“The government is of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what our founding fathers wrote in the Constitution.”
That was President Bill Clinton’s attack against the Republicans’ belief in lessening the strength of the federal government. He made this “powerful” statement in a rally in northern California and received thunderous applause for his witty statement.
Well, Willie was not so slick this time, and, unfortunately, neither was a large percentage of the American people listening to his speech.
The reel of programmed responses in his mind must have hit a glitch because the true, ignorant Clinton emerged with this statement.
The educated public noticed his mistake – this statement is not in the Constitution, it is in the Gettysburg Address.
A simple mistake – for a junior high school student. But not for the President of the United States. Especially not for a President who boasts of the importance of a strong, central government and a federally-controlled education system.
Of course, since Clinton can weasel his way out of any sticky situation, this little mistake will probably receive little attention. Yet, in the past, several prominent political figures have been criticized for making mistakes that were on a much smaller scale.
When former Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled the word “potato” by adding an “e” to the end during an appearance at an elementary school spelling bee, the media and the public ridiculed his illiteracy for a long time afterward. So Mr. Quayle is not a spelling bee champion. How many of us are?
Good ol’ Quayle stuck his foot in his mouth again in 1991. While he attempted to address the problem of television glamorizing single motherhood, by using Murphy Brown (Candace Bergen) and her recent childbirth, as an example, the nation and the media took to arms claiming that he was a chauvinist. In reality he was just pointing out the reality that being a working, single mother can be challenging and should not a be responsibility taken lightly.
Then there is Bob Dole. Some say he is trapped in the the 1950s. That is why he referred to the Los Angeles Dodgers as the Brooklyn Dodgers on national television. I saw his reference to the Dodgers and detected his characteristic dry humor and laughed along with the joke. Unfortunately, some Americans felt he was serious and were eternally offended by this “mistake.”
I can understand a Dodger fan taking offense, but even if Dole is not an avid sports fan, he can still run the country without superior knowledge of sports.
But can Clinton run a country when he does not even know what that country is all about? At first, I saw his character flaws and although I was a little disappointed, I did not discount him as President of the United States. When I kept noticing his speedy troop deployments, I wondered if they were thought through, but I placed my confidence in his decisions as the President. When he told our country that we were going to have to stick it through one of the largest tax increases in history, I grinned and bore it as I watched huge portions of my money disappear with each paycheck.
I placed my confidence in our elected official, just as the rest of us had to, but it seems as if he has pulled the wool over the eyes of millions of American people that plan to vote for him in November. He has filled our minds with his “high” hopes for our nation’s future, while being spoon-fed by his right-hand men. If he does not even know the contents of the Constitution, how much of what he preaches to the American people are really his thoughts, concerns and plans for the future of America?
It also seems ironic that a President who is so concerned with education is so uneducated himself. Maybe he should devote a little of that government spending to buying a personal copy of the Constitution of the United States, the very document that the government he is so eager to run is based on.
Christie Reed, a junior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at reedc@ulvacs.ulaverne.edu.
