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- <text id=92TT2210>
- <title>
- Oct. 05, 1992: Reviews:Television
- </title>
- <title>
- Oct. 05, 1992: The Whole Truth and Nothing But?
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Oct. 05, 1992 LYING:Everybody's Doin' It (Honest)
- </history>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Oct. 05, 1992 LYING:Everybody's Doin' It (Honest)
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- COVER STORIES, Page 34
- LIES, LIES, LIES
- The Whole Truth and Nothing But?
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Call them lies, call them fudges, all three candidates have
- committed their share
- </p>
- <p> BUSH
- </p>
- <p> 1. Iran-contra. The credibility of Bush's repeated
- insistence that he was "not in the loop" on the
- arms-for-hostages deal has been steadily eroded. Documents
- revealed in early September suggest that despite his claims to
- the contrary, Bush knew in early 1986 of objections to the sale
- by Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar
- Weinberger.
- </p>
- <p> 2. Abortion. Bush regularly declares, "My position on
- abortion hasn't changed." Well, not recently, anyway. Bush
- backed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision when he ran for President
- in 1980, but moved to the right as Vice President under Reagan
- during the 1980s and, in order to curry favor with the G.O.P.
- conservatives, eventually came to oppose the landmark decision.
- </p>
- <p> 3. Clarence Thomas. When he nominated Thomas in July 1991,
- Bush insisted that he was "the best man" to sit on the Supreme
- Court. But even the President's aides admit that a jurist of
- Thomas' modest qualifications would never have been considered
- for the job unless he was a black conservative.
- </p>
- <p> CLINTON
- </p>
- <p> 1. The Draft. Sheer luck combined with a high lottery
- number was how Clinton used to explain sitting out the Vietnam
- War. Charitably put, this answer was stunningly incomplete.
- Only when prodded has Clinton admitted that he schemed to get
- into an ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, though he
- never enrolled. And, oops, Clinton also conveniently forgot that
- he once received a military-induction notice.
- </p>
- <p> 2. Marijuana. He always handled the drug-use question by
- insisting, "I never broke the laws of my country." Only in a
- debate before the New York primary was Clinton pressed on
- whether he had ever used drugs abroad. The answer: a confession
- that he had taken a puff at Oxford, coupled with that now famous
- -- and widely doubted -- exculpatory phrase "I didn't inhale."
- </p>
- <p> 3. The Gulf War. Clinton says that he would have voted for
- the Senate resoluauthorizing the President to go to war, but
- also that he agreed with the minority position "that we should
- give sanctions more time and maybe even explore a full-scale
- embargo." Hawk or dove? Your call.
- </p>
- <p> PEROT
- </p>
- <p> 1. Navy Discharge. Perot, an Annapolis graduate, claims
- that he cut short his Navy hitch because his commanding officer
- wanted him to bend or break shipboard rules. The officer, now
- retired, flatly denies this. Another Perot explanation -- that
- he was shocked to discover that sailors used profane language
- -- belongs in the "didn't inhale" category.
- </p>
- <p> 2. The Self-Made Man. Perot boasted of founding Electronic
- Data Systems with no other resources than the $1,000 put up by
- his wife Margot; later he acknowledged that the figure was
- merely the amount of the Texas registration fee.
- </p>
- <p> 3. July Pullout. When Perot withdrew from the race on July
- 16, he cited the risk that his candidacy might lead to a
- constitutional crisis by causing an electoral-vote deadlock and
- throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Since
- that scenario had been widely discussed for months, Perot's
- tardy reaction to it suggested two other reasons for his
- pullout: 1) the realization that he could not win, and 2) his
- unwillingness to bankroll a full-fledged campaign.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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