A Brilliant Analysis and Summation from The National Review:
Warning: Lengthy Post
Warning to "Tuesdays With Lorrie" Cooey... This contains sensisble analysis and thorough reasoning -- best you skip it, lest it clutter the rat's thimble above your neck...
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The Comeback Kid, Indeed
How Clinton is winning
by Jay Nordlinger
Mr. Nordlinger is NR's managing editor.
February 7, 2000
It has now been a year since President Clinton was acquitted by the Senate?only a year. Never has one year seemed more like ten, or twenty. The impeachment drama has acquired some of the antiqueness of, say, the Mayaguez incident. Rep. John Kasich said recently that he had never seen an issue once so important "that crosses our minds less." Another Ohio congressman, Ted Strickland, said, "It almost seems unreal that it ever happened. It seems irrelevant at this point."
Clinton has been a busy beaver since February 1999, when his party held strong for him in the Senate: He has fought in the Balkans, completed many successful photo-ops, and engaged in the vital business of legacy-shaping. Is he winning? That is, is he winning the battle (it is more like a war) to interpret the Year of Monica?sex with an intern, perjury, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, censure by a federal judge (accompanied by a $90,000 fine), an $850,000 payoff to a much-ridiculed sexual-harassment plaintiff, impeachment, and all that? There is evidence that he is, indeed, winning?which should surprise no one who is a true student of either this politician or the present age.
Throughout that wild year of 1998, many analysts said that, no matter what happened, Clinton would be besmirched?there would be no washing out the stains of his misdeeds. If no official action were taken, he would still be sullied. If he were censured by the House or Senate, that would be even worse. If he were impeached?impeached, of all things!?that would be catastrophic, regardless of what the Senate did later. The first line of his obituary or encyclopedia entry would relate that he was only the second president in history to be impeached. He would be consigned to the lowest of the low.
Others, however, more wary, warned that Clinton would have to be forced from office if the seriousness and magnitude of his misconduct were to be recognized. If he survived?even by the skin of his teeth?he would end up winning. Anything short of an abject helicopter liftoff from the South Lawn would mean victory for him. What with his remarkable skills, and the national temper, he would crawl back, then run, preen, and cavort.
Some conservatives have found comfort in a recent poll showing that the number of Americans supporting impeachment has risen from 35 percent (at the time of the act) to 50 percent. These same conservatives are likely to point out that George W. Bush is ahead of Vice President Gore in national surveys, a fact that some attribute to lingering resentment of the president. Yet these bits provide only mild relief in the face of other indications that Clinton, who has patience, for one virtue, is gaining ground in the struggle for his reputation. These indications are political, cultural, and somewhat psychological. Taken together, they suggest that the old escape artist is set to slip the noose once again.
For starters, Clinton is back among the press. Granted, he speaks only to the friendly press (Larry King, Carole Simpson of ABC, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek), but he is doing it, and doing it with?to use an oxymoron made for Clinton?brazen finesse. He is even giving proper press conferences, without foreign leaders at his side to serve as crutches. After the last such one, Newsweek, speaking for the rest of the major media, said that the session had shown "why, for all his sleaze, we?ll miss the big guy."
Conservatives like to joke that Gore, on the stump, hardly ever mentions Clinton?s name?but neither do the Republican candidates, which is curious, given that they have an opportunity to run against an administration that is based to a large degree on lies. Only Orrin Hatch refers regularly, or with any heat, to the presidency that we have experienced for seven years.
Monica Lewinsky, far from disgrace, chats gaily with a gentle and avuncular Larry King. She is all slimmed down, and bringing in the money. She is invited by professors to address constitutional-law classes, where she discourses on privacy. Kenneth Starr and Linda Tripp, meanwhile, are possibly the most hated individuals in the country. Starr goes on his own round of interviews, pathetic. He now says that he should not have taken up the Lewinsky matter in the first place. He pleads with Clinton to "get right with the law." He alludes to the events of 1998 as "the recent unpleasantness," in the manner of other Americans, over a hundred years ago, who also had lost a war. As for poor Tripp, she has sought refuge in the plastic surgeon?s knife, and is one of the few players in this tragedy to continue to face real legal jeopardy. The contempt that is poured on her every day, particularly with regard to her looks, is breathtaking?in this supposedly feminist age.
And what of the president?s men? They are, for the most part, smelling like roses. Mike McCurry has been hired as a political analyst by CNN, his reward, evidently, for his role in thwarting the press and killing trust in government. He labored night and day to mislead, bully, and block the press; now he is welcomed into its very bosom. The Washington media?s soft spot for this shifty flack is a mystery. Lanny Davis, another of the type, is now a lobbyist about the capital. Paul Begala, too, is in clover, as a personality for MSNBC. James Carville, as always, fairly rules the airwaves, treated as a colorful original instead of a poisonous snake. Ann Lewis will likely get nice media work when she leaves the White House, although her hypocrisy in the Anita Hill and Kathleen Willey cases?to take only one example of her jaw-dropping inconsistency?would drive any normal person to a distant cave, for reflection and atonement.
Think, too, of Kenneth Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman who handed classified information from Tripp?s national-security file to a Clinton-friendly reporter, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker?a clear illegality of the sort that Charles Colson, in a different time and under a different president, went to jail for. Bacon is still at his podium, unchastened and, presumably, uninvestigated. The department?s inspector general promised a report on the matter by?get this?July 9, 1998. Needless to say, there will never be any report. The Pentagon must know the simple truth that no one cares.
Finally, consider a recent, fawning, morally vacant profile of James Kennedy, appearing in the New York Times. Kennedy is another Clinton scandal spinner, and the Times allowed him to spin at length, unchecked. About the denouement of the Lewinsky affair, he said, "We were looking over the edge into some sort of abyss, and it caused the body politic to take a step back and catch our breath. It was ultimately a cathartic moment." The paper?s reporter, John M. Broder, described this diligent stonewaller as "laconic" (a designation that Nixon?s surviving men must envy). He was, according to Broder, merely "an accidental tourist in the realm of scandal spin," never dreaming that he would be "inundated with questions on his boss?s truthfulness and sexual behavior." Sounding a common refrain, Kennedy said, "I don?t think I was ever called upon to defend what happened. What we did was defend the presidency and the people?s choice in the last election." Has he learned anything? Yes: that "no good comes of the politics of scandal and in vestigation."
CLINTON UNTOUCHED
Elsewhere, Clinton and his legions are pretty much left alone. Juanita Broaddrick, the Arkansas woman who has alleged?with chilling credibility?that Clinton raped her in 1978, is a figure we all turn away from, shuddering. No journalist has ever asked Clinton to address the subject, except once, obliquely: The president declined to comment?even to deny the charge! Gore, campaigning in New Hampshire, was asked about Broaddrick by an ordinary citizen, and he gave a rambling, tortured answer. Only one television network?the humble Fox?highlighted Gore?s remarks. William J. Bennett, a major Republican figure?and, indeed, considering his book sales, American figure?is able to say publicly of Clinton, "I believe he?s a rapist," and no one bats an eye. You might think that a furor would ensue; that one man or the other, Bennett or Clinton, would have to stand down; that the two could not exist in the same environment. But?nothing.
The president is unlikely to get within a mile of a journalist who would challenge him on Broaddrick. Instead, he sticks close to the likes of Bryant Gumbel, who, in an interview, invited him to play golf at his country club up in Westchester County. "I?d be happy to be your guest anytime," replied Clinton. Carole Simpson is even safer for the president than Gumbel: "You?re the first black president," she said to Clinton. "How does that make you feel?" ("I think it?s a compliment," was Clinton?s response. What else?) Later, Simpson said, "I have to bask in this moment for a moment, because I am here talking to the most powerful man on the planet, who [grew up] a poor boy from Arkansas, [and] I am an African-American woman, [who] grew up working-class on the South Side of Chicago, and this is a pretty special moment for me, to be here talking to you. How does it feel talking to me, that I made it too, when people said I wouldn?t be able to?" Clinton allowed that it felt okay.
This is the stuff of ABC News in the late-Clinton era.
When it comes to legacy-shaping, Clinton has his lines down pat. He praises the Founding Fathers, "smart people" who understood about "partisan passions." He unfailingly mentions Nelson Mandela, to whom he, by implication, equates himself. History, he says, will record that "I made a bad personal mistake, I paid a serious price for it, but that I was right to stand and fight for my country and my Constitution and its principles." Starr and his allies were nothing but a band of rogues who "spent $50 million trying to ferret out" a private peccadillo because "they had nothing else to do," seeing that "all the other charges"?Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate?were "totally false, bogus, made up." What?s more, "people were persecuted because they wouldn?t commit perjury against me"?an allusion to such innocents as Susan McDougal and Webb Hubbell. He laments the huge financial costs that his circle incurred, but takes no responsibility for them. In his mind, he is still the protagonist in Darkness at Noon, or Richard Jewell, falsely accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. He also draws reassurance from the example of his fellow impeachee, Andrew Johnson: "I think most people believe that he was unjustly impeached and that the fact that he stood up to it and refused to give in . . . reflects well on him in the history of the country."
What history says of Clinton, of course, will depend on who is writing it. Certainly we know what the 400 historians who signed an anti-impeachment, anti-Starr, anti-Republican petition will say. Typical of them is Princeton?s Sean Wilentz, who, in snarling testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, told Republicans that they risked "going down in history with the zealots and the fanatics." On the anniversary of Impeachment Day, December 19, the Boston Globe expressed a model Clintonite judgment, editorializing that "long after impeachment passions have disappeared into the mists of history, Clinton will be remembered for prodigious gifts that were too often squandered but also for presiding over a golden age of peace and prosperity." Jeffrey Toobin, of The New Yorker and ABC, has had his crack with the just-published A Vast Conspiracy. "Extremists of the political right," he says, "tried to use the legal system to undo elections?in particular the two that put Bill Clinton in the White House." Toobin is, in the parlance of the day, perfectly "on-message."
About that all-important obituary or encyclopedia entry: Clinton, in a conversation with Dan Rather back in March, said that he was "not at all sure" that impeachment would figure "in the first paragraph." Neither should anyone else be. In a conservative nightmare, there would be a line in the middle or toward the bottom of the entry about a "right-wing coup attempt" that Clinton and his party succeeded in repelling. If the broader culture war continues to go Clinton?s way, he may wind up regarded as, in David Frum?s striking phrase, "a martyr to the cause of sexual liberty." In a September 1998 cabinet meeting?the one in which Clinton issued a semi-apology for allowing his ministers to lie in his behalf?the president reportedly scolded Donna Shalala for suggesting that leadership had a moral dimension. By that standard, sniffed Clinton, she should have preferred Nixon in 1960 to John F. Kennedy. Who, really, in a Clintonized world, can overcome that rejoinder?
TIME ON HIS SIDE
That Clinton has traveled so far from impeachment in so short a time is astonishing. Revisit, just for kicks, Judge Susan Webber Wright?s extraordinary rebuke of him: "The record demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that the President responded to plaintiffs? questions by giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process.... There is simply no escaping the fact that the President deliberately violated this court?s discovery orders and thereby undermined the integrity of the judicial system. Sanctions must be imposed, not only to address the President?s misconduct, but to deter others who might themselves consider emulating the President of the United States . . ." Eleven days after Judge Wright fined him, Clinton was invited by the American Bar Association to address its annual convention. (Hubbell, for good measure, was invited as well.) Will history?will anyone?remember such grossness against Clinton? Will anyone ask, to pick another bone, the Wag the Dog questions? These, too, have faded speedily from memory. As with Juanita Broaddrick, it is probably too horrible to contemplate that a president could employ military force?in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq?merely for the sake of his own political and legal hide. Neither does anyone seem to want to think about Chinese generals stuffing the U.S. president?s hand full of cash.
On the electoral front, legacy-watchers will have their eye on three races this year: the presidential contest, of course; the New York Senate race; and the campaign to control the House of Representatives. If Clinton pulls off a trifecta?that is, if Gore wins, and Hillary Clinton wins, and the Democrats recapture control of "the people?s chamber"?he and his claque will be able to claim, not at all implausibly, that Americans flat-out repudiated impeachment. Republicans will probably shrink from making Election 2000 a referendum on Clinton. Given the beating they suffered at the hands of the Democrats two years ago, as they were on the verge of impeaching Clinton, who can blame them?
Bill Clinton will have not only this final year of his presidency, but many years thereafter to shape his legacy, to condition the national memory of 1998. He has, after all, less to come back from than the acquitted double-murderer O. J. Simpson, to whom he has been famously and usefully compared. Clinton will talk and talk, and spin and spin, leading tours of his library, giving lectures, writing eloquent and artful books, advising heads of state, raising money at Jackson-Jefferson Day dinners, schmoozing with his friends and admirers in academia and the press. He may even serve in Congress?he has already stated that he admires John Quincy Adams and (how about this for aptness?) Andrew Johnson for doing so in their post-presidential years. He does not have to win the struggle for his name right now, or before the next election, or even in the following decade. This is a twilight struggle, a long-term project, whose objective Clinton will never lose sight of.
On the very night the Lewinsky storm broke, Clinton?s then-adviser Dick Morris warned that he would not survive a prompt and full confession. The president answered, "Well, we?ll just have to win, then." He appears to be winning even now?just as, come to think of it, he always does. |
