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Clinton urged to attack his accusers
By Hugo Gurdon in Washington
Meanwhile, has anyone seen the elusive Al Gore?
A DEEP split opened up at the White House yesterday between
presidential advisers arguing that President Clinton can save his job
only by sincere contrition and others insisting that he must go to
war against his accusers in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The President is being urged to sack
Sidney Blumenthal, the official who urged
Hillary Clinton to speak out against the
"vast Right-wing conspiracy" that she
blames for the crisis threatening to bring her
husband's political career to a humiliating
end. Mr Blumenthal, a former journalist, is
known to White House reporters as "Sid
Vicious" for his tendency to vilify the
President's political opponents.
Other advisers in line for the chop are
Rahm Emanuel and Paul Begala, who have orchestrated a smear
campaign against prosecutors and any witnesses with evidence of
presidential wrongdoing. But these "spin warriors" are reported to
be fighting back, urging the President to get his White House "war
room" on highest alert to discredit his enemies. The concept of the
war room as a command centre from which to devise defensive
strategy was pioneered during Mr Clinton's successful 1992
campaign when scandals threatened to destroy his candidacy.
Commentators describe Mr Clinton as having just one chance to
"thread the needle" - he must get it right first time or he is doomed.
Bill Kristol, a former adviser to Vice-President Dan Quayle, said
Americans wanted to avoid resignation or impeachment and even
now would accept a genuinely penitent President. But, to be
believable, Mr Clinton "would have to sack people; he would have
to tell the truth; he would have to apologise; and he would have to
do all that before the Starr report comes out".
Mr Kristol said: "He would have to fire people like Sid Blumenthal.
The President's spokesmen have denied that anyone in the White
House is participating in smear campaigns against members of
Congress [but] it is a fact that Sidney Blumenthal has called the
press to get them to look into congressmen's private lives."
Even George Stephanopoulos, the former aide and "war room"
veteran who, in the 1992 election campaign, threatened to tarnish
those who published details of Mr Clinton's philandering, said the
old tactics had to be scrapped. He said: "I think the old formulas
won't work. He's got to give a full explanation and full apology."
But other influential voices continued to call for Mr Clinton to
resign, arguing that he has no chance of recovering either the
respect of voters or the dignity of his office. Paige Patterson, head
of Mr Clinton's own church, the Southern Baptists, used his pulpit
on Sunday to say the President should leave office "before he is
instrumental in corrupting all our young people". Mr Patterson said
that Americans should not judge Mr Clinton highly merely because
the economy was booming. He said: "This bespeaks a certain
enthralment with materialism, which is exactly what caused the
demise of Rome . . . and it will kill us, too." There are some 15.6
million Southern Baptists in America, and Mr Patterson's voice is
certain to carry weight with them.
Caught between contrition and attack, Mr Clinton is flailing around
for an effective way out. All the time, speculation continues to
circulate that there is at least one other woman, and perhaps two
others, who used to be junior staff members and who could deliver
the coup de grace by coming forward and claiming to have had
sexual liaisons with the President. This week's Time magazine says:
"White House aides themselves cannot answer the question that
most bothers the President's party now: Is there anything - or
anyone - else?"
Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, will
meet the top congressional Democrat, Richard Gephardt,
tomorrow to thrash out how to handle the Starr report, which
could be delivered to Congress as early as this week.
Until Mr Clinton's botched televised confession last month,
Republicans were so wary of politicising the investigation and
Democrats so defensive of the President that neither party worked
out what to do when Mr Starr was ready to report. They are now
debating what powers the House judiciary committee should have,
whether the whole report should be published, or whether only a
summary should go to members of Congress not on the committee.
Last February, Mr Clinton said he would "never" resign, and most
Democrats on Capitol Hill believe that the President may indeed
refuse to go quietly no matter what is in the report. This could
result in only the second impeachment trial in American history.
The only previous impeachment was of President Andrew Johnson
in 1868, and he survived the ordeal when the Senate fell one vote
short of the two-thirds majority required to remove him.
There are, however, many Democrats who still hope to limit Mr
Clinton's punishment to a reprimand or official vote of censure. But
Democrats worry that they could lose control of the procedure -
Republicans might add unacceptably strong language to the
resolution - and then a debate on censure would increase rather
than lessen the momentum of a Congress already hurtling toward
impeachment hearings.
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