In the article, 'The Trouble With Character' from Time magazine , writer Richard Stengel describes Bob Dole's attacks on President Bill Clinton's character during the second Presidential debate and explains why Dole's criticisms did not affect Clinton.
Stengel begins the article by discussing how American parents do not want their children to aspire to become President as much as they used to. Most Americans feel that someone else should do the job, and this person is no moralistic model. Stengel says that the people's negative portrait of the President is demonstrated in the roles the President plays in various movies and novels.
Stengel then discusses the second Presidential debate in which Dole said that Clinton 'single-handedly contaminated the highest office in the land' and is the leading cause of the public's distrust of the government. The focus of Dole's campaign was not Clinton's issues, but his moral pertinence. The press were surprised by the fact that most people think that Dole has a better character than Clinton, but they still prefer Clinton as President.
English: Official White House photo of President B...
Election results by county. Bill Clinton Bob Dole
US President Bill Clinton (center with hand up), f...This notion comes from the reasoning that most Americans are only concerned with whether or not the country and its citizens are taken care of, and so disregard the President's moral imperfections which, in the people's opinion, have very little to do with the issues. So the President can cheat on his taxes or even his wife and the Americans will overlook it as long as he is getting the job done. Claims such as these lead some to believe that Americans' standards of acceptable moral behavior are going down.
Stengel mentions examples of different presidents and the issues that gave them a bad reputation to demonstrate the fact that the people's expectations of the President have fallen. When it comes to...
Clinton
The only reason Clinton was elected is because people were mislead by the media. Very few news medias get the facts straight, an extremely low ammount. I do not believe Clinton was a great president as so many of you mislead people think, his views and morals were a definite wrong, his leadership skills were awful, and his decisions, weren't made to help the American people, just to disceive them and make himself more the "hero." He was an extremely selfish person. He thought of himself before the country. He didn't make decisions based on how they're going to help or make worse America, but how they were going to affect his political career, and his public outlook.
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