In politics we can define 'good' and 'evil' in terms of fidelity to the Constitution first, our laws and customs second, and our own sense of personal morality last. (The rankings are my own)
Nixon was a bad or evil president b/c he violated the Constitution. The FISA statute was created as a response to the Nixonian ideal that if the president does it, it's legal and thus he could spy on americans without a warrant.
Bush is a bad or evil president for violating the Constitution with his unaccountable and carefree violation of FISA. (and Iraq and torture)
Clinton was bad, not because he violated the Constitution, but b/c he was a cheater who lied about his affair in a court of law.
Of course, those nefarious qualities of each president are juxtaposed with the good qualities.
Nixon is in a different category IMO. Say what you want about Bush, but he was doing what he thought was in the best interests of the country. Nixon was spying to help himself and tried to use the government to punish his enemies. And before you mention Bush, recall that Clinton had his own FBI file-gate scandal.
But on this "good vs. evil" issue, here is what I posted several months back (commentary written during the Clinton presidency):
Maybe "evil one" is just wrong
Robert Reno - Newsday columnist
A caller to C-SPAN this week described President Clinton as "the most evil thing that God ever created."
This carries one step further the theory advanced by conservative political butterfly Arianna Huffington that the president is not "a decent human being." It fits neatly with the thesis of right-wing carnivore Emmett Tyrrell, editor in chief of the American Spectator, who says Clinton is "guilty of more high crimes and misdemeanors than Richard Nixon."
Interestingly, Lewis Lapham, the liberal editor of Harper's, agrees that Clinton is "a deceitful man," but his chief complaint is that the president is basically nothing either exotic or evil but merely "a Republican."
Now, remember, the election is still more than four months away. The more intemperate Clinton-bashers have a serious problem, which is: Where do they go from here?
When you define yourself as running against the Antichrist and four years of Clinton vilification gets Bob Dole no more than maybe 37 percent or 38 percent in the polls, you don't give yourself much room for further development of Clinton as the candidate of the devil.
The Republican problem is that they have so saturated the debate with the idea that Clinton is evil and government is evil that they leave themselves naked to the question of how they have participated so intimately in a political system without being soiled and contaminated by the evil that flows like lava all around them.
And how did the government get so wicked? What party has, after all, held the White House and driven the bureaucracy in 20 of the last 28 years?
It was Oliver Cromwell who, in full generosity to his 17th century adversaries, wailed, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Judge Learned Hand said the Lord Protector's words should be chiseled "over the portals of every church, every school and every courthouse and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States." It's not a bad idea.
Those who would have us believe Dole is Christ's own candidate against wickedness would better spend their time beseeching us to consider whether the Democrats are not evil but merely mistaken -- about gun control, about tobacco interests, about Social Security, about school lunches, about the minimum wage, about women's rights, about aid to education, about Medicare, about government's role as protector of the environment, the consumer and the unfortunate.
Then again, they tried that, didn't they? Maybe playing the devil card is all that's left to them.
Still, it makes for a campaign that is positively heathen in its ugliness and ungodly [in] its savagery, not to mention infantile in its excesses.
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=149392.0
