[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 31 (Thursday, March 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1332-H1334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             WHITE HOUSE SILENCE: AMERICANS WANT THE TRUTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Whitfield). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
DeLay) is recognized for 10 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, not far away in a United States Federal 
courthouse, a grand jury may hold in its

[[Page H1333]]

hands the fate of our President. Now, how it will end is anyone's 
guess. At this moment, fair-minded people are suspending judgment.
  All we can say for sure is that the Presidency seems diminished by 
it. Republican and Democrat alike, we will all be happy to have this 
spectacle behind us, because for weeks I have withheld comment on the 
charges leveled at the President. I thought it only fair that he be 
given the chance to explain himself to the American people without any 
rush to judgment on our part. These are, after all, serious charges, 
and premature condemnations of the President would not be fair to him 
or to the public.
  So I waited for the President to speak out, and I waited, and I 
waited, and I waited. But with each passing day, the silence emanating 
from within the White House grows evermore deafening. It is a silence 
broken only by the sound of character attacks launched at the 
President's accusers.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas will suspend.
  It is not in order to refer to the President in personal terms. 
Discussion of ``charges leveled at the President'' dwell on personality 
and are not in order, under longstanding precedents of the House, which 
are recorded on pages 175 to 176 of the House Rules Manual.
  The gentleman may continue.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I have checked the speech with the 
Parliamentarian and have gotten clearance from the Parliamentarian for 
this speech.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair is advised by the 
Parliamentarian's Office that certain recommendations for change in the 
text were not communicated.
  The gentleman may continue.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, the President's own spokesman has said that 
he does not want to know the truth about this entire affair. He has 
also said that the truth may be very complicated, as it so often is 
with the President. But while the President's spokesman may not want to 
know the truth, the American public deserves to hear it.
  The President's silence is a grave disservice to the American people 
who elected him. Twice a plurality of voters elected Bill Clinton to 
lead this country. Twice they put their faith in him to do the people's 
work. Well, Mr. Speaker, a Presidency enveloped in scandal is good for 
nobody, and the faith that the American people have put in President 
Clinton has been violated time and time again.
  I sometimes hear that none of this has any relevance to public 
policy. The President's defenders point to the polls that show high job 
approval ratings. While this may be an appropriate defense for an 
administration guided by polls rather than principles, it fails to even 
scratch the surface of the true implications of this affair.
  For most of this Nation's history, the American people have held a 
very high standard of conduct for the President of the United States. 
The reverence with which they held this office of the Presidency 
dictated this higher standard. Now it seems that the loftiness of the 
office is an excuse for a lower standard. He is the President. We 
should give him the benefit of the doubt. As long as the economy 
performs well, it does not matter how a President acts, or so the 
thinking goes.
  Well, I disagree with that thinking. One should not be able to get 
away with more simply because of the office that he holds. The leader 
of the free world should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. 
After all, the eyes of our Nation and of the world are constantly upon 
him.
  Mr. Speaker, poll numbers are fleeting, but the tarnishing of the 
highest office in the land has permanent consequences, and as for the 
character and morality of our leaders, I do not see it as my duty as a 
Congressman to give frequent lectures on this subject. We are 
legislators, we are not preachers. And all of us are flawed. We have 
all made mistakes. But there comes a point when remaining silent 
becomes a breach of responsibility. I cannot remain silent any longer. 
To do so would be to forsake my duty as an elected voice of the people. 
I am a representative of the people, and it is on their behalf that I 
implore the President to come forward with the truth.
  The charges against the President of the United States are very 
serious, and that is why Congress may have to act on them.
  Aiding in his defense, the President is said to have the best 
political tacticians and consultants in the business. We see and hear 
from these consultants very often. They miss no opportunity to malign 
the motives of the independent counsel or belittle the investigation, 
or send forth into the airwaves any number of legalistic evations and 
desperate semantic stonewalls.
  Ken Starr is just doing his job. The independent counsel is doing the 
job that the Attorney General of the United States and a three-judge 
panel has asked him to do. Yet, if we look at the charges made against 
him, one would think he was the devil incarnate.
  It is always the same with these people. The spin, the whole spin, 
and nothing but the spin. Are these the best political minds in the 
business? I am not so sure about that. They certainly know how to buy 
time, but that only works for just so long. They may be able to obscure 
the truth for a while, but they cannot change it. Their act is wearing 
very thin with the American people. It only aggravates the offenses and 
postpones the day of truth-telling.
  I cannot think of a better way to bring on formal congressional 
proceedings than to go on hindering, obstructing and belittleing the 
judicial proceedings that are now under way.
  Now, if that is the current White House strategy, then they will not 
be first to discover that deceit is one offense our forgiving public 
will not abide.

                              {time}  1515

  We Republicans know something about this from our party's bitter 
experience just a generation ago. There is no more fragile construct 
than a stone wall. In any scandal, the shortest route to safety is 
always the truth.
  It is worth recalling that many of these same people 6 years ago 
promised, and I quote, ``the most ethical administration in history.'' 
The troubling thing is that they still believe it. Six years and who 
knows how many scandals later, their moral self-assurance seems 
undiminished. Where does this self-assurance come from? It seems to 
arise from a profound understanding of everybody's misdeeds except 
their own.
  No administration has ever been more demonstrative in acknowledging 
our national sins past and present than this one. This is the same 
President who has so touchingly apologized for the sins of racism, the 
sins of discrimination, the sins committed during World War II against 
Japanese-Americans, and so on through our entire checkered social 
history.
  How easy admissions come when the wrongdoing is someone else's. How 
repentant they are when the guilt is broad and general and national and 
universal. But now the question is one of personal wrongdoing. A 
strange silence has fallen over the White House. Mr. Speaker, at the 
heart of this investigation are some very, very serious questions, and 
a shrug is not an answer.
  The response that these are personal traits that the public was well 
aware of when it elected him, that times are good, and people just do 
not care, and so on, likewise, rings very hollow to me. We have heard 
this line many times from the commentators.
  I must say it absolutely amazes me. It is not very flattering, no 
matter how you look at it. Surely it marks the first time a President's 
integrity has ever been defended on the grounds that our expectations 
were low to begin with.
  I do not for 1 minute buy into the argument that the public does not 
care about integrity, because, like most of us, the public is clearly 
bewildered by all of this. I suppose you can add to that a certain 
public fascination with this spectacle.
  But we have an administration that often seems to defy so many of 
life's rules: honesty is the best policy; character is destiny; 
whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he reap. We all grow up believing 
these rules were firm and inflexible. Yet, somehow this White House 
seems to have found a loophole in each one of them.
  They shy from the truth. They attack the character of others as if to 
divert attention from their own. They sow shame and scandal. Up till 
now, it seems to be working. But all of this can only work for just so 
long. In politics, as in life, you cannot stave off the consequences 
forever.

[[Page H1334]]

  My money is still on the old saying that honesty is the best policy. 
Where simple honesty is concerned, there is no such thing as executive 
privilege. Sooner or later, straight answers will have to come out. The 
longer the White House waits, the greater the harm to themselves and to 
their bond of trust with the American people.
  The sooner we hear the truth, the sooner they will regain public 
trust and respect. Let me repeat that, Mr. Speaker, not mere approval 
or popularity but trust and respect. Leaders do not live by polls 
alone. Without trust and respect, they are nothing, and any title they 
hold is a mockery.
  On his way to Washington for the 1993 inauguration, the President-
elect, Bill Clinton, made a stop at Monticello to pay homage to Thomas 
Jefferson. It was Jefferson who offered, perhaps, the most prophetic 
comment of the next 6 years of this presidency. No man will ever bring 
out of the presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
  Something is amiss when a president receives almost as many bills 
from his lawyers as from Congress. The judicial proceedings will run 
their course regardless of this White House stonewalling. But if the 
President would just tell the truth to the American people, it would go 
a long, long way toward bringing this ordeal to an end. The truth, the 
truth is the only thing now that can preserve the dignity of the 
presidency.
  That is what it is it all comes down to, Mr. Speaker, is the truth. 
The Independent Counsel must pursue it. Congress must expect it. The 
public must hear it. The President must tell it. Then, finally, we can 
put this sad chapter behind us and move on.

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