At Least Sixty American Newspapers Have Asked The President To Step Down

Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher got a lot of "negative mail" over a story he wrote about how reputable publications were mentioning The "I" Word with regard to Bush's recent admission that he had committed impeachable offenses. Here is Mitchell's response to this negative feedback:

[I]t amazes me when people make fun of the very notion that a president under a dark cloud might be asked to leave office, or given a push, in light of the very recent experience involving one William Jefferson Clinton. This seems especially poignant, in light of President Clinton leaving office with an approval rating over 60%, while the current occupant of the White House sits at around 40%. Then there's the perennial debate over the relative demerits of fooling around with an intern vs. fooling an entire country into going to war based on false evidence (and anything else you'd care to add on top of that).

In any case, while still not taking a position on impeachment, I thought it would be interesting to look back at how the press reacted to the Clinton Crisis of 1998. Did newspaper editorials condemn Clinton for his screwing around, and lying about it, and leave it at that, or did they come out squarely for his exit from office?

What follows, from an Associated Press rundown on September 15, 1998, is a long list of newspapers that "called for President Clinton's resignation." AP added that some of those listed "did so before the release of Kenneth Starr's report on Sept. 11."

Mitchell then lists some 60 newspapers that asked Clinton to step down over the PenisGate Scandal.