The Only Goal Is Presidential Humiliation

I’m so tired of Paula Jones. Whatever trauma, real or imagined, she experienced has given way to the lure of life as a litigious exhibitionist pawn of the vultures of the far right, who are interested only in the destruction of a president who has proved impervious to more direct attack.

The American public has demonstrated through ballots and polls that it likes the way this president conducts the affairs of state, and no amount of criticism from the likes of me or those on the right seems to dissuade them. We critics shouldn’t give up raising issues concerning Clinton’s governance, but it is mad to attempt to bring down a sitting president over an impossible-to-document charge of sexual harassment that predates his presidency and for which there are no witnesses other than the president and his accuser. The various charges concerning his private behavior as a governor were amply vented before each of his presidential campaigns, and voters chose to ignore them.

This whole unseemly matter should have been delayed until after Clinton’s presidency; it could have been put to rest had Jones accepted the $700,000 settlement her lawyers worked out. But those with a more strident political agenda intervened, the lawyers quit and a right-wing foundation, spiritually affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and run by graduates of his defunct Moral Majority, took over, persuading Jones to go to trial now.

Just why Falwell and his family-value proteges are so eager to expose the nation’s children to a public debate about oral sex and the exact shape of the presidential organ is beyond me. Do Falwell’s political differences with the president count for so much that this man of God is now willing to turn politics into pornography?

Falwell’s mind-set is that of a crank obsessed with proving that Clinton is guilty of everything from pushing drugs to murder. For three years Falwell has been peddling videos making those outrageous claims. He has been aided by Paul M. Weyrich, another ally from the right-wing fringe, who has been harassing the president with TV and radio ads in Washington soliciting further examples of sexual harassment by Clinton or top administration officials. All of which will be grist for the gossip mills during Jones’ show trial in May--an exercise intended to humiliate the president of the United States.

Funds for Jones’ case are being raised by the Rutherford Institute in Virginia, run by John W. Whitehead, formerly of the Moral Majority’s legal branch, which has paid for Jones’ hair and clothing make-over as well as her lawyers and the boarding of her dog. It had previously distinguished itself by arguing in court that Social Security numbers are the work of the devil.

Donovan Campbell Jr., the new lead attorney for Jones, is well-known in his home city of Dallas as an activist on the Christian right. Campbell led the fight to restore the Texas sodomy law so it could be used to prosecute homosexuals. He’s also known for picketing a legitimate theater presenting a play with a gay theme.

The Jones media circus has been orchestrated by Susan Carpenter-McMillan, Jones’ intimate advisor, who has taken over managing Jones’ life and appearance even--as McMillan told Times reporter Carla Hall--discussing a possible nose job like her own. A seasoned veteran of right-wing talk radio and the anti-abortion wars, Carpenter-McMillan persists in calling the president a “slimeball.” At least she’s not uptight. She brags about being able to urinate while standing and casually chats about oral sex, according to The Times profile, and admits to having had an abortion while she was an unmarried college coed.

Clinton’s troubles may be fun and games for these folks on the extreme right, but how is the nation’s interest served by a sad show trial for the titillation of the entire world? Will there be discussions of the details of the president’s genitalia beamed worldwide?

What future president, Republican or Democrat, will not be subject to similar abuse? There’s never a shortage of those willing to defame a celebrity, let alone the president, with publicity-seeking civil suits. Will they too have their day in court while the serious business of government grinds to a halt?

I know the president is not above the law. But Clinton as president does not stand charged with breaking the law. If Clinton has failed us as chief executive, it is because of the legislation he signed into law and the policies that his administration pursued here and throughout the world. Let us judge him on that basis and that basis alone. Pantsing the president hardly bodes well for the future of the republic.

Robert Scheer is a Times contributing editor. E-mail: rscheer@aol.com