IN SEARCH OF A LEGACY Poll: Clinton greater than Reagan, Washington Gallup survey also ranks Bill ahead of Jefferson, tied with Bush

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 27, 2003 3:54 a.m. Eastern

Bill Clinton tops Ronald Reagan, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in a new survey of America's greatest presidents, and ranks evenly with George W. Bush.

A Gallup poll released this month asked the question: "Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?"

While Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy finished first and second with 15 and 13 percent of the votes respectively, Clinton and President Bush tied for third at 11 percent.

Reagan finished fifth with ten percent of responses, followed by Franklin Roosevelt with nine percent and George Washington with seven.

Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Teddy Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and Thomas Jefferson all collected less than five percent.

Clinton is especially popular among the MTV generation, with nearly 3 in 10 respondents in the 18- to 29-year-old age group mentioning him. His 29 percent tally of younger Americans is about triple the competition from Lincoln and the current president, both of whom received ten percent support from that group.

Not surprisingly, one's political affiliation had a great impact on selections for this poll. For instance, among Republicans, Clinton received only two percent backing, compared to 23 for George W. Bush, 20 for Lincoln, and 18 for Reagan.

Those identifying themselves as Democrats gave Kennedy 25 percent and Clinton 21 percent, compared to just three percent for Both Reagan and Bush the younger.

Just two years ago when the same question was asked, Reagan was the overall winner of the greatest president question, gathering 18 percent of responses – twice as much as Clinton.

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The Clinton Legacy

I'm a bald faced liar, but I know you don't care.

The Art of Lying
Possibly Bill Clinton's greatest legacy is the level he has raised the art of lying. Many Americans have known William Jefferson Clinton for a pathological liar for most of his political career. Indeed, few people, even among his supporters expect him to tell the truth any longer. They've come to accept he knows no other way but to lie. And, sadly, they accept it that way.
It may be years before we know the full extent of his lies and his criminal acts, but there is much we already know. We are left with a legacy of documents outlining the lies and antics of this man including The Starr Report and Clinton's response is publicly available for all to scrutinize.
The list of topics he's lied about goes on and on, but who can overlook the more obvious ones including: his draft status, the Chinese missile program, the White House Travel Office, Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, and his grand jury testimony,

Clinton Lie: Monica Lewinsky
"I didn't have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." - President William Jefferson Clinton
Clinton Lie: Gennifer Flowers
In the 60 Minutes interview, Steve Kroft asked: "I'm assuming from your answer that you're categorically denying you've ever had an affair with Gennifer Flowers?" Clinton replied: "I've said that before, and so has she." In his deposition in the Paula Jones case, Clinton admitted having sex with Flowers.
Clinton Lie: The Draft
"All I've been asked about by the press are a woman I didn't sleep with and a draft I didn't dodge." - ABC News' Nightline, February 12, 1992. On April 6, 1992, former Clinton friend Cliff Jackson revealed that Clinton had received a draft induction notice in the spring of 1969, correcting months of Clinton claims he "wasn't called."
Clinton Lie: China Missile Program
"When the rip-off artists looted our S&Ls, the President was silent. In a Clinton administration, when people sell their companies and their workers and their country down the river, they'll get called on the carpet." - Clinton's presidential campaign announcement speech, October 1991. Currently, Congress is investigating why the President granted waivers for Loral Corporation to assist China in strategically significant missile launches.
Clinton Lie: The Travel Office
"There is nothing funny going on. We were just trying to save money for everyone." - Clinton on Travelgate, May 28, 1993. In fact, Hillary Clinton and Clinton pal Harry Thomason schemed to fire the Travel Office staff and replace them with Thomason's firm, and then sicced the FBI and IRS on Travel Office chief Billy Dale, accusing him of embezzlement and fraud. After two years of legal battles that exhausted his life savings Dale was cleared by a jury in two hours.
Clinton Lie: Stonewalling
"More rather than less. Sooner rather than later." - Clinton responding to Lewinsky questions, January 22, 1998, almost seven months ago.

"Liberalism not only legitimizes envy, jealousy, ignorance, and the lack of moral standards, but it also makes these attributes virtues." --Drake Raft

Raised Immorality to the Level of a Virtue
What has happened to America's sense of decency and honesty? This country is in desperate trouble when we elect a man we know is an immoral liar and criminal, yet proudly say that character does not matter. Clinton lies, cheats, steals, sleeps around, lies some more, lies about lying, and then smiles. And the American public love him for it.
It is a sad commentary on the American electorate that what once would have been corporately rejected is now accepted. The recent hearings on campaign reform clearly showed that an attitude of "everyone does it" somehow relinquishes one from responsibility. It's that same "everyone does it" mentality that has enabled many Americans to excuse Mr. Clinton's sexual escapades as something that they claim is commonplace.

Legitimized Homosexuality
William Jefferson Clinton has possibly done more to advance homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle than any person in history. He consistently pushed to make homosexuality a protected civil right and redefined our nations "hate laws" to make criminal anyone who disagrees with this deviant lifestyle.

Americans have learned to tolerate what is evil and have redefined that evil to appear good in order to appease their consciences. It's what Senator Moynihan called, "defining deviancy down." When some form of deviant behavior gets out of hand, we simply redefine it as normal and learn to live with it.
Other Americans have either become complacent, skeptical, or are outright ignorant of what is really happening. Most troubling, though, is that many Americans actually agree with what is happening and welcome it. These attitudes are clearly discernible when you read through some of the hate mail I have received.

In The Closing of the American Mind, a New York Times bestseller by a former Yale University professor, Alan Bloom, addresses in broad scale what has been going on culturally in America as a result of postmodern philosophy: There is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get "beyond good and evil" and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore. Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the vary language that exemplifies that condition. The new language is that of value relativism, and it constitutes a change on our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman Paganism. A new language always reflects a new point of view, and the gradual unconscious popularization of new words, or of old words used in new ways, is a sure sign of a profound change in people's articulation of the world.
Perhaps more than anything else, America's cultural decline is evidence of a shift in the public's attitudes and beliefs. A wide shift has begun among the public in the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic character and habits of a society - what the ancient Greeks referred to as its ethos. There is a coarseness, a callousness, a cynicism, a banality and a vulgarity to our time. There are just too many signs of de-civilization - that is, civilization gone rotten. There is the ongoing, chronic crime against children: the crime of making them old before their time. We live in a culture which at times seems almost dedicated to the corruption of the young, to assuring the loss of their innocence before their time.
(William J. Bennett, "America's Cultural Decline Must Be Reversed," AFA Journal, April, 1994).

The leaders we choose are a reflection of the moral fiber of our own country. America has spoken ... and they've chosen evil over good. This is a sad day in America.

What Has Happened to America?
What is wrong with America is not complicated, nor will expensive government programs cure it. Mankind has rejected God and His standards and has deliberately determined to go its own way.
Americans consciences have been so seared that they have begun to "sell their birthright for a bowl of food." Americans no longer know the difference between right and wrong because they have sold themselves to the culture of "diversity." Esau forfeited his birthright to his brother Jacob for the sake of a meal of lentil stew and bread (Gen. 25:29-34) and similarly Americans are selling their birthright for the sake of their pocketbooks. The birthright in Biblical times consisted of the special privileges that belonged to the firstborn male child in a family. Prominent among those privileges was a double portion of the estate as an inheritance. I'm afraid, American Christians are likewise in danger of loosing their privileges and inheritance as they ignore the "higher" law of Scripture in exchange for economic security.
In Exodus 18:21, Jethro, a man of great insight suggests that Moses select competent, trustworthy men to share the load. "But select capable men from all the people - men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain - and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens." Did you get that? "Men who fear God." Friends, we have failed in this wise admonition. Bill Clinton does not fear God, rather he taunts Him and mocks everything good from God.

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, understood the concept when he said that God "has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

George Washington warned that, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." He also said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

Bill Clinton is not fit to be President of the United States because he is clearly not a Godly man. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, he has repeatedly shown his disregard for everything truthful, honorable, good and Christian.

The Scriptures clearly state that "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." (Psalm 33:12). The nation who honors the one true Jehovah God will experience His blessings of protection, provision, peace, and stability. This nation has forsaken God and as a result we can see in our families, our schools, the inner-cities, our government, indeed in all areas of our lives, the removal of Gods blessing.
The crime in our streets, the poverty in the inner-cities, the war zones in our homes and schools will not end until we understand the days we are living. Contrary to liberal propaganda, we don't have an economic problem, we have a problem of our spirit. For probably the last 100 years, we have systematically rejected God and as a result, we are now experiencing the fruit of that sin.
American politics is not any longer about Democrats, Republicans, or Independents ... It's not a fight between the Liberal Left and the Christian Right ... It is about what America is. It's a war of competing ideas and worldviews. It's about Right vs. Wrong. Truth vs. Untruth. It's a conflict over beliefs and values, over the ideas that will rule society. It's about the direction we want this country to go in the future. It's about the world we leave for our children. It's about what god we acknowledge or whether we acknowledge any god at all. It's about the same struggle man has gone through since the beginning of time, the struggle between good and evil.
On one side, you have people who believe in living by a set of divinely inspired moral absolutes - or, at the very least, they believe that following such a moral code represents the best way to avoid chaos and instability. On the other side, you have people who insist that morality is simply a personal decision. Any attempt to enforce it is viewed as oppression. Quite simply, many liberals believe that efforts to adhere to and enforce behavioral rights and wrongs is simply the powerful in society attempting to force their views and judgments on the "victims" of society, rather than what it is: an attempt to maintain the standards that have evolved and survived throughout human civilization and which produce a quality life.
We Americans have spoken ... and apparently God has no place in our lives as we have chosen evil. Sadly, if the so-called "Christian Right" was truly right and if they were influencing this society like biblical Christians, a man like Howard Phillips would have more than only 1% of the vote. Voters have selected their next leader based on "popularity," "personality" or the "media spin" on the issues rather than choosing a candidate because he is "right."
I've heard it said on many occasions, that a vote for a 3rd Party candidate is a wasted vote. I disagree! A vote for a person who doesn't deserve our vote is the wasted vote.
There are those who would say the sexual practices of our President is a private matter and should have no bearing on his being in office. I wonder if they thought that about:
Sen. Robert Packwood, Oregon Republican, who resigned in 1995 rather than being expelled for sexually harassing female staff members.
In 1987, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, told reporters to ignore rumors of his affairs and watch what he did instead. The Miami Herald did and found model Donna Rice, 29, leaving his Capitol Hill townhouse. Pictures appeared of the two cavorting on a boat named Monkey Business. Hart was asked in a televised news conference if he ever committed adultery, a question he declined to answer. He withdrew from the race a short time later.
Rumors of womanizing helped sink John Tower's chance to be defense secretary.
Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in his hearings to be a Supreme Court justice.
Rep. Donald "Buzz" Lukens, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. Mel Reynolds, an Illinois Democrat, were convicted in 1989 and 1995 respectively of having sex with 16-year-old girls.
There are those who would say no one is perfect and Clinton's detractors are being judgmental. Those who make this suggestion want to continue to lower the standards in this country by suggesting that everyone be perfect before they can demand that their president not be a felon. America would be better with fewer people like that. In their warm and fuzzy way they make America worse because they accept what they get and assume they deserve no better.
Well, I deserve better than Bill Clinton and so do you. We now have an admitted though as-yet unconvicted felon as president. Pseudo-religious argument about judging and casting stones are not what this is about. It is not about being sinless before we can come to a rational decision about who we trust with what. It is about whether we will judge the person against the standard or allow the standard to be brought down to the person. I'm not suggesting any resolution about the eternal resting place Bill Clinton's soul, but simply whether he is living up to the expectations--the standard--we have for whoever holds the Office of the President of the United States.

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The Clinton Legacy

Well said, Exactly!