COMMENTARY: A tough week for people with power

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey”(Journey Publishing Co.), a book series of daily meditations. If you have feedback on this column or want to suggest a question for a future column, e-mail Ehrich at journey(AT)interpath.com.) UNDATED _ It was a tough week for people with power. President Bill […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey”(Journey Publishing Co.), a book series of daily meditations. If you have feedback on this column or want to suggest a question for a future column, e-mail Ehrich at journey(AT)interpath.com.)

UNDATED _ It was a tough week for people with power.


President Bill Clinton found himself under attack for an alleged affair. Microsoft Corp. lost a face-off with a federal judge over marketing tactics. The governor of Kentucky was being investigated for campaign finance abuse. Fidel Castro went to Mass and heard the Cuban people cry,”Freedom!” Power, it seems, has its limits.

It was a tough week for truth, as well.

The president’s carefully phrased denials and his critics’ gleeful dispensing of rumors made the Monica affair/non-affair seem like rival soap operas, or a Leno-Letterman conspiracy to generate new material. Did Microsoft cave in because it saw the light about healthy competition, or because Bill Gates suddenly recognized that arrogant bullying is bad public relations? And what in the world possessed Fidel Castro to invite the pope and 3,000 journalists to his island prison?

The search for truth, it seems, isn’t nearly as interesting as the spin-doctoring of perceptions. Our search isn’t for truth, but for advantage.

As fact and fiction blended and the line between politics and theater blurred, I remembered”The American President,”a film about a president falling in love. He is widowed and she is Annette Bening, so sharing the presidential bed seemed OK.

What brought it to mind wasn’t parallels between Michael Douglas and Bill Clinton, or between Annette and Monica, but the film’s bad guy: an opportunistic wannabe whose nasal moralizing about”family values”is obviously cheap and self-serving.

Early in the Bill-and-Monica drama, one conservative commentator referred to the president as the”moral leader of the nation”and said Clinton was leading the nation astray. In an age when claiming the righteous high ground is effective politics, we will hear more of that theme.

But let’s be clear about one thing: The president isn’t our moral leader. The morals of this nation aren’t shaped in the White House, or in the bizarre hothouse of Washington D.C. These are politicians, and we expect so little of politicians that many refuse to vote and we sigh in relief when Congress is in recess.

Bill-and-Monica isn’t a moral Gettysburg holding the nation’s future. It’s the usual stuff: libido, partisan maneuvering, crocodile tears, journalists looking for the next Woodward-and-Bernstein opportunity, and pols conducting polls to make sure they’re seated when the music stops.


The morals of this nation are shaped much closer to home.

We learn values from our parents. If they value truth, we will, too. If father molests daughter, if mother drinks away the food money, our values may be warped. We learn about love by being loved. We learn about justice by being treated fairly.

The cruel don’t become cruel because they watched breathless exposes in Washington. The cruel are passing along their own personal pain. Sexual predators usually are acting out childhood experiences; the mistaken moral compass is deep inside, not in the Oval Office.

We learn values from our teachers. If they display love of learning, we will want to learn. If they seem bored or burned out, we will scheme for grades.

We learn values from our pastors. We can tell when a preacher is unprepared or insincere. Even the most diligent pastor can’t undo hatreds and agonies learned at home.

We learn values from each other. If the norm in our workplace is to cheat and goof off, our own honesty and diligence might waver. If the way to get ahead is to step on people, we might buy heavier shoes. If our neighbors are rude, we might become a rude neighbor.

If this nation is in moral collapse, as the religious conservatives love to assert, it isn’t because politicians are scoundrels, and it sure won’t be resolved by electing right-wing zealots to office.


Morals collapse because people close to us fall into sin, and because we ourselves fall into sin. It is specious for us to project our own failings onto others, or to blame politicians for leading us astray.

Americans discovered the lure of adultery long before they knew Presidents Washington, Cleveland, Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Clinton shared their weakness.

DEA END EHRICH

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