Clinton and Character
Events have devised this sorry legacy: Bill Clinton will be recalled, with mocking irony, as the president who introduced the legal wink of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to public policy. It seemed a clever ploy back in 1993, when the new president was dodging intense political cross fire over gays in the military. Gays will not be allowed to serve in the military, Clinton decided. But — – wink! —– we’ll look the other way.
When the president attempts to cover his own behavior with an equivalent version of hypocrisy before the law, it injures all of us and creates a swamp of impossible dilemmas for the nation. Shall we give him an official pass to perjure himself on questions about his sex life? Or is Congress about to impeach a president for mere sexual infidelity? Have our public values been reduced to the contentious word games of criminal-defense lawyers? Or is America conducting a moralistic plebiscite —– thumbs up, thumbs down in the overnight polling?
The dispiriting core of this crisis involves many such questions without satisfying answers. The nation would like to look away but can’t. Clinton could make the distress disappear by resigning, and, if the facts get worse, it might yet come to that. But even resignation would produce a terrible precedent in politics –— an ugly new playbook for how to drive a president from office.
If character failures rose to the level of constitutional principle, Clinton would be a goner. But they don’t (the founders understood our human frailties and designed a government to offset them). The impeachment saga will thunder on, perhaps for months, as blood sport for partisans. But I do not believe that the Starr report convinces us that this president’s wrongs against the republic approach Richard Nixon’s or justify the equivalent of regicide.
If that is so, then why is Washington so inflamed by this scandal? Political fevers always burn more intensely inside the beltway than elsewhere, but this feels different. What’s striking is the anger that has swamped Clinton since his confessional moment. It’s deeper than party lines and includes a surprisingly open contempt from many Democrats —– even some of the president’s old friends. I do not think this is simply about the sex or about nervous politicians seeking cover.
The public may know Bill Clinton the warmhearted and captivating political star —– the comeback kid –— who dazzles with his intellect and emotive powers, but Washington insiders know Clinton better –— or at least in different terms —– than Americans at large, and many harbor a residual distrust of his word and intentions. They have been burned before by Clinton —– seduced by the earnest sincerity, betrayed by the abrupt duplicities. The Starr report reads like a soft-porn potboiler because the lawyers who wrote it stretched for smarmy legalisms to justify every last sigh and ejaculation. But my hunch is that this sordid narrative has a familiar feeling for many who deal with Clinton, including reporters. Not that they had sex in the Oval Office. But they, too, have fallen prey to his charm, been used for short-term political purposes and then been abandoned.
If you have read the prosecutor’s report, you may have sensed an odd coldness about the sexual encounters. Clinton is on the phone with congressmen, chatting about the government shutdown or other issues, while Monica Lewinsky services him. Months later, she’s not sure he knows her name. He arranges coded signals for their trysts – —playing hide-and-seek with the Secret Service and his own staff —– then won’t allow himself an orgasm. Not sure he trusts her yet. Is this even about sex?
Lewinsky says she is in love. The president says she makes him feel young. He observes, insightfully, that she has been hurt by different men but says that he will be her friend. Help her, not hurt her. Then Lewinsky gets canned, abruptly shuffled off to the Pentagon by nervous White House administrators. Clinton breaks off their meetings but says that he will bring her back after the election. During their eleven months without secret encounters, they have phone sex.
Starr’s bizarre recital of facts is so mushily formed that it allows for opposing interpretations of why Clinton actually ended the affair. There is evidence from both Clinton and Lewinsky that he was sincerely struggling to overcome his weakness, trying to correct a personal mistake in an honorable fashion.
On the other hand, the facts also suggest that Clinton got warned about the salacious gossip Lewinsky was babbling to friends and family, awoke to his jeopardy and tried belatedly to cover his tracks. Get her a job, keep her happy so she won’t blab, get her out of town. Lewinsky tries to play hardball, too, a sad little parody of Fatal Attraction. Both of them are needy people.
But unless we learn more facts later, I can’t see that Starr actually proves the case for obstruction of justice, especially since the president’s own motivations seem ambiguous. He wanted to end the relationship months before any threat of Lewinsky’s testifying in the Paula Jones case surfaced. Sure, his defensive actions can be construed as having been designed to silence a witness, but pinning obstruction charges on him requires lots of malign inferences that Lewinsky herself won’t explicitly confirm.
If the Starr report falls short as an indictment, it makes a devastating character study of the president: a man who can be wonderfully warm and empathetic but also ruthlessly cold and deceitful. It doesn’t seem exactly arrogance, since Clinton makes himself easily intimate and vulnerable. Yet one also glimpses how callously he uses people, including his closest staff and long-held friends. He charms the people he needs, then sacrifices them to tactical necessities, then pleads for forgiveness or, at least, a neutral silence. I am not naive about politicians, but I was chilled by a pattern that became visible at the start of his presidency —– how he uses up his own troops when it seems to offer him short-term gain.
Clinton and Character, Page 1 of 2