President Clinton

Re “Stony Path to Impeachment,” Oct. 31: That Jack Nelson’s comparison of the reaction to Watergate with the response to Kenneth Starr’s charges against President Clinton only mentions Vietnam once and ignores the failure of Richard Nixon’s economic policies is typical of the fallacious, wishful thinking of journalists nostalgic to repeat their most thrilling exercise of power.

Nixon came to be seen as a president whose foreign and domestic policies not only weren’t working, but were increasingly disastrous. Paranoid and defensive, he seemed unable to handle either his own problems or the nation’s. In allowing Nixon’s enemies in the media and Congress to use his mistakes to drive him from office, the public didn’t have to turn on a popular, effective leader.

Journalists who can’t face up to the consequences of the public’s complete loss of trust in them also can’t understand why their fellow Americans are so resistant to the obviously calculated destruction of an extraordinarily beneficial and efficacious presidency. This president’s enemies in the media and Congress would have to bamboozle the public into stupidly allowing them to destroy a gifted leader who has skillfully unleashed our economy by reversing a calamitous plunge into debt, while improving every social problem and successfully promoting world peace.

ROSES PRICHARD

Los Angeles

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I read with interest your Oct. 30 editorial, “Starr-Crossed Spending.” I realize all those who think Starr is an out-of-control prosecutor will take this as proof they were right. It may even swing more people that way, but how do we know this isn’t par for the course? Can we see this compared with other government investigations so we know whether this is something we should be upset over, or is it business as usual?

MAGGIE BLOOM

Carmichael, Calif.

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George McGovern (Commentary, Oct. 30) has it wrong. It is Clinton’s terrible judgment and colossal lack of self-control that make him unfit to remain in office. Everything he has done in the last 10 months is self-involved and an attempt to save his position, disregarding the best interest of the country.

KATHLEEN N. CRAWFORD

Long Beach