Standing By Their Man Is Hard to Do

Who would have thought that Hillary Clinton would have ended up as the Pat Nixon of the ‘90s? It was Hillary, remember, who took a swipe at the late great queen of country music back in 1992, when she said, “I’m not sitting here like some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” At least Tammy, who died Monday, had the last laugh. As dutiful as Pat was all those years, Hillary is reduced to the merest simulacrum of the feisty independent woman. Bill sweats his way through the denials, while she smiles bravely, loyally, at his side.

But then again, in this world turned upside down, who would have thought the implacable Republicans of 1994, united by Newt the Conqueror, would now be reduced to fractious whiners, with Dick Armey thundering to stunned high schoolers about Clinton’s moral turpitude and the party reeling at the prospect of Ken Starr’s report soon on its way to Congress. And who would have thought that the Democrats, endemically fractious and divided, would somehow appear united behind a man many of them despise?

For its part, the right, now chafing at the seeming invulnerability of the president, has only itself to blame for the public’s indifference to Clinton’s errancies. With truly relentless zeal, the right has managed to debauch the currency of political abuse about President Bill. On the political stage, they tried to brand him as a dangerous radical, “a McGovernite,” “a hostage to the special interests” (meaning labor and blacks), a peacenik. Even at the start, back in 1992, there was scant resemblance in this portrait to Clinton’s politics, and none whatsoever after the spring of 1993.

Of course half the art of politics is the misrepresentation of one’s opponents. But the problem with trying this on someone as politically agile and unprincipled as Bill Clinton is that he could effortlessly outmaneuver the misrepresenters. Already firmly anchored right of center, all he had to do was take--with the assistance of Dick Morris--a couple of sidesteps even further to the right and his opponents had nothing left to do but look foolish. The right paid the penalty for all those profitable years of infantile abuse of Jimmy Carter and of Democratic presidential candidates through the 1980s, as commies abroad and welfare-loving tax-hikers at home. They had forgotten how to deal in the language of political reality in the 1990s.

So, they turned to the bludgeon of scandal and, of all insane ideas, tried to whack Bill and Hillary with the death of Vince Foster. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the clients of Richard Mellon Scaife, the massed legions of Jerry Falwell and the right-wing radio hosts all plunged into that swamp and, as credible accusers, finished themselves off.

So, with the Christian Coalition reduced to an inconvenient faction, and under the leadership of a man, Newt Gingrich, beloved by corporate donors but mistrusted by the public at large, the right ended up in the ludicrous situation of having the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit as its main card to play in this election year.

The liberals don’t look any better. Years of standing by their man have left them with political credentials as shopworn as those of the right. They stayed loyal as Clinton signed the welfare bill and the crime bill and kindred snoop-and-kill’em-legislation. Clinton has been a disaster for civil liberties, a bonanza for big business. Yet they stood by him.

Then came the sex scandals. The women’s groups, who nearly destroyed Clarence Thomas and who chased Bob Packwood out of Congress, have, with a very few exceptions, kept their mouths shut about a man convincingly accused, with a wealth of detail, of advances far exceeding in abrupt crudity anything alleged about Thomas or Packwood.

Judge Susan Webber Wright may have been construing the harassment laws correctly, but if the beneficiary of her ruling had been a Republican, the leaders of the major liberal women’s groups today would be calling for her removal from the bench. It’s no use, the liberals saying Clinton has been the object of mere slur and innuendo. There are just too many accounts, whether it’s Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey or any of the others, not to believe that we have here a man oft-times pretty much out of control and capable of very ugly behavior. The behavior may not warrant political disgrace but in terms of hypocrisy, the liberals will pay a heavy price for not making more of a stink about his conduct.

Watergate was a good scandal. It led to a reexamination of secrecy, of money in politics, of abuses of power, whether by the White House or the CIA. It produced good laws. The Jones/Lewinsky scandals have been fun, but vacuous. They’ve engendered nothing but hypocrisy and cynicism.