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".
Clinton's friends turn backs on him
By David Wastell in Washington
The London Telegraph September 6, 1998
External Links
Statement of
Senator Bob
Kerrey on
President Clinton
[3 Sept '98] -
Senator Kerrey
home page
Full text:
Lieberman's
remarks [3 Sept
'98] -
Washington
Post
In NH, Gephardt
looks like a
candidate [5 Sept
'98] -
Washington
Post
The next
campaign,
candidate by
candidate -
Washington
Post
Clinton Accused
- Washington
Post
The Committee
to Impeach the
President
Senator Bob
Kerrey profile -
Congress.org
Senator Kerrey
home page
SoWhat? gate -
Conspiracy.com
Bill Clinton's lies
[includes quote
from Senator Bob
Kerrey] - The
Pissed Off
American Page
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:80/ |
