Believe it or not, there was once a time when there were no such things as polls, other than elections. There was also a time when honor, a work ethic, and integrity were the most important values in American life. The work ethic still survives today, but honor and integrity have been given a far too early burial by the denizens of Washington.

Let's start our historical foray with a specific date: July 4, 1826. The fiftieth anniversary of the reading of the Declaration of Independence, or the Jubilee Celebration of Liberty, as the day was called by Americans at that time. The last two surviving framers of that document, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, died within five hours of each other on that day. Neither had been expected to survive to see it. Jefferson died fifty years *to the hour* after the reading of that great document. That day in 1826 was (and still is) seen as the final blessing of the American system of government by God or whatever higher authority there may be, the feeling that a country created by men of this caliber could not fail. It was a fitting and graceful end to the lives of two of the most influential and honorable men in the nation's history, and two of the five or six greatest Americans ever (I number George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Martin Luther King in that short list). These six men are the standard that citizens of our country should aspire toward. Without exception, in times of peace and in those of great personal danger, they looked inside themselves and found the strength not only to fight for what they thought was right, but to make others see the light, forcibly at times, and always with the perception of the big picture that fanatics tend to miss.

This is not to say that there aren't other great Americans, or to take away from what those people have done; I could come up with a list as long as my arm in no time. But I don't think there is any American who has had as much an influence on national affairs and on American society as these six men. Washington was the original 'hero of the people,' being the one who basically introduced the idea of guerrilla warfare into the lexicon of military tactics and rallied a ragtag bunch of misfits to defeat the better armed, trained, and supplied British army, as well as helping to define the Presidency, and was much loved by the people. John Adams' long list of accomplishments in government may not be as flashy, but was equally as important in the birth and maintenance of the fledgling American state. Abraham Lincoln began the long and arduous process of ending slavery which Martin Luther King brought into focus for the modern day, at the cost of both of their lives and the (until very recently) irreconcilable division of the American people. Little need be said about the contributions of Benjamin Franklin in many spheres of knowledge, including but not limited to politics, diplomacy, physics, and journalism (the type of journalism which informs rather than polarizes by self-promotion).

Yet, of all of these, and all other Americans who have contributed to the survival and/or prosperity of the American state, none can compare to the accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration of Independence (with later modifications by its other framers, of course, but the language used is primarily his). As a patriot in the time of the Revolutionary War, as an opinion maker during the crucial formative years of the United States, as President and as a private citizen after his term of office, he helped guide American political affairs with his clear vision of the needs of the Republic. He authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and was much involved in the political affairs of his home state. He penned treatises on philosophy and government which helped form the Union in the first place. He founded and helped build the University of Virginia. Somehow he also found the time to be an architect, a loving father and husband, and in general an honorable and great man. His social skills, nobility, and pure heart made him without doubt the best-loved man in American history.

There is an example of this love which illustrates its potency and universality in the society of the day. As Jefferson grew older, while he was fashioning his last great work, the University of Virginia, he fell upon hard financial times, so much so that he proposed a lottery for his estate, Monticello, along with all of his land holdings, barring only one piece of land which had been hereditarily his wife's and which he had no power to sell by the laws of the day. An act of the Virginia legislature was passed allowing him to declare this lottery.

As soon as it became public knowledge that Jefferson was in dire straits, the American people rose up to his aid in gratitude for his many accomplishments on America's behalf. The Louisiana state legislature (for which state Jefferson had personally fought for inclusion in the Union) passed an act appropriating $10,000 to be 'placed at his disposal' in 1826. According to one of my sources on Jefferson's life, 'Life of Thomas Jefferson' by B.L. Rayner (written in 1834, by a contemporary of Jefferson's, and which can be accessed in full with revisions and editing by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr. at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1683/ljindex.htm , it was believed the state of South Carolina had done the same. As Rayner says in section 39 of that work, "public meetings were called in all the considerable cities of the union at which feeling and high-spirited resolutions were passed and subscriptions opened which were as suddenly filled with contributions to the relief of the suffering apostle of human liberty." Jefferson died before he derived much benefit from that support, though.

Now here is the most unique aspect of the high regard in which he was esteemed. During this time when people felt the desire to aid Jefferson, much was made of the necessity for care in presenting these funds to him: "Various schemes were proposed in different places in all of which the leading object appeared to be how to bestow their bounty so as to give least pain to the delicacy of his feelings." (Same source, section 39.)

This was a man who had the strength of his convictions, an animated and giving personality, the grace of nobility (and probably a strong understanding and application of the term 'noblesse oblige,' even though technically there was no such thing as a noble class in those days, or in these), an apt intelligence, and a knack for public speaking, writing, mediation and compromise. He was a protector of the common man's rights, in a time when it was fashionable for the landowning class, even in America, to look down on almost everyone else as inferior beings. He steered a steady and indefatigable course through the turbulent waters of the times, helping to reconcile hundreds of thousands of disparate voices into the single, far more powerful voice of a unified nation. His writings are still used as primers on politics and democratic (little d, not big D) philosophy. He was a clear voice of sanity in the roiling and energetic period during and after the Revolutionary War. He helped provide direction where there had been none.

He was, by all accounts, even including those of most of his political opponents (who would have had something to gain from his resignation), a great and honorable man. This is not to say he did not have his foibles; some current historical theories, based on allegations made during his Presidency, have it that he fathered one or more illegitimate children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, possibly while married to his wife. DNA testing has not disproven that contention completely, but it has shown that such a conclusion is highly unlikely, and is generally accepted to have disproven that Hemings' first child could even possibly be Jefferson's. It was Jefferson's return from Paris with Sally pregnant with that child, Thomas Woodson, whom she obviously named after Jefferson, which first raised eyebrows and eventually fostered the allegations against Jefferson. According to the DNA testing, Thomas could not possibly have been Jefferson's son, no matter how much Sally might have a stake in Jefferson being named the father. There is an appendix at the link I previously provided which details the background on this issue. Still, even if the allegations of the time and those historical theories were true, his accomplishments far outweighed his faults, and, as he said on his deathbed, "I have done for my country and for all mankind all that I could do, and I now resign my soul without fear to my God, my daughter to my country." (same source, same section) No one could ever have spoken truer words.

Now, let us turn to recent history. Let's look at another President, one that has spent a good part of his time in office parsing words, lying, trying to cover up those lies while at the same time maintaining the appearance of deniability, and running frenetically back and forth trying to impress the American people, whose trust he has lost by his own hand and words, with fleeting promises that quickly turn out to be nothing more than publicity stunts. He claims responsibility for an upturn in the economy which not only may be cyclical, but even if it were not should still be laid primarily at the feet of Reagan and Bush rather than Clinton, given the slow, long-term development of that trend. He claims responsibility for something which was started in the Reagan administration by Republicans (remember the Balanced Budget Amendment that, though it failed in its path toward amending the Constitution, started all of the groundswell toward the end of having a government whose income equalled its outlays? Not many Democrats seem to). He is a shell of a President, who has continuously paid lip service to family values while participating in what sounds like at least 20 years of cheating on his wife and claiming that he smoked marijuana but never inhaled. Who knows? Maybe he and Hillary have some sort of agreement whereby he can play around all he wants, and if so, that's fine. But the point here is not that he took part in some kind of illicit relationship with Lewinsky, which we now have had detailed all too clearly; it is his reaction to the whole thing, and his continuing and apparent lack of concern for the impeachment process. Let's not forget about the celebration he threw almost immediately following his impeachment. What was that supposed to demonstrate? If it was that things were business as usual, why didn't he just play the part of the diligent President, rather than plainly flaunting the decision of the House of Representatives?

He is known in Washington circles as a man whose promises cannot be trusted; that reputation has been with him for years, long before Tailgate became public. He is an attorney and a politician, both of which professions have fallen into disrepute, and proves his predilection for self-defense over that of the country he is supposed to be protecting almost daily. What great work has he accomplished? Granted, he definitely stands on the backs of those who legitimately began the quest for a balanced budget, but is apparently unable to see them and has never once given them an iota of credit for it. What can he legitimately claim that he has done that is anywhere near on a par with his great predecessors, especially Jefferson? How much damage has he already caused to the American systems of government and justice, not to mention to the office of the President and the American public?

I get the feeling that, if it was made clear to Jefferson that he would have no more real power as an opinion maker, he would have stepped down from the Presidency because he would not have wanted to so weaken the American system of government or to cause the kind of strife that is extant in the current time, especially in the volatile environment of early America. He probably would then have gone on to continue his great accomplishments, though they might have been lessened by that scandal. And I am convinced that he would have recaptured the trust of the people because he was, at heart, the greatest of men no matter how many women he slept with while married, and tried to conduct himself with honor in all things. He most certainly would not have attacked his accusers for being caught in an adulterous relationship, or required others to lie for him, or given the impression that he was innocent when he knew all along that he was not. Nor do I think he would have tried to parse words the way that Clinton has, or run around to every troubled spot in the world, not to foster peace, but solely to garner support at home. And he certainly wouldn't declare war on another state with the cynical intent of diverting attention from his own political troubles.

As a matter of fact, on the scandal of the day accusing Jefferson of adultery, he maintained total silence. He didn't have a bunch of talking heads able to influence national opinion almost instantly holding pep rallies for him, and he didn't have a bunch of lawyers working for him to defend against such accusations. If the accusations were indeed true (at least in the fact that he had committed adultery, whether he had fathered illegitimate children or not), it is very likely that he felt that America could not afford or even survive a scandal at this level, and so decided to lay low until the accusations blew over, which they eventually did. If the accusations were false, then he had nothing to gain by defending himself unnecessarily; the more vigorously he did so, the more people would tend to believe the accusations. Which is yet another one of Clinton's problems.

I hear already the moral relativists' cries, that Jefferson's times were far different than today. To that, I say, you're absolutely right. Jefferson had more at stake during his time in the national spotlight than does William Jefferson Clinton. He had a fledgling nation to protect, not a superpower that, by most accounts, will roll on undaunted (economically, anyway) after the end of Clinton's presidency, whether it be this year or in 2001. It was a nation that Jefferson had the greatest part in creating, and he would have put the needs of the many before those of the few. He also had a humility that Clinton will never even be able to touch.

So finally, as the title of this piece states, there is absolutely no comparison between Jefferson and anyone else in the history of the United States, let alone the self-protecting, self-aggrandizing, self-centered man who daily reduces the integrity and ability to govern normally imparted to the Office of the President. He doesn't even have the decency to step down. His claim to fighting for the right (not the conservative right, but truth and justice) is ludicrous and fallacious on its face. I don't think Clinton would know the truth if it stepped up and slapped him. I think he's a pathological liar of epic proportions, to match his ego. He's lost in a morass of linguistic and ethical gymnastics, and he's already dug himself so deep that he'll never get himself out of his personal hole again. He has cost both major political parties so much that the two-party system may be dead already. Maybe Ross Perot's party and other, smaller factions are the wave of the future, and the death knell has sounded for both the Republican and Democratic parties. My only problems with that are that Republicans have been unjustly accused of partisanship and attempting solely to gain advantage from the impeachment process when, in the main, they are apparently the last bastion of protection for the Constitution, and that Democrats are so plainly trying to gain every advantage they can to the cost of Republicans, and lying or warping the truth so obviously.

- The Watcher (Will propaganda win out over truth? Stay tuned...)