NOT A SINGLE RESIGNATION FROM THE SCANDALOUS ADMINISTRATION

Eight years ago this fall, this writer despaired, watching as President George Bush climbed down from the impregnable fortress of Reaganism. Bush had been the first sitting vice president since Martin Van Buren, 150 years earlier, to win the White House, in what the American people understood to be essentially Ronald Reagan's third term. Bush's abandonment of his "Read My Lips: No New Taxes" pledge splintered the mighty Reagan coalition and flatly proved Mr. Bush unworthy of his great predecessor. Recall, also, that during the 1980s the phrase "Reagan Democrats" entered the language. History has recorded no "Bush Democrats," and won't.

As the extent of the betrayal became clear, I agitatedly called a friend in St. Louis whom I knew to have the ear of the administration's premier tax-cutter, one Jack French Kemp. This St. Louis attorney and I had become friends in the short-lived 1988 Kemp-for-president campaign, for which he served as Missouri chairman over loyal foot soldiers such as myself.

"Allen," I told him, "call your buddy Jack and tell him to leave. Resign. Quit. The sooner the better. All the high ground won by Reagan through eight years is being surrendered without a fight.

"We need someone in a high-profile position," I continued, "to quit Bush on principle. It needn't be bitter, or even angry, but rather a British-style resignation in protest against this disastrous budget agreement and its tax hikes. Kemp is the guy. He can say something like, `With all due respect to our current president, whom I wish well, I must depart because this isn't Reaganism, it's an abandonment of it, and I can't in good conscience remain in an administration that would repudiate Reagan's successful economic policies in order to cozy up to the very adversaries who will use this to whip us next time out.'"

It is a matter of historical record that this counsel went unheeded not only by Kemp, but by a Bush administration which, basking in 91 percent approval ratings, soon was resembling a fish flopping around in a rowboat. People as smart as Bush budget director Richard Darman, best friend Jim Baker and Co. didn't need a canary-in-the-mine shaft warning that they were courting disaster. They knew what they were doing. Yeah, right. (For the record, after Bush's defeat his best friend, Jim Baker, responded to a friendly critic who made a similar critique by saying, "You're right. We blew it.")

Now, in the sixth year of the Era of Clinton, the R-word is in the air again. Columnist George Will has bemoaned the lack of a single resignation from any among "the ongoing lie" that is the Clinton administration. And here is how William Kristol, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard, put the matter this week in a piece entitled "Where Are the Resignations?":

"Bill Clinton is not a man of honor. But are there no honorable men around him? Can his staff and his Cabinet be lied to without consequence? Is there nothing that will impel them to depart? They need not become vociferous critics of the president. They need not denounce him. A quiet, principled leave-taking would suffice. But it would be refreshing if one of them refused to be complicit any longer in the ongoing lie that is the Clinton White House. Apparently, not one of them is willing to do that."

As Abraham Lincoln said, "Important principles are and must be inflexible." Some things are worth more than hanging onto public office: Principle. Honor. A reputation for truth-telling. An unwillingness to be used by a shameless liar.

Where are the resignations?

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.