January 4, 1999

[Partial transcript]

Dr. Keyes: What's the GOOD NEWS today?

Well, first good news, I come off of a true vacation; that's right. For the last, it must be, what, a week and a half almost, I have actually gone without a second thought of impeachment and Bill Clinton and any of the other stuff, and so I have really good news for all of the Clinton bigots in the audience. All of you folks out there who want us to forget about this and get on with it, do you know what my New Year's resolution is? My New Year's resolution is that we shall not, at all, ever again on the Alan Keyes Show, mention the subject of whether Bill Clinton should be removed from office. (pause) NOT! (laughter) Got you with that one, didn't I? Yes I did. Don't you worry about it.

As a matter of fact, do you want to know what my true New Year's resolve is? I didn't, in fact, look at junk about Bill Clinton impeachment--avoided reading newspapers, tried not to listen to the talking head shows, spent several days getting entirely away from all this junk--and since I live right next door to Washington, that requires some effort, but I managed it. I stored the stuff up, though, and then spent several hours going through some of it, and the vacation period where I hadn't thought about it, giving me a little bit of objectivity. And when I came back to it, fresh, all that I read simply deepened my resolve to make it clear. Any of you out there who may have thought that we shall now get on with something else, I've got news for you. I'm sorry; three hours a day, every day, from now until Bill Clinton is removed from office or the Senate of the United States has inalterably stained itself with the shame of leaving him in office, we will deal with and talk about nothing else on the Alan Keyes Show.

As we were "impeachment central," so we shall be "conviction central" until this is done, because there is nothing more important before this nation right now than the issue of what we do with this corrupt lack of integrity in our political establishment.

And one of the pieces that truly confirmed this in my mind was a piece by Martin Shram--he's a nationally syndicated columnist. It's based, by the way, on a piece that was in the Los Angeles Times by Elizabeth Shogrun and Gene Gertztensang, who are staff writers for the Los Angeles Times. And that one, by the way, of the Los Angeles Times, accessible on the internet on their page. But Martin Shram wrote a good piece about this, so good in fact that I want to share it with you to make sure that you get the full gist of it. Are you ready for this? Here goes. The title of the article "Out of Touch With Reality." And it goes as follows:

"We hold these media truths to be self-evident. The most insightful interviews are the briefest. The most revealing (see also, damaging) questions are also the most obvious. And that's the way it was in the State Dining Room of the White House on Sunday, December 20th, when President Clinton threw a holiday party for some friends and wound up face to face with a journalist. Los Angeles Times correspondent Elizabeth Shogrun, whom the President knows as a working journalist, had been invited as the guest of one of the President's pals. But she had the good sense to remember her career calling. So she asked the obvious, 'How does it feel to be impeached?' 'Not bad,' replied William Jefferson Clinton, the first elected President ever to be impeached by the House. Also impeached was the never elected Andrew Johnson, who had been Abe Lincoln's unpopular vice-president at the time of Lincoln's assassination.

"And 'not bad'? Not bad? This is not something minor or trivial. It is something major, perhaps even serious. It is not just evidence of yet another President who is out of touch, it is evidence of a President who is in dangerous denial. President Clinton, who came to office saying he could feel our pain, apparently can no longer feel his own."

Through the instant news wonders of the internet, Miss Shogrun's story began ricocheting through the power corridors of Washington even before it hit the streets in Los Angeles. And every time the story was repeated, the response was the same. It began with surprise and disgust, then quickly evolved into fury or despair. And that was just from the President's fellow Democrats! Remember, House Democrats had just argued in vain that censure was condemnation so serious and painful that it was punishment aplenty for the lies the President told under oath about his "private sex life." Now, Senate Democrats were arguing that the House impeachment vote was punishment aplenty, and the Senate should vote to censure but not convict and evict.

And here was the President saying, this first ever condemnation by impeachment was, well, really, not bad at all. Just what does he think Democrats working to save his stained presidency are going to be able to do with that? He also went on to say, according to Miss Shogrun's article, that he believes that in ten or twenty years his presidency will be positively judged. He does not think historians will give "undue weight" to his impeachment when they assess his presidency.

Also, bursting with joviality as he partied with his friends in this dark hour of his presidency, Mr. Clinton was reported by Miss Shogrun to have laughed about the fact that porn mag publisher Larry Flynt had become a big influence in this tawdry business of politics and impeachment. It was Mr. Flynt's cash for trash investigation that forced Representative Bob Livingston, Louisiana Republican, to renounce the speakership and say he will resign from Congress. "Clinton regaled his listeners with a description of a letter that Flynt wrote to Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr congratulating Starr for aiding the cause of pornography," Miss Shogrun reported.

Deck the halls! Only from Bill Clinton, ever the jovial holiday host, can we discover the merry side of the impeachment of a President. Unlit by TV lights, he confides to friends that being impeached is "not bad," but if he is told by his advisors or elves that he has not appeared contrite enough, well then turn on the TV lights and he'll do contrition, or he'll perform an apologia for having given in to his shame, even if it turns out he has none to give in to.

In Washington, I have met people who used to serve as President Clinton's top level advisors, who now say privately that if they were in Congress they'd probably vote to impeach their ex-boss and convict him, and remove him from the exalted office in which he is now entitled to sit. There is perhaps just one remaining good case for not reaching for the hook right now. It is made by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democratic elder statesman from New York, "We need to preserve the presidency from future peril of easy, politically motivated impeachment." Unfortunately, that leaves us with no good way out of today's dilemma. We need to save the presidency from a stricken President who may now be truly incapacitated. We cannot ignore the evidence. President Clinton has been stricken politically tone deaf, and mainly irreversibly dumb.

Now, why am I sitting here chuckling about this? I'll tell you why. Because having sat here all these weeks and listened as the Clinton bigots tried to make out, "Oh, he's repentant, he's contrite," and so on--no, he's not contrite in the least little way. And you and I both know it. This is a man without contrition, without shame, without repentance, without decency, without conscience. This is an unprincipled little would-be tyrant, whose only standard is the successful satisfaction of all his lusts and ambitions.

And as long as he is successful, he doesn't care where he gets his help from either. He's perfectly happy to be in the company of Larry Flynt. If any of you are familiar with the things his daughter has written about Flynt and so forth and so on--I mean, this is a guy who may have molested his own daughter? Does it get lower than that? I'm not entirely sure. I can hardly imagine. But Bill Clinton doesn't mind. "Hey, a little help from my friends," he says. After all, since he lives a pornographic life, he probably has great admiration for the purveyors of pornography.

But the truth is that it's a good emblem of the kind of person we're dealing with, and it should remind us of what the Senate will be saying if it leaves him in office. See? It should remind us that he sits in the office that is the pinnacle of our public life, the pinnacle of the political life, the life of the citizen. This is the highest that we can aspire to as free men and women, to be like Bill Clinton. And if the Senate does, in fact, by its action or inaction, confirm that this is the standard that now prevails in American public life, then they will destroy our public life. And I know that there are people who believe that the only things that destroy great nations and civilizations are economic junk and materialistic this'es or thats. I think they are people who are taken in by appearances, and don't look for the reality. The reality is that the battles won or lost were won or lost long time before on the moral battlefields, and Bill Clinton's removal from office is the moral battlefield that will determine the future of this Republic.