THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607060014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 44 lines
Washington, D.C., was long known as a city filled with brilliant men and the women that they married when they were young. This has all changed with our leaders in the GOP, the family-values party.
Senator Dole divorced and then remarried - to a much younger and very smart woman. U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, also has a second, much-younger wife. Ditto U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
Such short memories we have. Only one person has ever resigned from the presidency - that great Republican Richard Nixon.
Only one person has ever resigned from the vice presidency - that great Republican Spiro Agnew.
Only two Cabinet officers have ever gone to jail as a result of felonies they committed in office - John Mitchell, U.S. attorney general under President Nixon, and Albert Fall, U.S. secretary of the interior under President Warren Harding, both good Republicans.
Thirty-two people were convicted of felonies and went to jail as a result of the Watergate fiasco.
Can you imagine U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, he who was censured by the Senate for his role in the Webtec scheme, being chairman of a committee investigating alleged breaches of ethics?
Our neighbor to the south, Sen. Jesse Helms, is the worst racist in our government. If he were not so powerful tying up the State Department, he would be a joke.
U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, ran against Harry Truman for president - 48 years ago, for gosh sakes.
President Clinton is no saint. We Americans seem to insist that our presidents and other holders of high office be saints. I guess that we had better start requiring them to be from monastaries or theological seminaries. Even then we would occasionally find a Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggert.
When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, their victory was called a landslide. Not so.
When Canada held its past parliamentary election, the party in power retained two - that's two - seats. That's a landslide.
LAWRENCE M. PUGH
Virginia Beach, June 12, 1996 by CNB