BILL CLINTON: AMERICAN CALIGULA
By PEGGY NOONAN
For seven months I have kept on my desk a picture from a tabloid. It is of
two close friends of President Clinton, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and
the actress Markie Post. They are laughing and holding hands in joyous
union as they jump up and down at where fate has put them down. It had
put them in the Lincoln bedroom. They were jumping up and down on
Lincoln's bed.
It seemed to me emblematic of the Clinton
White House, a place where opponents' FBI
files were read aloud over pizza and foreign
contributors with cash invited in the back door.
I thought: Something's wrong with these
people, they lack thought and dignity. But most
of all they seemed to lack respect, a sense of
awe -- not the awe that can cripple you with a
false sense of your smallness but the awe that
makes you bigger, that makes you reach higher as if in tribute to some
unseen greatness around you.
That, it seemed to me last week, as the president spoke each day and the
Starr report was published -- that was Mr. Clinton's problem, his real sin --
a fundamental lack of respect for his country, for its citizens, for his
colleagues, for all of us. The pollsters have it wrong when, seeking to
determine whether he can continue to govern, they ask, "Do you respect the
president?" The real question is, "Do you think he has any respect for us?"
'We Must Win'
I think he showed with a chilling finality last week that he does not. I believe
he demonstrated that people and principles are, to him, objects to be
manipulated. You can tell preachers you cherish scripture, tell Monica you
cherish her, it doesn't matter. The object, as Dick Morris says the president
told him, is to "win."
Never, in all of last week, did he explain why he put the country through
eight terrible months of dissension and distraction, when he easily could
have spared it the trauma (and spared his career too). Never did he explain
why he sent his media generals out every day to lie for him with conviction,
and to slime his opponents. It was telling that when he spoke to the
evangelicals he said some people needed apologizing to, and that first, and
"most important," was his family. What followed was a litany of his friends
and his staff. His country came in dead last in the litany, as it has in his
actions.
In the report and in his comments it was clear that the most important thing
to Bill Clinton is, now and always, Bill Clinton. But what was amazing is that
he seemed last week to think that we feel that way too.
And so he spoke of the scandal as his "journey." He said it has helped him
grow. He said it may make him stronger. He said it has been an exhausting
week for him. He said this has been the most difficult time of his life. But
then, as if to comfort us in our concern, he offered context: It may turn out
to be the most valuable, too.
He noted that his drama may make American families stronger. He said it
provides an opportunity for healing. He spoke moistly, glisteningly of the
early days of his first presidential run "when nobody but my mother ...
thought I had a chance of being elected." He talked of a little boy who told
him "he wanted to be a president just like me." The boy was "husky, like I
was," the president said moistly, glisteningly.
He compared himself to Mark McGwire. Would you want Mr. McGwire
to give up now, he asked? But Mr. McGwire is a champion because he has
shown himself the past 10 days to be what is now an amazing thing, a
celebrity who is a good man. This is the exact opposite of what Mr. Clinton
has shown. The weird solipsism, the over-the-top self-dramatizing
continued in the Starr report. There Mr. Clinton was not Mark McGwire
but, as he told Sidney Blumenthal, a "character in a novel," a victim of a
sinister force weaving a web of lies about Monica Lewinsky and him. He
compared himself to the hero of "Darkness at Noon."
He told evangelical ministers at a prayer breakfast that he had reached "the
rock bottom truth of where I am." He said he has "sinned." He bit his lip,
lowered his moist eyes, and said his "spirit is broken." He then went on to a
raucous awards dinner where he laughed gaily, waved and announced,
"Hillary and I have been ... just lapping this up!"
For all he seemed to be, in Flannery O'Connor's phrase, a pious conniver.
As he spoke to the evangelicals, I was reminded of his great learning
experience in 1980, after he lost his re-election race for the governorship.
Knowing the people of Arkansas had come to see him as different, as too
liberal and too Yale, he immediately went out and joined the only local
church choir that sang on TV every Sunday morning. People liked it. He
manipulated them for gain, to win. And in 1982 he won.
The problem is not that he is an actor. As an actor he puts not only Ronald
Reagan to shame, but Laurence Olivier. The problem is that he thinks
people will believe anything, that if he says a thing it is true. He absorbs his
lies, and becomes them. The country suffers for this.
Mr. Clinton seems -- and this is an amazing thing to say about a president --
to lack a sense of patriotism, a love of country, a protectiveness toward her.
He dupes the secretary of state, who must be America's credible voice in
the world, into lying for him to the public and press. He fears his phone is
being tapped by foreign agents, opening him to international blackmail. But
he does not discontinue phone sex. Instead he comes up with a cover story.
He tells Ms. Lewinsky they can say they knew they were being bugged, and
it was just a "put on." He sends the first lady to go on television, where she
denies the Lewinsky charges and says, "This is a battle... some folk are
going to have a lot to answer for."
It is similarly amazing to say of an American president that he is decadent --
an Ozarks Caligula, as a placard he passed last week put it. While being
sexually serviced he keeps the door ajar so his secretary can alert him to
calls; while taking one from a congressman he unzips his pants and exposes
himself so he can receive oral sex. He masturbates in front of his young
lover in the bathroom near his study, and in a staff member's office. When
Ms. Lewinsky asks him about rumors that he'd attempted to molest
Kathleen Willey, he is indignant: He would never approach a woman with
small breasts. When the Lewinsky story breaks, he asks a pollster, a man
newly famous for letting a prostitute listen in while he advised the president
on strategy, if he should tell the truth. The pollster tells him no. The president
responds, "Well, we just have to win then."
It is interesting, by the way, that of the self-described hundreds and
hundreds of women Bill Clinton has been involved with, it is Ms. Lewinsky
who has done the most damage. The reason I think is that in picking her he
made a crucial mistake: He chose someone much like himself. She
describes herself as insecure as she makes demands. She learned to
manipulate in this manner through the culture of therapy. Her wants are
justified because she is, after all, burdened with fears, and can be comforted
only by the meeting of her demands. He picked someone with as grand a
sense of entitlement as his own. At the end of the affair she demands that he
feel contrition; she also demands a job with these words: "I don't want to
have to work for this position... . I just want it to be given to me."
And he picked someone who is, like himself, an exhibitionist. It never
occurred to Ms. Lewinsky to be discreet about their affair, not to tell a
dozen friends and family about the cigar, the nicknames. But then discretion
has never really occurred to him, either. That's how we know about so
many of his affairs. He always leaves a trail, an open door. He wants us to
know.
I once saw the president in one of those big Washington hotel dinners a few
years ago shortly after he talked about his underwear on TV. He was in full
self-deprecating mode, teasing himself for his mistake. But he went on a
little too long; he talked too much about it, and the crowd seemed to be
thinking what I was: Doesn't he know that as he stands up there going on
and on about his shorts we are starting to imagine him in his shorts? The
poor man doesn't know. And then I thought: Yes he does! He wants us to
imagine him like that. And he has lived out his presidency so we can.
Caligula made his horse a senator; Mr. Clinton made his whoring a
centerpiece. Both did so because they lacked respect and concern for
anything but themselves. Ancient times could tolerate its Caligula, but Mr.
Clinton is, quaint phrase, the most powerful man in the world, the leader of
the free world, the chief executive of the United States, commander of our
armed forces, the man who one day may be forced by history to unleash a
nuclear missile. It is not tolerable that such a person be in such a position,
and have such power.
Not Good Enough
Jesse Jackson once said, "God isn't finished with me yet," and it was
beautiful because it was true. God isn't finished with any of us. Maybe he
will raise up Bill Clinton and make him a saint, a great one. Maybe he will
make Bill Clinton's life an example of stunning redemption. But for now, and
now is what we have, Bill Clinton is not wise enough, mature enough, stable
enough -- he is not good enough -- to be the American president.
In the therapeutic language he favors, an intervention would seem to be in
order. That would be impeachment, for the high crime and misdemeanor of
having no respect for his office, for his country, and for its people.
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