(CNN) Vice President Mike Pence once argued the president of the United States should be held to the highest moral standards to determine whether he should resign or be removed from office.

Pence made the argument in two columns in the late 1990s, where he wrote that then-President Bill Clinton's admission of an affair with a White House intern and prior lies to the public about the matter, possibly under oath, meant Clinton should be removed from office.

Yet Pence also moved beyond the specifics of the Clinton case: He made a far-reaching argument about the importance of morality and integrity to the office of the presidency.

Pence wrote the columns in the late 1990s when he was a local Indiana radio host and prominent conservative voice in the state arguing Clinton had lost his moral authority to lead the country. One of the columns , "The Two Schools of Thought on Clinton," was posted on his now-defunct website for his radio talk show. Another column, "Why Clinton Must Resign or Be Impeached," was posted on his congressional campaign website. Both columns were archived by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The columns ran in various Indiana newspapers at the time but did not get national attention.

Dismissing the idea that the president is "just the like the rest of us," Pence wrote, "If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous.

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