And on a lighter note:
Washington Scene: Plotters
The New Republic
February 6, 1998 Stephen Glass
When Hillary Clinton started ranting last week, about a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Beltway pundits could barely suppress their snickers. The first lady seemed to be implying that somewhere in America there is a committee of middle-aged white men who regularly
get together, hunch around a long oval table, and feverishly plot to undermine the Clinton administration. Does Mrs. Clinton really believe this malarkey? Does anyone?
Actually, I do. Last Sunday, just such a meeting took place, and I was there. It was the monthly gathering of the Commission to Restore the Presidency to Greatness, or crpg, and the scene unfolded exactly as the first lady might have expected. The clandestine rendezvous took place in Northern Virginia at the rural home of software developer R.
Theodore Curtis. The attendees were all middle-aged white men dressed in sober ties and starched dress shirts. Most had receding hairlines. Sitting on the table in front of each man was a namecard listing his title and area of responsibility: "Vice President for Vince Foster's Death Affairs," "Special Counsel to Investigate Filegate," "Deputy Inspector for Arkansas Issues," and so on.
The gathering began, as all good board meetings do, with reports from the officers. One by one, the members of the group detailed their latest findings. Many made use of charts or diagrams, outlining things like the position of Foster's head relative to his bullet wound. Some brandished what appeared to be form letters from congressional staffers responding to their inquiries.
Eventually, Senior Deputy Michael V. Housman got his turn to speak. His speciality is the hitherto unpublicized theory that Bill Clinton is really a woman--the lesbian lover of the first lady. Housman proposed that the group organize a press event to publicize his hypothesis. But though he was once a respected member of the group, Housman's standing has been rather low ever since the failure of his prediction that "Wilma Clinton," as he calls the president, would come out of the closet on "Ellen." So Curtis quickly dismissed
Housman's p.r. proposal, saying it would strain the group's credibility.
Curtis then opened the floor to new business. This is what everybody had been waiting for, and within moments the table exploded into a heated discussion about Monica Lewinsky. Surprisingly, not everybody was entirely happy about the scandal. Brian Goldin, Curtis's top lieutenant, warned that the Lewinsky affair could pit feminists against the president--and certainly the group would not want to be aligned with feminists, who, after all, are even more dangerous to America than the Clinton presidency. Others worried about getting too involved in a story so centered on oral sex, which violates their Christian beliefs, while still others seized on that problem to propose a new initiative--a concerted campaign to fix the Communications Decency Act in order to keep public discussion of
sex to a minimum.
Eventually, Curtis brokered a sensible compromise: The group would hold a rally on the Mall, with no discussion of oral sex whatsoever. Sensing another opportunity to make his case, Housman proposed merging this rally with an event publicizing his Clinton-is-really-a-lesbian theory. All the demonstrators, Housman suggested, could wear skirts, or "something else feminine." Curtis warned Housman that one more mention of lesbian theories or drag rallies and he would be ejected from the group.
The Lewinsky scandal represents an important step in crpg's evolution--perhaps the most important in its two-year history. The group has taken off in the last six months after the most powerful anti-Clinton group, the Clinton Investigative Commission, failed to turn up hard evidence that Ron Brown, the late commerce secretary, was murdered. Although CIC gained national notoriety and still runs a popular website (www.impeachclinton.org), Curtis and several colleagues became convinced that CIC was surreptitiously under the
control of--yes!--Clinton allies. "It's really Clinton's most ingenious plan of all," he explained to me. "By funding your own opponents, you can make sure they never quite hit bone, just flesh wounds. People think there's an opposition when there's not. That's the real reason why none of the scandals have quite stuck."
But now that Curtis's new group had its big chance to step out from under CIC's shadow, would it make good? While the Washington Monument rally got off to a slow start on Monday--only a dozen or so members showed up to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" and wave signs that read "Impeach Now" and "Sing Monica. Sing the Truth"--throngs of
counter-demonstrators soon emerged. This was an impressive feat, really, given that predemonstration publicity was practically nonexistent. And yet the Clinton supporters seemed surprisingly friendly toward the protesters. In fact, at one point, at least one
demonstrator switched sides. Sensing a deception--know-it-all Beltway-types like me can smell chicanery from miles away--I asked Curtis whether, in fact, the counter-demonstrators were actually members of his group, too. He insisted that was not the case, but when I pointed out that one of the new Clinton supporters had forgotten to take the "I believe Monica" button off his shirt, Curtis turned beet red and started shouting at the demonstrators. "Stop. Stop. Stop. I told you all not to switch around," he screamed over their singing. "I just got tired of being pro-Clinton," one of the turncoats sheepishly replied. "I want to be on the fun side sometimes."
It turns out that the crpg stages both sides of their rallies when their opponents don't show up. It's not a bad way to exaggerate strength and media attention, actually--I used to work at a pro-choice group that did the same thing. But it also makes it awfully hard to fathom that these conspirators could be behind such a complicated scandal as Monicagate. Of course, maybe that's just what they wanted me to think. |
