Nothing But the Truth
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

It's August 18. Yesterday the President of the United States made two performances. First he did a dance for Ken Starr. Then in the evening he put on a show for the American people. The whole thing was rather predictable. I neither waited for the leaks from the Starr testimony, nor watched Clinton's mea somewhat but not a lot and really it's Starr's fault culpa on television. I knew what would happen.

I also had a pretty good idea of what would happen this morning. I flipped from morning show to morning show watching citizens declare that they don't really care about all this, and that we really need to move on. This I also predict. Conservative pundits will be jumping up and down screaming about what a demon the President is. And they will be correct. It is utterly reprehensible that this man should engage in adulterous behavior with an employee, promote her, lie about it in a civil suit, and then go on TV and lie about it to the American people. But friends, that's not news. From the moment Bill explained that he broke no American narcotics laws while a student at Oxford (see, there is no American law that says you can't get high in England) during his first campaign, he has been blowing uninhaled smoke.

Here is the sad news of the day. People really don't care. It is a sad thing that a President would argue that he should be left alone in his immorality because the economy is strong. But it is a tragedy that the majority should buy that nonsense. I can't understand it. The President says, 'I did not have in inappropriate relationship with that woman" and no one believes him. He then says, 'And so what if I did" and everyone gets in line. The sign of the apocalypse, the proof that we live in the last days of a moribund culture is not in the White House, but on Main Street. Remember that this stopped being about the President's private life the minute he told the public, "I didn't do it."

Our cynicism about the truthfulness of the President isn't new. It was in the early 50's that that line was crossed. Gary Powers and his U2 spy plane came down in the Soviet Union. Believing that no one could survive a crash from the U2's altitude, the President denied that we had flown spy planes over Soviet airspace. And then Mr. Powers appeared on Soviet television, alive and well, beside the ruined remains of his spy plane. The lies just continued from there.

The willingness to be lied to by our political leaders is more than a sign that we are not a people that value truth. It is true we don't value truth. But there's more. It reflects a mega-shift in our understanding of the relationship between the government and the governed. When, for instance, one is an employer, what can one demand of one's employee? What would you do with someone who worked for you, and said with a straight face, "I sent that report you asked me to send last week" when the report was sitting on his desk? What if their response to being caught in the lie was, "I did send the report you asked me to send last week. I just didn't send the one you're worried about. There was a second report you asked me to send, and I sent it. No, I didn't send the one that cost us that sale." Such an employee would swiftly become an ex-employee.

Now suppose that you are an employee. Your boss tells you that all is well, that profits are at a record high. The next week the boss lays off ten of your friends, because of financial concerns. Or your boss tells you he has a hunch the pet rocks are due for a comeback and he's putting all the company's assets in the pet rock business. What would you do? There isn't much you can do, is there? He or she is the boss.

So it is with the imperial President. If we citizens saw him as an employee, he'd have been out on his ear a long time ago. He'd be off telling lies somewhere else. We would demand that our political powers would tell us the truth. It's not such a strange concept. At Saint Peter Presbyterian Church we pray sometimes "for those in positions of public trust." That means politicians. They are in positions of public trust. Such people must tell the truth. I'm less concerned that the President lied in the Paula Jones case than I am that he lied on national television. Everyone was wondering, had he done it. He looked straight into the camera, didn't blink and said, "No, I didn't do it."

But we don't see the President as someone who worked for us. We believe that we work for him. We may grumble under our breath about his lies (but never on camera, he could fire us, and the other sheep might call us names.), but we do not demand the truth because we don't believe that we can. They are not civil servants, we are civil subjects. And so the President not only may lie in civil suits, he may also lie to the people.

Oh, we like sheep are behaving like sheep. And as the shepherd coos at us, we bleat with joy. All is well at the sheep farm. Profits are up, ever since they started fleecing the sheep at will. And if the shepherd nicks us, well, all the other sheep say it doesn't really matter, so I suppose it must not. Whether or not he has claws and fur, and sharp teeth, that's not our concern. Whether he dances with wolves is his own private matter.