Thanks to its habitual viewing of Chris Matthews's Hardball, THE SCRAPBOOK was under the impression that it had become well acquainted with every harsh Democratic critic of Bill Clinton in America -- all three of them (former congressmen Ben Jones and Paul McHale, and Carter pollster Pat Caddell). But a few choice words in the New York Times from the onetime Friend-of-Bill novelist Pat Conroy ( The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini) sent us to the Nexis database and a remarkable 2,000-word essay by Conroy last month in the Charleston, S. C., Post and Courier. It was mainly a tribute to Conroy's alma mater, The Citadel, with which he has famously had a love-hate relationship, and for whose disciplines the Clinton travails seem to have given him a renewed appreciation. A sample:
"As South Carolina knows, I am a white Southern liberal of the knee-jerk variety, and I thought that Bill Clinton represented the best of my breed.
"I was wrong. I was terribly, terribly wrong.
"Because of my Citadel education, I cannot accept a president so comfortable with lies, half-truths and evasions. This year has been agony for me as I watched the politician I admired the most putresce before my eyes. Because of the Honor Code, I believed the president about Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Monica Lewinsky. I bought the whole package not because I am naive, but because I am a Citadel man and cut my teeth in a military society where our word was our bond and where our trust in each other in the barracks was such that it was against the rules to lock our doors.
"I learned lessons at The Citadel that my president did not learn at Georgetown University, Oxford University, or Yale Law School. Until this year, it never occurred to me I received a much finer education than Bill Clinton. He knows little about honor, responsibility and character. The Corps of Cadets at The Citadel is the best place in the country to learn all you need to know about them."