From: "J. Orlin Grabbe" 
Subject: SNET: [Fwd: All the president's women, London Sunday TImes]
Date: 25 Jan 1998 21:16:38 -0500
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From: rayheizer@value.net (Ray Heizer)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: All the president's women, London Sunday TImes
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 16:11:18 -0800
Organization: Value Net Internetwork Services Inc.
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NNTP-Posting-Host: k81.value.net

 
-- Our boy is toast ...

< 1/25/98: The Sunday Times: Review:
< 
<             [Andrew Sullivan logo]             
<                                                                                               

<            All the president's women            
<    Sex, lies, tape - and the abuse of power
<                                               
< The reason why Washington was transfixed last  
< week by the Monica Lewinsky affair was not
< simply because Bill Clinton had become         
< enmeshed in another sexual-legal-political     
< scandal. So what's new? And it wasn't simply  
< because the affair had ingredients that make
< even Hollywood's paranoiacs look incurious:    
< from allegedly soiled articles of clothing to  
< bosomy young women from Beverly Hills High.
< It wasn't even because the word "impeachment"  
< was used seriously - and prematurely - in      
< Washington for the first time since Nixon (a
< scenario which seems as far-fetched as Mr     
< Clinton's definition of an "improper           
< relationship".)
<                                                
< No, the reason we were all dangling on the     
< ends of our modems on Wednesday and Thursday   
< was because finally it felt as if the mystery
< of Bill Clinton might be resolved. We might  
< at last have closure. We might, once and for   
< all, prove, in one single and encapsulating
< case, the two things that have hovered inches  
om Clinton for six long years, but      Gore
< have never been definitively plastered to his
< face: that the president is a sexual monster
< and that he is a bald-faced liar.
< 
< With the Lewinsky affair, everything that we
< have long suspected about Clinton in sexual
< and emotional matters hangs tantalisingly in
< the air. Suddenly, it seems as if he could be
< proven not merely an adulterer (we know
< that); nor even a happy-go-lucky philanderer
< (we've forgiven that). No, what the Lewinsky
< case promises is incontrovertible proof that
< Clinton is someone who abuses power to abuse
< women. This scandal, whatever the tabloids
< shriek, is not about sex. It is about the
< abuse of power.
< 
< Think, after all, of his trail of injured
< paramours. They are no Camilla Parker
< Bowleses. None of them is Clinton's equal;
< and each of them was used in the most
< misogynous way imaginable.
< 
< Gennifer Flowers, almost definitional of the
< American term "white trash", was fodder for
< the tabloids and for the Clinton attack
< machine. Now, it turns out, according to
< reports of Clinton's own recent deposition in
< the Paula Jones case, that she was indeed
< Clinton's lover for a period of years,
< despite his bald-faced lie to the American
< people in the 1992 campaign. She was
< dismissed at the time as a mere "friendly
< acquaintance" and is now a footnote to the
< Lewinsky scandal. The press regarded her as
< tacky and incredible. She was neither.
< 
< Ditto Paula Jones. The issue in that case,
< again, was not Clinton's wandering eye. It
< was the way he allegedly abused his position
< as governor of Arkansas to purloin the most
< debasing of sexual favours from a woman
< completely out of her depth. But Monica
< Lewinsky clinches the case. Here was a
< youngster scarcely older than the president's
< daughter, star-struck, over-awed, and, if any
< portion of the tapes is accurate, infatuated
< with the president. If Clinton knowingly
< sexually exploited her, then we will know for
< sure that this pattern of indiscretion is
< more than indiscretion. It is a pathological
< abuse of adult responsibility. It wouldn't be
< tolerated in a schoolteacher, let alone the
< president of the United States.
< 
< The second tantalising promise of the
< Lewinsky affair is that it might catch the
< president in a simple and devastating lie. On
< Wednesday, his discomfort with this
< possibility was palpable. All day long, he
< tried to deny something that seemed true
< without lying - not an unusual Clinton task,
< but still a tricky one. Asked simply to deny
< a relationship with Lewinsky, he first
< averred that "there is no improper
< relationship" but avoided the admission that
< there was one. After a few more tries at the
< present-tense defence, he finally used the
< past tense in denying it. Pressed further, he
< said there was no "sexual relationship" at
< all - but in such an awkward and cramped way
< that most of Washington spent Thursday trying
< to work out what his definition of a "sexual
< relationship" might be. The conventional
< wisdom by Friday was that it meant that no
< fully fledged sexual intercourse had taken
< place, but left open the possibility of oral
< sex, an activity Clinton apparently does not
< consider a form of adultery. Then he merely
< said that "the allegations" were not true,
< without specifying exactly what those
< allegations were. Veteran Clinton-watchers
< admired a classic performance. But whatever
< these exquisite nuances, it was clear by the
< end of last week that a possibility still
< existed that independent evidence (tapes and
< documents) and an appealing young
< upper-middle-class witness (Lewinsky) could
< finally call the president's perpetual,
< meandering and maddening game of bluff.
< Gotcha!
< 
< So why did I sense across town this week an
< air not simply of exhilaration but also of
< sadness? There is something Shakespearian in
< it, I suppose, a sense that this highly
< talented but highly flawed man has finally
< spun a tangle from which even he cannot
< escape. The correct adjective to describe all
< this is simply tragic. The muffled lies of
< last week seemed almost pathetic; the
< coincidence of such a massive embarrassment
< with the State of the Union address this
< Tuesday a hideous as well as delicious irony.
< Americans have always known, after all, that
< Clinton is a man with an uncontrollable
< libido and an inability to tell the truth.
< But they have also known that he is a
< brilliant politician and a perfectly
< effective president. As long as he managed to
< keep his precarious act on the road, the
< American people were prepared to forgive one
< side of him in order to enjoy the other.
< 
< And, in retrospect, the record is impressive.
< When Clinton was elected, he asked voters to
< judge him on "the economy, stupid". Six years
< later, he has presided over the virtual
< abolition of inflation, record low
< unemployment and a federal budget finally in
< surplus. The country is at peace and welfare
< has been reformed. Crime has plummeted to
< 30-year lows and taxes look set to be cut.
< The stock market has enjoyed one of its most
< impressive runs ever. International trade has
< been expanded while the Democratic party has
< been dragged, on the surface at least, back
< to the centre of American politics. Compared,
< say, with Nixon's execrable record in
< domestic policy, it's an impressive set of
< achievements.
< 
< But now all this is in jeopardy, thanks to
< what is at the very least a bizarre
< relationship with a 21-year-old intern. And
< news of the relationship would never have
< entered the political arena if Clinton had
< merely settled the Paula Jones suit rather
< than get enmeshed in its potentially fatal
< legal consequences. But his pride, and his
< refusal to tell the truth, would not allow
< him to break clean from his past. So, at
< last, the long series of lies and sexual
< tangles has reached a critical mass where
< they all threaten to compound one another. If
< the Lewinsky case were an isolated instance,
< it would surely have a limited impact. But it
< arrives as confirmation of a pattern of
< mendacity that may not be legally fatal, but
< is surely politically lethal. The lame duck
< just got amputated.
< 
< I can't believe this will lead to
< impeachment. Perjury in a civil case, if
< proven, is hardly equivalent to the long list
< of abuses of power that brought Nixon down.
< And there is not an appetite in the country
< for that kind of humiliation. Indeed, if the
< Republicans overplay their hand in this,
< Clinton could yet emerge as the victor. But
< it does effectively mean that Clinton's
< chance to chart the American agenda for the
< next three years is over. His initiatives on
< health care, tax cuts, education and
< voluntary service have been rendered
< dead-on-arrival on Capitol Hill. His
< political brilliance has been fatally
< undercut by his moral incapacity. His
< presidency will therefore likely end as it
< began: not with a bang of achievement, but
< with a slow and interminable whimper of
< sordid embarrassment.
< 
< He deserved better from himself. So did
< America.

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