First Family Soap
Opera, or Spin Cycle?
By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 29, 1998; Page A6
EDGARTOWN, Mass.-President
Clinton's summer sojourn on Martha's
Vineyard began with an
announcement by his spokesman that
the vacation would be an occasion for
"repair work within his family."
A few days later, press secretary
Michael McCurry reported that "the
healing process" is "underway, but it's
not done yet."
Later this week, a reporter asked for
the latest news on the family recovery.
By now, regular updates had become
a source of levity. "I stand by my prior assessment," McCurry said, as
laughter echoed in the makeshift briefing room set up here in the
gymnasium of a local school. "With each day, we are getting more
confident in that assessment."
There have been many peculiar things about the president's vacation this
year, which began just a day after his nationally televised acknowledgment
of his extramarital relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky. But perhaps
strangest of all has been the spectacle of the president's aides and other
loyalists talking freely about what they say is domestic turmoil at the
Clinton household. Privately, people who know the Clintons have been
even more blunt in describing what they say is an unmistakable chill
between the president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Chattering about the psychological dynamics of the first family is not, to
put it mildly, the kind of thing that usually would ensure a secure future for
any member of the Clinton team. In this season of embarrassment for the
president, however, it has become acceptable for his subordinates to let
people know he is in hot water on the home front.
Such statements are so unusual that some reporters who cover Clinton are
vexed: Has the famous White House spin machine ceased to function? Or
is all the talk about the Clintons' marriage a new and more sophisticated
brand of spin?
Simply put, the White House's credibility is in such disrepair after seven
months of the Lewinsky controversy that some reporters do not even
believe it when they are told the president is having no fun on his vacation.
"It seems like they are trying to manage this like they do everything else,
which is to play out a plausible scenario," said Bill Plante, a veteran White
House reporter for CBS News. Like many colleagues here, Plante
suspects that by promoting the line that the president is being punished for
his Lewinsky indiscretions at home, the White House hopes to position
itself later to argue that the president has already paid the proper price for
a personal transgression.
As for the reports on the first lady's anger, Plante said, "Probably it's true
- but I don't think what they're playing out is based on any real knowledge
of what's going on. . . . I can't recall another occasion when they've
discussed the mood of the first family, particularly hers."
McCurry acknowledged that talking publicly about the Clinton marriage is
unusual, but said the circumstances of this vacation are equally so. Far
from trying to spin a story about Clinton's personal suffering, the
spokesman said, he was trying simply to acknowledge the obvious in a
way that would be credible to the public without intruding on the privacy
of the first family.
"Under the circumstances, it was important to be candid by accurately
portraying some sense of what's going on," he said.
He said he had not discussed with the Clintons what it was acceptable to
tell reporters about their marriage, but that individual conversations with
both of them gave him an implicit sense of the boundary. "I think they
trusted me to put out just enough without saying too much," he said.
Other Clinton loyalists, in fact, have been much more explicit. Political
consultant James Carville, speaking on CNN after the president's Aug. 17
speech, said of Hillary Clinton: "I think, to paraphrase Queen Victoria,
she's not amused. I think the president's going to spend a little time in the
woodshed here."
Even Roger Clinton, the president's brother, talked Thursday night on
CNN's "Larry King Live" about the "very emotional, very powerful" times
the president and his family are going through on their vacation.
"Oh, my God, it's got to be tough," said Roger Clinton, who added that
his brother is "way down personally."
Michael Murphy, a Republican media strategist, said he believes such
comments reflect the White House's "contrition spin . . . it's part of a highly
calculated strategy to create a penance-lite."
Emphasizing how much Clinton is suffering for his transgressions at home,
Murphy said, is a way of subtly underscoring Clinton's argument that his
affair with Lewinsky was a private matter, even while satisfying a public
hunger for punishment that stops short of impeachment or official
reprimand. "Because their spin is that this is only a domestic matter, this is
a way of showing he's paying a domestic price."
Leaving politics aside, however, there has been plenty of evidence in the
past 11 days that the Lewinsky controversy is exacting a toll on the first
family. So far, there have been no presidential golf outings, a stark
contrast with his usual vacation routine. And, with just a couple of
exceptions, the Clintons have been absent from the island's summer social
swirl. In past years, they went out to parties and restaurants almost every
night.
Even so, on the few occasions they have been out, the president and first
lady have put on a happy face. She spoke about education policy at a
dinner party at investment banker Steven Rattner's home last week. At a
nearby table, the president, seated next to law professor Alan Dershowitz,
talked about the Bible and science, with only passing references to his
legal problems.
Back in Washington, aides were thrilled by newspaper photos of the first
family, including daughter Chelsea, sailing with former CBS anchorman
Walter Cronkite, who has sometimes been called "the most trusted man in
America."
One friend and former adviser who also summers here said she doubted
that anyone, either aides or island socializers, had a genuine sense of what
is going on in the Clinton marriage. "Her instinct to help him has got to be
conflicting with her instinct to kill him," said political consultant Mandy
Grunwald. "What's truly happening will stay incredibly private." |
