Clinton's friends turn backs on him
By David Wastell in Washington
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Alone in the wilderness: President Clinton enjoys a round of golf before leaving Ireland
PRESIDENT Clinton flies back to Washington today to confront his gravest political crisis since his affair with Monica Lewinsky became public.
He faces a sudden and possibly fatal collapse in personal support from senior Democrats, including former friends and advisers, and the prospect of a fight with Congress to stave off a motion of censure or - much worse - the possibility of impeachment proceedings.
The change of mood among his party in the three weeks since Mr Clinton testified to the grand jury has been thrown into stark relief by Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat for whom a young Bill Clinton first cut his campaigning teeth, who launched an excoriating attack on the President in the Senate.
After accusing Mr Clinton of "immoral" and "disgraceful" behaviour, Mr Lieberman, a long-time political ally, said Mr Clinton's actions "contradicted the values" that the President had publicly embraced for the past six years and "compromised his moral authority" to restore family values.
Other senior Democrats in the Senate endorsed Mr Lieberman's condemnation, and it was as if the floodgates had opened. This sudden change of heart by Mr Clinton's erstwhile allies has been occasioned by the lurid and distinctly unsavoury details of his liaison with Ms Lewinsky.
According to the latest leaked details of Miss Lewinsky's testimony, the President had sex in the White House on Easter Sunday last year after he and his wife, Hillary, had attended a church service for the Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 other Americans killed in Croatia. On another occasion the couple are said to have made love in the Lincoln bedroom, reserved for visiting heads of state.
It is details such as this which have persuaded Democrat politicians and voters to conclude reluctantly that the man is no longer an asset to his country, but a liability.
The desertions from the Clinton camp are approaching epidemic proportions. George Stephanopolous and Dee Dee Mayers, both architects of his public persona in the early years of the administration, have turned against him, and last week Robert Reich, one of Mr Clinton's oldest political friends, joined in.
The President is now "almost totally bereft of authority", said Mr Reich, Secretary of Labour in the first Clinton administration. He "now appears to be a better liar than truth teller". His denials of the affair were spoken "with the same emotional intensity he has brought to bear on public issues. Thus, he will never again be entirely believed".
But the way in which Senator Lieberman turned on his friend last week provided an insight of how even his closest allies have now conceded that the Lewinsky affair is a lie too far for the President.
Mr Lieberman was in the same position as millions of Americans last month: on holiday with his family, who found themselves returning again and again to discussion of the President's behaviour.
His 3,000-word speech, which he began composing on a laptop from his beach-house, represented the distillation of four generations of Lieberman family thinking - ranging from his 83-year-old mother, who he said was the most forgiving, to his four children aged 10 to 30, who he said were the most upset.
Mr Lieberman revealed afterwards that the President had telephoned him twice since giving his grand jury testimony on August 17, and he warned him during the second conversation that he planned to make public comments "that would not be comfortable to hear". The senator came under immediate pressure from White House staff to hold off until the President had left Russia - and from fellow Democrats in the Senate not to call for Congress to censure the President. He agreed to both requests.
The brutal reality which Mr Clinton now faces is that members of his own party in Congress are determined to take the conclusions of the Starr report seriously, both from a sense of outrage and their responsibility as legislators.
Some advisers are urging Mr Clinton to accept a "plea bargain" with Congress, acquiescing with a censure vote on the understanding that the matter would be taken no further. But, despite his hard-wrung admission on Friday that he was "sorry" for his conduct, Mr Clinton is said to be determined to fight his corner, foreshadowing a protracted battle for months ahead.
House leaders Newt Gingrich, for the Republicans, and Richard Gephardt, for the minority Democrats, are to meet other key Congressional figures on Wednesday to hammer out a deal on how to handle the expected 1,000-page report from special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, due this month.
The plan had been for the report to be kept secret from all but the 30-odd members of the House Judiciary Committee, which must decide whether to call for public hearings. But senior Republicans now want all members of the House to be issued with an "executive summary" of the key findings.
In the increasingly hostile climate, it will be difficult for Democrats to mount an effective case against, even if they want to. The steady desertion of senior Democrats is illustrated by the way the party's leading contenders for the White House in the year 2000 have set about distancing themselves from the man they hope to replace.
With the exception of Vice President Al Gore, whose Boy Scout loyalty to Mr Clinton appears undented, they are backing away from him one by one. First it was Richard Gephardt, the House Minority Leader, who declared Mr Clinton's behaviour and his attitude afterwards "wrong and reprehensible". Then Paul Wellstone, Senator from Minnesota, said the President's actions were "indefensible".
Last Thursday Senator Bob Kerrey, the one-legged Vietnam veteran from Nebraska, followed Mr Lieberman on to the Senate floor to endorse his remarks. He declared Mr Clinton's affair "immoral" and accused him of using a standard of truth "not adequate . . . for my children, for me, or for the leader of our country".
Former Senator Bill Bradley said that the United States needs a "new kind" of leader who lays greater stress on teamwork. In the White House race which will begin almost as soon as this autumn's congressional elections are finished, too close an association with Mr Clinton is being seen as a liability - and Mr Gore, who would normally expect to be a "shoo-in" for the Democratic nomination, looks vulnerable.
As Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia's Centre for Governmental Studies, put it: "If you hug a greased pig too closely then you're going to get dirty. Gore has a clean private life but he is going to look dirty because of his association with Bill Clinton."
Mr Gephardt's strategy is simple: to position himself so clearly that he is seen as the principal challenger. One Democrat who has stuck with Mr Clinton since 1992 said: "Gephardt's best chance is if Gore falters, as he may well do. He wants to be the most visible candidate, the man to whom everybody turns."
It would be an exceptional event for Mr Gephardt to win his party's nomination: no mere member of the House of Representatives has done so this century. But, since a failed run at it in 1988 he has acquired a steadily higher profile as the Democrats' leader in the House, popping up regularly on television.
But despite efforts to woo organised labour, one of the party's key constituencies, Mr Gephardt may be outflanked on the party's Left wing by Senator Wellstone, 54, a former professor at a liberal arts college. If he decides to run, Mr Wellstone will present himself as a champion of the poor, who, he argues, have been overlooked for the past six years. But few expect him to perform well against Mr Gore.
Bill Bradley, on the other hand, is a 55-year-old former basketball star who was served as Senator from New Jersey for 18 years. Having spent the last two years as a visiting academic at campuses in California and Indiana, he would campaign as a Washington outsider and would have strong appeal to the centre ground - being socially liberal but economically conservative.
The man whom Mr Gore's advisers most fear, however, is Senator Kerrey, 55, who was beaten by Mr Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 1992 and who has had clashes with the administration ever since - not least in early 1996 when, long before it became fashionable for Democrats to do so, he called the President "an unusually good liar".
Senator Kerrey, a social liberal but economic conservative, is seen by his supporters as everything that Mr Clinton is not: a war hero, decorated for the action in which he lost his leg, and above all a straight-talker whose honesty has never been doubted.
"If only we had chosen him in 1992, we would not be in this mess now," one senior Democrat said last week. His outspoken comments last week were overshadowed, by Senator Lieberman's attack. But his office posted a fuller statement on the Internet and drew the attention of journalists to it. Even if the President survives the crisis of the next few weeks, this is how he will be treated by his party for the remainder of his term.
telegraph.co.uk |
