Public lies and private lives

“Even presidents have private lives”, Bill Clinton told the American people following his statement to the Grand Jury concerning his “inappropriate relationship” with White House staff member Monica Lewinsky.

Perhaps it is due to the constant ugliness of modern media politics, but the public seems to have become desensitised to the anguish of the players in this tawdry tragedy. The president, his wife and daughter do have a private life. It has been invaded. The jokes of the comedians and the salacious details of the media are an unfeeling and often hypocritical attack on a wounded public servant. And we, the voyeurs, are not free of blame.

Privacy is a powerful and important part of God's protective provision of human vulnerability. The delicacy of human sexuality is something in which we should rejoice in the privacy of our own marriage. Even before sin disfigured our relationships, God's pattern was for us to leave father and mother and cleave to our partner. It is a privacy into which others are not invited, for the two have become one flesh. With the arrival of sin, this naked intimacy is compromised. It is marred by sin, and covered by fig leaves, but it still exists.

As Christians, we know all about the effects of sin, of its deceitfulness and hypocrisy, and we should find no joy in the plight of these fellow humans who are tangled in such a dreadful and now a public mess. Bill Clinton has acted like a normal sinful human being. Like many modern politicians, he has used his family in publicity to gain power. Once in this position of power, he has gained sexual favours from a junior employee, young enough to be his daughter. He has abused the trust people placed in him as husband, father, employer and president, and has now compounded his problems by dissembling and misleading.

One cannot help but see the parallels with David, and his handling of the Bathsheba affair. He too did not perceive the seriousness of his error; he too tried to cover it up; he too held the high moral ground, until forced to confess by the public exposure of the prophet. Yet the difference is that David did confess and repent, and bore the consequences of his actions with real grief.

Thus far, Bill Clinton has been an unconvincing penitent. He has been dragged screaming to the point of public apology. And his qualified statements of contrition are a little hard to believe, given how recently he was self-righteously declaring his innocence.

He certainly does not seem to appreciate the magnitude of the damage he has done. Leaving aside the impeachable accusations of perverting the course of justice, and the damage to the other people directly involved in the case, Mr Clinton has damaged the nation and the world.

His behaviour has further eroded the possibility of public trust in government, given his willingness to place self-interest above public good, and to lie about it.

He has undermined the attempts of our society to stop the sexual abuse of the vulnerable by the powerful—a president in his fifties with an intern in her twenties!

He has continued to bring the free world, and therefore Christianity, into disrepute amongst others, especially in the Muslim world. It confirms all their worst stereotypes of the decadent Christian West.

Despite all this, it seems that Mr Clinton (and a majority of the American people) think that the economy's present buoyancy justifies his continuance in power. This only demonstrates the failure of people to understand the importance of principle over materialism, and the significance of Mr Clinton's actions for his nation and the world.

Has the president a private life? Yes, public figures should retain a private life. It will be circumscribed because of their public role. It does affect their public role. Yet there are matters between husband and wife, and between God and individuals, that should not be intruded upon by others.

Unfortunately, Mr Clinton forgot that privacy when he invited Ms Lewinsky into it. He has invaded his own privacy.