Clinton vs. Bush: Who should resign?

There’s a really interesting article on Editor & Publisher that notes all the newspapers who called on Bill Clinton to resign back in 1998. Now, I don’t remember this — however, I was 15 at the time and so the only thing I really read in the Inky was the sports pages — but apparently our city’s own Inquirer called on President Clinton to resign in 1998.

Now, you don’t have to take sides in the whole conservative/liberal war to see the strangeness here: Obviously, the Inquirer isn’t quite the big fan of our current prez. And if the paper was gutsy enough to tell Clinton he should resign, then you think they’d certainly have told Bush to resign months ago. That, of course, would never happen at this point, with all the accusations of liberal media bias/etc. that would happen if they did.

The Editorial Board has obviously had a huge turnover since then, so it’s not quite comparing apples to apples. But it’s certainly rather funny that the Inky wrote this in 1998, before the Starr Report came out:

Bill Clinton should resign. He should resign because his repeated, reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair.

Of course our current president has done nothing of the sort. (I’m not talking about WMDs/Iraq war/spying on Americans. I’m talking about that thing with the door in China. Now that was an embarassment.)

Newspapers Urge President To Quit [E&P via Eschaton]
Photo by ecb29