Twenty years ago this week _ on Aug. 19, 1998 _ the Orlando Sentinel made national news when it was one of the first major newspapers in America to call for President Bill Clinton's resignation.
The president had been caught lying.
He had butted heads with a special prosecutor.
He generally acted ... well ... un-presidential.
So the editorial board decide that Clinton lacked both "the integrity" and "the decorum" to continue serving as president of the United States.
The stance made national news _ and several other major papers followed the Sentinel's lead in calling for Clinton's resignation.
But the stance also shocked some local conservatives, who were utterly convinced the Sentinel's editorial board always sided with Democrats in the White House.
Those people were, of course, provably wrong. The Sentinel had a long history of backing Republicans.
And I don't mean mostly Republicans. I mean only Republicans in presidential races. The Sentinel's editorial board hadn't endorsed a Democrat for president since 1964.
But facts have never mattered much to hyperpartisans (of either stripe). So conservatives who had been long convinced the Sentinel was part of the "liberal media" heaped praise on the newspaper. Many readers did.
"My prayer is that he (Clinton) resign now and save our nation the further embarrassment of an inevitable impeachment," wrote one reader in the following days.
"I don't know which I am more embarrassed by, or ashamed of," wrote another, "that the man who is the leader of our country is a liar and a cheat or that so much of the American public appears not to care that he is."
The general consensus was that no man who lied and acted undignified should remain in office.
That was the general view ... 20 years ago anyway.
