While he was president Bill Clinton lied to the American people on national TV, committed perjury multiple times, suborned perjury and obstructed justice. As the NY Times put it in December 1998: “We believe the evidence presents an ironclad case that he [President Clinton] lied, by plan and repetitiously, while under oath in a civil suit and before a grand jury.” Clinton also slandered the female intern he seduced 10 times as a liar and a stalker. The number and brazenness of Clinton’s lies to the Congress and the public as he sought to avoid the consequences are stunning. His very serious crimes were grounds for his impeachment and did incalculable lasting damage to the country. And he has never said he’s sorry.

Hillary Clinton repeatedly lied and misled the American people over a period of 16 months about her reckless use of personal email devices for purely private gain. She concealed and destroyed thousands of public records. The Director of the FBI found that she had been “extremely careless in her handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” On the night of the

Benghazi attack she told two conflicting stories, the first that the violence was prompted by an anti- Muslim internet video and the second in an email to Chelsea: “An Al Qaeda-like group carried out the attack.” Hillary, like her husband, seems to be congenitally unable to tell the truth and blames others for her carefully orchestrated “mistakes.” In the words of Colin Powell, former Secretary of State: “Clinton’s people have been trying to pin her email scandal on me.”

You can say a lot of things about Paul LePage but not that he’s a premeditated liar; he’s too open and unrehearsed to be an effective liar. Habitual liars mask their mendacity and lie convincingly. His hyperbole, verbal gaffes and political pivots fall into the category of fibs and white lies of no lasting harm. Less forgivable are his unkind words to describe his opponents, immigrants and the disadvantaged. But insensitivity or intemperate language, however callous or uncharitable, is a Grand Canyon moral and legal difference between perjury and jeopardizing national security. LePage broke no law of God or man, his personal life is squeaky clean, his administration is scandal-free and he mitigates his lack of refinement and sophistication with solid achievements.

So who are the winners and the losers in this political bloodsport?

Bill has a library named after him and receives $500,000 speaking fees. The liberal media are in the tank for Hillary to be coronated as our next president — buy one, get one free.

The Clintons enriched themselves from self-described “broke” to a net worth over $100 million.

LePage, an up-from-poverty, blunt-speaking reformer, is diabolized as an inherently “bad” man by a relentlessly hostile press for the unpardonable crime of challenging liberals’ entitlement economics while thumbing his nose at their selective standards for social decorum. His chump-change salary is roughly the same as that of a public school principal and his wife waits on tables.

The reaction of many adults and the liberal media to the respective “lies” of the Clintons and LePage is remarkably similar to that of a child: it’s okay to lie if you can get away with it. A large segment of the public seems to have developed moral calluses to Clintonian amorality and deceit. Compared with the Clintons, LePage is a neophyte in lying competition. No one should expect the Clintons to be suddenly truthful, when lying has brought them power, prestige and wealth. Leopards can’t change their spots.

Walter J. Eno, 
Scarborough