EDITORIAL: Building bridges to disillusionment

President Clinton's abuse of power should not go without significant consequence. The approval ratings have yet to register significant negative effects, but throughout the country, people spent the weekend in turn shocked, embarrassed and disappointed by the explicit details of the Starr report. From abroad, political leaders dealing with their own crises hoped that the government of the world's only superpower would quickly regain stability. Some of the British newspapers even called for Clinton's resignation so that the country can move on. At home and overseas, all worried about his continued effectiveness. From our view, we see that our President abused his office, taking advantage of an unfair power relationship with someone of our own age. And then, instead of offering an admission and saving the nation from much embarrassment and division -- not to mention money that went into funding the investigation -- Clinton continued to abuse his position, lying under oath before a grand jury. He has committed an offense that would not be tolerated in someone from any walk of life; an offense that should not go without consequence, whether it be self-imposed in the form of resignation or inflicted upon him by Congress in the form of a censure. And even now, he wants us to learn from his example. At a White House breakfast with religious leaders Friday, Clinton said: "The children of this country can learn in a profound way that integrity is important and selfishness is wrong." What have we learned, Mr. President? Despite the success of your social legislation, despite your revival of service-oriented programs such as AmeriCorps, despite your continued support of education, perhaps your most permanent influence upon us is the development of a distaste for the idea of public service, a diminished respect for politics and a further dissipated trust of political leaders. Whatever the course of events from this point on, we are left wondering, "What happened to the baby boomer candidate who, while on the campaign trail proclaimed the presidential office as his life-long dream and promised a new era of optimism?" Well, his dream came true. And in the process, he destroyed ours.