Clinton: Yet Another Scandal-Plagued Presidency

Make no mistake: Whitewater is about a lot more than possible small-time financial chicanery and a minor-league Washington cover-up. We are talking about control of the presidency in 1996 or earlier--and the only thing that matches conservative and Republican political opportunism is liberal and Democratic hypocrisy.

GOP stalwarts, uninterested in getting to the bottom of Watergate or Iran-Contra, are now suffused with patriotism in pursuing Whitewater and the other allegations about Bill Clinton. Conversely, there are too many congressional Democrats, once outraged over the immorality of earlier GOP regimes, whose past insistence on the public’s right to know has become acquiescence in this Administration’s desire to have the public not know.

No one should be surprised. This is human nature. It is also political history--and given the inadequate attention paid to such precedents in the television age, it may be useful to examine Whitewater and other Clinton controversies in the perspective of past political scandals.

To begin with, Whitewater--the land deal, with its related savings-and-loan chicanery--isn’t enough to bring down Clinton. Even Watergate was less a single event than a catchall. When Richard M. Nixon was forced out of office in 1974, the anti-Nixon furor fed on a wide range of issues beyond the break-in: the Nixon Administration’s larger involvement in political espionage, the Daniel Ellsberg break-in, the ITT scandal and others. The scandal furor of 1973-74 was also a showdown over which party would pay for the failure in Vietnam--the Democrats who fumbled militarily or the GOP who used it as a cover for violating civil liberties.

However, if Clinton won’t be brought down by any single episode, it is possible to see the outline of a larger GOP indictment--a contention that Whitewater is but one facet of a flawed Clinton morality that began with draft evasion 25 years ago; then broadened with shady financial deals in 1970s and 1980s Arkansas; took further shape with Gennifer Flowers, and may now involve a Washington abuse of power and cover-up.

For the President is America’s chief of state as well as the leader of a political party, and he is at risk if he can’t measure up to a moral-leadership role. Nixon couldn’t and was forced to resign; Lyndon B. Johnson, a well-known financial and political finagler, may have been investigated and ejected in the post-Watergate climate; Clinton may be vulnerable today.

Clinton is certainly not the first financial hustler in the White House. Other modern Presidents have been touched by scandal. The point is that, one way or another, most of them--Warren G. Harding, Harry S. Truman, Johnson, Nixon and Bush--were made to leave. If Clinton fits the scandal-President pattern, these precedents should be discomforting.

Indeed, polls show that from the first, many Americans did not trust Clinton because of his draft-board maneuvers, the charges made by Flowers and his Arkansas wheeler-dealer roots. This poses the question: Isn’t Clinton’s behavior typical of small-state governors who get to the White House? No--because past governors of the smallest states haven’t gotten there. Not ever. Jimmy Carter of Georgia was actually from one of America’s relatively large states.

Ironically, the 20th-Century Presidents tied to the most scandal came from a high-powered background: Four were U.S. senators from major states (Harding of Ohio, Truman of Missouri, Nixon of California and Johnson of Texas) and three of them had served as vice president. Harding died before he could be blamed for the infamous Teapot Dome scandal. Truman brought Kansas City cronyism to the White House. And Johnson traded on favoritism to build a multimillion-dollar communications business while in Congress. Still another President linked to scandal, Bush, had earlier been vice president and CIA director. If there is a scandal precedent, it should be not to promote vice presidents or former vice presidents.

But a second moral might be: Perhaps Americans made a mistake in ignoring the old rule, true since Franklin Pierce in 1852, of not picking a President from one of the smallest states. The rule has two components: Small-state nominees often represented the ideological fringe: Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, in 1964, and George S. McGovern of South Dakota, in 1972, are two examples. The second problem is that small-state politics often develop out of a small-time climate, where the practices leave something to be desired. Americans already had some of these doubts about Clinton even as they elected him in 1992 to be done with Bush.

Looking ahead, it’s unclear if the whole surfeit of Arkansas-hustler accusations made against the Clintons--from sweetheart commodities deals to shredded financial records, obstruction of justice and sexual harassment--can ever reach critical mass and make Clinton an Ozark Elmer Gantry, unacceptable to Americans. But the argument against electing another small-state governor is already substantial.

Even if some accusations against Clinton get partly proved, the public has many types of recourse. Only one is legal; most are political. Because so many allegations involve behavior in Arkansas rather than Washington, Clinton is unique--compared with the other scandal-plagued Presidents--in having his controversies emerge early enough for his first midterm elections. Truman’s mink coat, deep-freeze and five-percenter messes and Nixon’s Watergate didn’t surface until the second midterms (1950 and 1974, respectively).

The importance of 1994’s scandals coming in time for the first midterms is obvious: Instead of the usual small gains made by the party out of power, the GOP has a larger opportunity. They could wind up gaining three to four Senate seats and 20 or so House seats--enough to stalemate Clinton and his programs in Congress during 1995-96. True, the Republicans could be at risk if they overplay Whitewater, but their broader accusations against Clinton are probably good politics. The earlier Truman and Nixon scandals produced major opposition gains in the midterms.

For all that it’s implausible today, any emerging impeachment debate would be significant. Of the two Presidents against whom impeachment has been sought since the Republican-Democratic era began, Andrew Johnson in 1867 and then Nixon, both confrontations were brought by an opposition Congress. Johnson, remember, was a Unionist Democrat picked by Republican Abraham Lincoln as his running mate in 1864. After Lincoln was shot, hard-line congressional Republicans, eager to get rid of Johnson, settled on impeachment. And, of course, when Nixon was impeached, opposition Democrats were carrying the banner. No President has ever been impeached by his own party. If the unseating of Clinton, far-fetched now, should become a serious issue, it could be devastating for Democrats--and possibly cost them control of Congress for the first time since 1953-54.

However, the most likely political effect of the charges circling the President is to hurt the Democrats slightly this November and to hurt Clinton more if and when he seeks a second term in 1996. If some of the allegations against the President gain credence, he might not run for reelection, and the chances of strong opposition in the primaries would grow. Indeed, of the four Democratic Presidents before Clinton, all but the assassinated John F. Kennedy faced tough primary challenges to their renomination. Weak New Hampshire showings forced Truman and Johnson to retire in 1952 and 1968, and Carter, after surviving a primary challenge, was ultimately defeated in November, 1980.

Even the stock market and the economy could be affected by a major political scandal--especially one that generates impeachment talk. The 1994 stock market is already in a nose-dive--with politics part of the explanation. It’s worth remembering that back in 1973-74, as the embattled Nixon Administration fought impeachment, its impaired management of the economy overlapped with a major recession and the biggest bear market since World War II. Were a comparable financial crisis and economic slowdown to develop in 1994-95, this could cost Clinton the White House two years from now.

Controversies now embroiling Clinton may seem unique. But the politics of scandal are a familiar tale in U.S. history. While some lessons are encouraging and some aren’t, they’re all worth keeping in mind as the various accusations and stories play out.