Trouble With Bill Clintons Character :: essays research papers

affect With Bill Clintons CharacterIn the article, "The Trouble With Character" from Time pickup , writerRichard Stengel describes Bob Doles attacks on prexy Bill Clintonscharacter during the certify prexyial debate and explains why Dolescriticisms did non affect Clinton.Stengel begins the article by discussing how Ameri lavatory parents do notwant their children to aspire to become President as much as they used to. MostAmericans feel that psyche else should do the job, and this person is nomoralistic model. Stengel says that the peoples negative portrait of thePresident is groundd in the roles the President plays in various movies andnovels.Stengel then discusses the help Presidential debate in which Dole saidthat Clinton "single-handedly pollute the highest office in the land" andis the leading cause of the publics distrust of the government. The focus ofDoles campaign was not Clintons issues, but his moral pertinence. The presswere surprised by the fac t that most people imply that Dole has a snap offcharacter than Clinton, but they still prefer Clinton as President. This notioncomes from the cerebrate that most Americans are only concerned with whether ornot the state and its citizens are taken care of, and so disregard thePresidents moral imperfections which, in the peoples opinion, have very littleto do with the issues. So the President can cheat on his taxes or even his wifeand the Americans will set down it as long as he is getting the job done.Claims such(prenominal) as these lead some to believe that Americans standards ofacceptable moral manner are going down.Stengel mentions examples of different presidents and the issues thatgave them a bad reputation to demonstrate the fact that the peoplesexpectations of the President have fallen. When it comes to politics, Americansare becoming more European that is, they are becoming more and more tolerantof the flaws in their leaders. This is why Doles complaints are ineffect ive inconvincing voters.In my opinion, I think that Stengel is correct in saying that the reasonwhy Doles attacks are not working is voters are not concerned with thePresidents personal shortcomings, but preferably his capability of running thecountry, and the two are not always nearly related. I think that Bob Dole isgoing about the unit issue all wrong, and his tactics are not practical and mayeven backfire. He is trying to make Clinton look bad by insulting his character,but in doing so, Dole is revealing a grass about his own.Take for instance the issue of Clinton and his playful attitude