Real Scandals And Contrived Ones
by Christopher G. Adamo
Had liberal Democrats ever truly wanted to end corruption in government, there were plenty of scandals to be dealt with during the Clinton Presidency. Instead, their selective episodes of outrage and indignation prove them to be the very definition of hypocrisy. Consider the controversy surrounding President Bush's dramatic visit to the Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln. Judging from the reaction of virtually every partisan Democrat with access to a microphone, one might presume that the episode constituted some despicable crime against America.
But the President was merely doing what a Commander in Chief should be doing: bolstering the troops and rallying the citizenry. And an event of this nature will also serve to uplift the morale of personnel on every other ship and at every military installation where it has since been rebroadcast. It's a far cry from those demeaning, Clinton era spectacles in which military professionals were reduced to the status of props, intended only to boost the image of the draft-dodging Chief Executive.
Nevertheless, Democrats and their cohorts in the major media are working tirelessly to create the impression that something was very wrong with the manner in which the President made his appearance, incessantly harping on the issue of cost. However, had spending really been of concern to them, an incident of recent years involving Senator John Glenn should have caught their attention.
In April of 1961, the Soviet Union stunned the world with its announcement that Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had successfully orbited the earth in Vostok I. Within weeks, America launched Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on fifteen-minute sub-orbital missions. But while these feats required tremendous courage on the part of their principals (Grissom nearly lost his life at splashdown), as technological milestones they represented little more than that of a Scud missile.
America did not orbit a human being until Friendship 7, piloted by John Glenn, flew in February of the following year, a space-age achievement only eclipsed by Neil Armstrong's moon landing. But in 1962, it was John Glenn who held the nation spellbound as he completed three full orbits and endured a harrowing re-entry to end the mission with a successful splashdown and recovery. It was John Glenn who rode in the ticker-tape parades and stood as the symbol of America's technological prowess and its resolve to stand toe-to-toe against the Soviets. And it was John Glenn who became an icon to those who gloried in heroics and the American spirit. But that was before he entered politics.
Upon being elected Senator from Ohio, things deteriorated rapidly. Senator Glenn's public persona drifted hopelessly to the left. By the end of his political career, he had degenerated into little more than a Clinton lackey. But it was the iron-fisted obstruction of committee hearings into Clinton's national security breaches that most distinguished Glenn's final months in office, undermining domestic vigilance and accountability to the point of contributing to the nation's vulnerability to attack.
However, for his efforts John Glenn reaped an incredible reward. At the age of 77, he was granted his wish of flying in space on the Shuttle Discovery, ostensibly for medical experimentation involving, of all things, “zero gravity sleep studies”. (Who knows when one may have need of snoring octogenarian stowaways in space?). Although scheduling is absolutely precise for missions of two vehicles that are to dock in orbit, a single vehicle can be scheduled for virtually any time slot. And thus it was for the Discovery, as it rode spectacularly into space… five days before the mid-term elections of 1998.
Eventually, it became obvious that this sorry episode was merely another taxpayer-funded occasion for Bill Clinton's shameless grandstanding as he exulted at the launch that it was a “great day for America and a great day for senior citizens.” He might also have added that it was a great day for the Democrat Party. NASA's announcer dutifully chimed in, describing Discovery at liftoff as carrying “six American heroes and one American legend.”
The following Tuesday, election results came back in favor of the Democrats in a rare mid-term upset, abetted at least to some degree by the prominence of John Glenn on the evening newscasts. Costs to the American people didn't total in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but in untold millions. And just where was Senator Byrd's droning sanctimony, or any intense media scrutiny, back when such responses were clearly warranted, and might have truly benefited the country?
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