Mike Lux - 1998 Work Against President Clinton's Impeachment

1998 Work Against President Clinton's Impeachment

In the late 1990s, Lux joined People For the American Way, a major liberal organization working on constitutional issues and advancing the liberal movement. Once the name Monica Lewinsky began to appear above the fold on every newspaper in the country, he was put right in the middle of the ensuing political battle. He has said that he was "appalled" at what the President had done, but nevertheless also thought the impeachment campaign the Republicans began to wage against the President was a mockery of the Constitution. He and his colleagues at PFAW decided that given their vested interest in both combating the right and protecting the Constitution, they were the perfect organization to step into the middle of the issue.

Lux, along with PFAW and a handful of "Clintonites" such as James Carville, believed it to be politically disadvantageous to ignore the issue, and instead launched an ad campaign with the theme "It's time to move on". These ads were met with hostility from top Democratic Party leaders and consultants. Many of them began to publicly comment on the ads, saying that they were detrimental to the party as a whole, and that supporters should not be donating to PFAW.

Lux and PFAW soon partnered with Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, whose similar internet petition campaign was gaining ground quickly. PFAW along with a group that would become MoveOn.org worked to both rally grassroots groups around the cause and to deliver 500,000 signatures to members of Congress. The campaign was hailed by many as one of the key moments in the efforts to defeat impeachment of the President.

Read more about this topic:  Mike Lux

Famous quotes containing the words work, president and/or clinton:

    A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
    Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)

    The future of America may or may not bring forth a black President, a woman President, a Jewish President, but it most certainly always will have a suburban President. A President whose senses have been defined by the suburbs, where lakes and public baths mutate into back yards and freeways, where walking means driving, where talking means telephoning, where watching means TV, and where living means real, imitation life.
    Arthur Kroker (b. 1945)

    For all the injustices in our past and our present, we have to believe that in the free exchange of ideas, justice will prevail over injustice, tolerance over intolerance and progress over reaction.
    —Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)