Politics & Power Quote by Charles Ruff

Ruff’s line is a lawyer’s balancing act disguised as empathy: an attempt to launder a scandal through the language of civic accounting. By opening with “We know the pain,” he concedes the obvious damage without dwelling on particulars. The harm is framed as already understood, already processed, almost administrative. “Our society” stretches the circle of injury to the whole nation, but then he quickly narrows it to “his family and his friends,” repositioning the president as a human figure with intimates rather than a public actor accountable to citizens. It’s a subtle pivot from outrage to pity.

The hinge word is “but.” It doesn’t rebut the pain; it reallocates attention. “We know, too” suggests moral maturity, the ability to hold two truths at once, when the real goal is to make the second truth feel like the more grown-up choice. “How much the president has done for this country” is deliberately nonspecific, a fog of achievement meant to swallow the concrete facts of misconduct. Specifics would invite rebuttal; vagueness invites reverence.

Context matters: Charles Ruff served as White House counsel during the Clinton impeachment era, where the rhetorical mission wasn’t to prove innocence as much as to lower the temperature and reframe the story. This sentence aims to convert judgment into fatigue: yes, there was pain, but look at the ledger of governance. It’s not just defense; it’s triage, asking the public to privilege stability and accomplishment over punishment, and to see condemnation as disproportionate, even unpatriotic.