. This is of course a far cry from a president who had earlier on denied any wrongdoing.

This action comes across as a corrective action because the presidents earlier reaction to the scandal had connotations of brinkmanship. Although it may be important for a politician to regularly adopt a confident and outspoken stance as a way of holding out a personality that is clearly in control, overdoing it, especially in such circumstances will be perceived more as obstinacy than desire to remain in control.

This was the case with Nixon. He failed to admit early enough that he was guilty of any wrongdoing. That is why to date the Watergate scandal remains a mystery. Clintons famous phrase I did not have any sexual relations with that woman had to be retracted in fashionable manner. To this, Clinton used his legal knowhow. Even after admitting having an improper sexual encounter with Lewinsky, the president was careful not give his opponents too much ammunition.

The defense regarding the falsehoods of the presidents statement was predicated upon the lexical meanings of words as well sentence structure. An example of this is contained in (Armstrong and Fogelin). The argument advanced in the presidents defense referred to his statement in which he said there is no improper sexual contact with Monica Lewinsky. It is of course not clear the message the president intended to pass on at the time, but in his defense, he said that he had meant to say that there was no sexual contact with Lewinsky during the period of investigation.

Whether he had made the statement with that foresight, or it was just a mere lucky coincidence for him remains unclear. The issue that emerges from this is that the president did a good job in his defense. Indeed, his liaison with Lewinsky had ended long before he was questioned about it. His choice of words was therefore wise because it offered him a safety net in case he needed to retract his statement. Had the statement used was instead of is then matters would have been different because his lies how have turned out to be more blatant. It matters less that the public might have been aware that he was simply using words to wiggle himself out of the scandal. The prosecution was neither clean as well and it would have been unfair for them to use a different yardstick to judge the president.

Another corrective action the president appears to have taken was to continue with his duties as the commander in chief. This was a period that was characterized by an assault on America and its allies by terrorists. One such act was the bombing of the US embassies in East Africa. It turned out that the suspected terror group was one known as Al Qaeda, a terrorist network that was suspected to operate from the lawless Afghanistan, with a complex web that spawned the globe. One of its feeder states was suspected to have been another Northern African country, Sudan.

According to (historycommons), although there was a general consensus among the presidents men on the need to act on the terrorist attacks, a general feeling also that it was important to ensure that the timing of such an attack did not come across as an attempt to divert attention from the raging scandal. The president is reported to have only asked his defense chiefs whether they were sure about the targets. He asked that matters related to timing be left to him to handle. Eventually, he did strike the targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, but his timing came under criticism from the media, some congressmen and later on from the 911 commission (historycommons).

The strikes may not have had a good or intended effect on the nations security, but they did act to divert the attention from the scandal. It reignited the use of the term wag the dog. This was a title that had been used months earlier in a Hollywood movie that had a plot that resembled what Clinton was going through (historycommons). In the movie, a besieged president creates an artificial crisis to divert attention from a domestic scandal. The symbolic use of the term by the presidents foes was of course extreme because there was no artificial crisis that had been created by the president. All his defense chiefs had agreed of the need for a strike they only differed on the timing.

It is not even clear whether the president intended to time the strikes to divert attention the distraction effect could have been an aftereffect. The jury is out on that. The important note is that Sudan and Afghanistan were bombed in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on American embassies and that these strikes ended up acting as heat sinks for a besieged president.

The democrats on their part also fulfilled their roles by helping the president to redeem his image by pointing out the political nature of the proceedings. Their role as the presidents party members can be credited with congressional acquittal of the president. They struck a rare unity of purpose during the proceedings and even worn over a few middle line Republicans. It is would not have been interest of the party to intervene in the scandal from the onset because its initial intentions appeared noble. The nation has right to know whether its commander in chief had a history of serious crime.

For the party therefore, an attempt to intervene with an otherwise noble process would have portrayed it in bad light. However, as the process moved on the scandal took a more personal approach. This marked the point at which the process turned itself in to a political undertaking rather than a truth seeking endeavor. It was at this point that the democrats openly adopted a hard-line stance that ended up producing a deeply divided house. For one to portray such a process as a political witch hunt, it is important that such evidence is present. Having a deeply divided house sent a message to the public that the process was not based on principle rather it was more about scoring political points than establishing the truth.

Dealing with the affected public
The whole impeachment process was premised on the fact that the President had breached the trust bestowed upon him. The veracity of this claim may be contentious, but regardless of that, the presidents actions still constituted some level of betrayal for the American people. He may not have committed crimes as grievous as those of Buchanan, Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, but nevertheless, he still fell short of American peoples expectations.

He acknowledges this when he addresses the press from the Whitehouse lawns and apologizes to the American people. Notably missing from his speech is any apology to his accusers or any acknowledgement of their concerns. By so doing, the president sends a direct and clear message that his duty is to the American people not his accusers. In addition, he lists his achievements in the past six years of presidency and lays out his aspirations and visions for the country. This is an expression of the presidents intention to serve out his remaining term.

The presidents assurance to the American public is intended to cool political temperatures that had reached a crescendo at the time. The president actions are laudable because a country that has no confidence in its leadership tends to experience slower economic activity. Investors in such an economy will for example tend to withdraw their money from the stock market, something that will lead to share value dropping. The president had a duty to safeguard such interests.

In addition, he adopts a conciliatory tone and calls for national healing (The History Place). It was important that someone because a deeply divided house might not have augured well for the country because it was easy for the rest of the country to now become divided along party lines. The presidents was telling the American public that he was ready to rise above partisan politics in the interest of national healing. The president occupies a unique position in national politics. Although comes to power through a political party, he is expected to go beyond partisan party politics in the performance of his duties.

This was one such occasion. Even though extremist republicans had blurred the line between public and private, the president was expected to take in his stride and offer the olive branch. He could afford to let his bitterness to play out in the public.

Evaluation
The catchphrase that has been associated with the scandal has been the president saying I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky (bbc). This was in response to a direct attack on his personal life. There may be no justification morally for anyone caught in extra marital affairs scandals. Nonetheless, this must be dealt with at appropriate levels. It was not fair for the president to be subjected to public scrutiny over an extra marital affair yet history is replete with presidents with similar dispositions.

His reaction was therefore justified because he could not have been expected to just admit culpability over a matter that did not have any effect on his performance as the head of state. If his detractors were to put on the spot and asked how they thought the presidents affair with Lewinsky would affect the economy or national security, they would probably have not had a satisfactory answer. To the president as well these were people abusing their privileges to score political points.

He also scores highly on his choice of words. He must have got his detractors flat footed when he went on to explain his intentions when he used words such is instead of was. Being a politician, the president knew better than to sit back and admit that he had blatantly lied. Honesty is not the best policy at times, and especially when dealing with matters of a political nature. Had he been sure that he had the right proceedings going on, then it would have been prudent for him to be truthful.  This was however not the case. His accusers must have been waiting for him to admit his mistakes so that they could fix him. Luckily, he knew better than to allow them such lethal ammunition.

Perhaps the best person in terms of handling the scandal was the first lady. She continuously adapted her responses to suit the situation at the time. She may have been at the dark for most of the time, but even when it became clear that she was also a victim of circumstance, she did not betray any emotion. The media must have waited for days on end for her to break down and perhaps give them more details touching on her life and the president. To her credit, details of her disappointment have never come to the public domain.

Every media house would be aware of the value of getting the most detailed account of such a debacle and would therefore invest a great deal of resources in getting such a story firsthand. The case may not have been much different, meaning that the media must have placed its informants in strategic places both within and without the Whitehouse to get any breaking news on the first lady.

The fact that there was no significant reporting of such happenings in the mainstream media is a testimony of the first ladys sober handling of the crisis. She must have figured out early enough that the only losers in such a scenario would have been her family. The winners would then have been the media and her husbands detractors. For that she saved both her marriage and a potential downfall of the presidents career. Her presence at the conference just after the impeachment proceedings served to give an impression of a president who had been forgiven by his wife. This may have considerably tilted public opinion in the presidents favor because the scandal had played itself out in such a manner to suggest that the president was being punished for being unfaithful to his wife. For that reason, any hint of being forgiven by his wife was a signal to the public to extend a similar gesture to him.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, overcame personal differences to emerge united in the face of the crisis. Such cases at times provide some selfish leaders within a party with an opportune time to scale up the power ladder. Some democrats could have easily teamed up with the republicans to hand the president a humiliating defeat in name of principle. To its credit the party forged a united front to the extent that they won over few moderate democrats. Yet, one cannot tell for certain whether all of them agreed with the presidents actions. In spite of any differences that may have, and must have existed at the time, they reasoned that it was in the best interest of the party to present united front. This resulted in an acquittal of the president at the congress yet the republicans had control of both houses.

Negative handling of the crisis
Independent counsel Starr and President Clinton have been cited as the parties that should be held responsible for the waste of public resources that followed the Lewinsky saga (Quirk). This postulation appears to affirm that the public inquiry carried out by Starr was a waste of public resources. Clintons guilt stems from his handling of the scandal from the onset. His denials generated more heat than light, and the case would probably have had a better ending had he handled his response better.

That should not in any way be construed to imply that he should have immediately admitted guilt over the scandal. He should have been more tacit in the response as to leave his accusers second guessing. That may of course prove tricky for him given that his wife must have had all her ears open ready to get any hint of her husbands infidelity. Problematic as it may have proven the president should have found a way of avoiding perjury and related crimes.

Kenneth Starr is the other culprit. He took an otherwise noble judicial process and created a sensation out of it. Even Hillary Clinton, who should have been grateful to him and his team for revealing her husbands faults, was not impressed by his work. Instead, she describes the whole impeachment process as one directed by her husbands political enemies (whorunsgov). Starr failed to run a professional inquiry that would even have had its challenges based on technicalities. Most of the challenges are based on how he handled the scandal. An example cited by (POPP) accuses Starr of making his presentation to the congress dramatic to catch media attention. In such a case, one is justified to conclude that the counsel may have had vested interests in the process.

The media and the American public too had a hand in what the scandal turned out to be. All parties that advanced this scandal stand accused because of the contention by (Quirk) that the whole process was a waste of public resources. Matters may have been different had the inquiry turned out truths that would have been of value to the American people.  The American people are guilty of cheering on the media madness that ensued when the scandal first reared its head. As (Bennett) suggests, most of the American people focused on side issues of the scandal such who did what. 

It such perceptions that drove the media to focus its reporting on such kind of issues so that in the end, the inquiry ended up being a personality contest. The media obscured important policy matters and focused on the Presidents impeachment. Yet, it was clear all through that the intentions of the inquiry had been hijacked and turned in to a political battleground. It would have been better for the media to focus on substantive matters of the inquiry if they had thought that the inquiry was important for the American people. Nevertheless, the media did not execute this coup on its own they must have been acting on the desires of its constituency. The media does not act in isolation their actions are dictated by their clients. The same goes for the American media at the time. They must have had a public that was continuously seeking to get more sensational details on the story.

Even though the Democratic Party had shown their solidarity with the president and even voted in the senate to produce an acquittal, they could have done more in the initial stages of the process. They did not do enough to counter the propaganda that was used by the presidents accusers to justify the formation of an inquiry.  (whorunsgov) describes Independent Counsel Starr as a former solicitor general under George H.W. Bush, Clintons predecessor.

Democrats did not take advantage of this to run a propaganda in which they would have dismissed Starr as an agent of the Republican Party. There would probably be no proof for that, but of importance is that the party should not have wasted any chance to dismiss the inquiry. Put another way, the democrats appear to have their politics too honestly, and only mobilized their political might after it became clear that the inquiry had a potential of damaging their party. They should have done this sooner rather than later as was the case.

There was the case of House Speaker David Livingstone, who resigned in a huff after admitting to having had extra marital affairs (CNN). His resignation was triggered by an allegation by Larry Flint, a publisher of an adults content magazine to the effect that the senator had also had extra marital affairs. The Democrats should have dug out details of such a persons life and used them to extract concessions from them. That may sound unethical, but one needs to acknowledge that the Republicans did not have such considerations when they invaded the private life of the president. It would be more like paying them back with their own coins. In a nutshell, the democrats failed to play out the political propaganda that was needed to counter the republican hypocrisy in the process.

Summary and conclusion
The constitution is not clear on what constitutes an impeachable offense they are not in black and white. That is why a process such as that Clinton went through is provided for in the constitution. Although the intentions were noble, they have nevertheless sometimes resulted in subjective processes that have led to inappropriate inquiries such as that the one experienced in the Whitewater controversy. None of the literature explored in this study have exonerated President Clinton from blame on what ensued after the Whitewater controversy. There however seems to be a concurrence that the matter was blown out of proportion.

As a president, Clinton is entitled to a private life too as long as the privacy does not affect the performance of his duties as a head of state. The public is not entitled to get an appraisal of the presidents life unless for example, it concerns his health. Clintons personal life came across as imperfect because it was overly investigated. Senator Menendez, a moderate republican said Monica Lewinsky is not Watergate. Let he who has no sin in this chamber cast the first stone (CNN).

Menendez expresses his frustrations with the hypocrisy that had characterized the scandal all through. According to him, the impeachment was based on frolicsome considerations. The accusations were not worth the amount of public resources that went towards its conclusion. Additionally, if everybodys personal life details were to be pried on like the presidents were, no one would emerge a winner. Had the process established corruption and financial impropriety on the president, then the findings would have proved to be material on the presidents ability to perform his duties as the head of state.

Had congress convicted the president, then a bad precedent would have been set. It would even have triggered a chain reaction sort of process where each of the parties would have been fighting to outdo each other in terms of congress convictions. Impeachment is an integral part of Americas democracy and for that reason, it is important that it maintains its integrity. America cannot afford to have an impeachment process that will be used for settling political scores.

After the inquiry, the importance of independent counsel came under scrutiny and was thereafter abolished. A similar fate would have probably befallen on the impeachment process had it the congress convicted the president. Once the purpose of a process is compromised, it loses public trust, and it consequently becomes more profitable to abolish it altogether. Had the congress voted for a conviction, then the president would have been better been known as one who got impeached for having extra marital affairs. That would not have been a fair judgment for Clinton, who had had presided over six years of presidency that had seen the country experience economic recovery.

In sum, Clinton did commit a crime but it would not have been fair to impeach him on the strength of that offense. As another Republican concurred proven offense are not impeachable. But they are close. He did not go scot-free the amount of public humiliation he underwent was enough to punish him for his offenses. Kenneth Starr failed in his duty as an Independent Counsel and should even be held responsible for the subsequent abolishment of the office later.