Potomac Watch
Win a Case, But Lose a Presidency
"I think the president is pleased to receive the vindication he's been
waiting a long time for."
--White House spokesman Mike McCurry
One thing the Clinton presidency never lacks is audacity. Only this White
House could take the wreckage left by the Paula Jones case and call it a
triumph.
Consider the fruits of famous victory:
> an admission under oath by Mr. Clinton that he indeed slept with
Gennifer Flowers, meaning he lied to the country when he denied it
in 1992;
>an admission, by former beauty queen Elizabeth Ward Gracen, that
she was asked by the Clinton campaign in 1992 to lie about her
tryst with Mr. Clinton;
>the revelation of an unusual, to say the least, "relationship" in the
Oval Office with a White House intern barely older than his
daughter;
>tape-recorded statements by that intern, Monica Lewinsky, that the
president suggested she could deny their relationship, and that Mr.
Clinton himself has lied under oath about it;
>the ruin of Hillary Rodham Clinton as a plausible feminist
spokeswoman, given her silence at the many accusations of
harassment against her husband;
>and the assertion of executive privilege, both for White House aides
and for Mrs. Clinton, far broader than even Richard Nixon dared to
claim.
All of these uplifting facts, and many more, have become public record as
the result of Paula Jones's charges. OK, nobody's perfect. But does any of
this sound like something Harry Truman would call "vindication"? Merely
recounting the list shows how much the Jones case has made a shambles
of Mr. Clinton's moral leadership.
And the damage is a long way from done. Judge
Susan Webber Wright's dismissal spares the
president the spectacle of a sex trial next month.
But he may miss the Jones case before his ordeal is
through. By clearing away the fog about sex, Judge
Wright has now forced everyone to confront the
harder legal facts about perjury and witness
tampering.
Sex has been Mr. Clinton's ironic political shield.
Many Americans seem to buy the White House
spin that presidential adultery is a private
matter--even if it's conducted in the Oval Office
study. Americans have also developed a healthy skepticism about sexual
accusations of all kinds. They certainly won't impeach a president for
them.
But Kenneth Starr is building a criminal and not a sex case, as the White
House well knows. That's why it unleashed its spinners so ferociously on
him after the Jones dismissal. Their new strategy is a public-private
whiplash: In public, berate Mr. Starr for taking so long. But in private,
make privilege claims (especially for confidant/fixer Bruce Lindsey) that
will take months to reach the Supreme Court.
That's also a public signal to Ms. Lewinsky and her erratic attorney,
William Ginsburg, that they can delay cooperating too. Mr. Ginsburg
seems willing to jeopardize his client's future rather than have her explain
what's on those tapes. His gamble seems to be that without Ms. Lewinsky,
Mr. Starr has no good case against the president and so won't indict either
one.
But Mr. Starr's case against her seems very strong. What if Mr. Starr
sends his report to Congress, while indicting her and naming the president
an unindicted co-conspirator?
It's true Republicans may not consider that enough to impeach. But
Congress also has other options. Republicans are now considering what
Georgia Rep. John Linder calls "informational hearings" that could let Mr.
Starr make his case in public over several days. The sight of the bookish,
methodical ex-judge laying out evidence of lying would take the public far
away from sex.
Sooner or later, Linda Tripp's tapes will also emerge--and those too will
be educational. "I think the fish has to be out there long enough for the
American people to see how rotten it is," says Mr. Linder, who leads the
House GOP re-election effort this fall. Landing in summer or fall, such
facts might help voters render their own judgment on Mr. Clinton's
behavior this November.
So the president is likely to survive, but at the price of a broad public
disdain for his honesty and ethics. And maybe that's the best way to
perceive his "vindication" in the Jones case.
When Paula Jones first made her charges, I doubted her in this space. I'm
suspicious of late hits and believe in the presumption of innocence. But
nothing she's said has damaged Mr. Clinton more than his own responses
to her. His agents smeared her, his lawyers sought to deny her a day in
court, and he is suspected of obstructing justice.
Now her case has been dismissed--not because a jury found her charges
untrue, but because a judge found they didn't reach the Arkansas legal
standard of a "claim of outrage." What a proud moment in presidential
history.
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