‘The Speech’: Instant End to the Scandal

Those of us who want to see Bill Clinton either resign or be removed from office have a fear that can be summed up in two words: The Speech. If the president addresses the nation just before or after his testimony to the Ken Starr grand jury, the Monica Lewinsky scandal will be over.

Since Clinton’s fate will be decided by Congress, not in a courtroom, the only battle he has to win is the battle for public opinion, and that’s a fight he never loses. If Ronald Reagan was the great communicator, Clinton is the greater communicator. Actually, the greatest, as effective with words as Mark McGwire is with a bat. Regardless of his past or upcoming truthfulness, the results of DNA tests on Monica’s dress, her words on Linda Tripp’s tapes, Clinton’s words on Monica’s answering machine tapes or new photos of the two of them together that may emerge, all would be wiped away by The Speech. Not because Americans are that gullible, but because Clinton is that good.

Some forget that his current popularity was not launched into the stratosphere as a result of reaction to the January eruption of the Lewinsky scandal, but in response to the State of the Union address he delivered a few days later. When more Americans than usual tuned into the speech out of curiosity over the scandal, they saw a brilliant performance by a strong-looking president delivering the words and phrases that polls and focus groups told the White House they wanted to hear. With that speech, the president slugged a home run ball that still hasn’t come down.

As someone who makes a living putting language into the mouths of others, I have never underestimated the power of words. In 1984, when President Reagan was on the defensive after a confused, stumbling performance in his first debate with Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, pundits started asking whether Reagan was too old to remain in the Oval Office. One national newspaper even raised the question of senility. But the matter came to a sudden end, fairly or unfairly, when Reagan uttered two simple sentences in the second debate: “Age should not be an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Even Mondale roared with laughter, and the election was essentially over. Words had made the difference.

Heading into the Republican convention in 1988, George Bush was 17 points behind Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Pundits said Bush’s acceptance address would have to be the speech of his life to turn the polls around. It was and it did, sparking an immediate jump in his popularity. Words made the difference.

But when it comes to using words to deflect criticism or blame, Reagan and Bush are amateurs compared with Clinton. His verbal deftness can even be seen in supposedly mundane matters such as when videotapes of him greeting big money contributors at White House coffees surfaced last fall. Commenting on them, Clinton referred to the tapes as “films,” saying that Americans could look at the films and judge for themselves. Any other politician would have called a tape a tape, but Clinton knew the word carried a Nixonian stigma and cleverly avoided it.

I disagree with political observers who refer to any presidential address on the Lewinsky scandal as a mea culpa speech. It will be filled with mea but little or no culpa. For a preview, look back to his admission that he put a marijuana cigarette into his mouth but didn’t inhale, meaning he did it but didn’t do it.

And those predicting that Clinton will justify lying under oath about an adulterous affair as necessary to spare the feelings of his wife and daughter give insufficient credit to the sophistication of his manipulation prowess. The Speech, if delivered, will go far beyond that. I expect it to include heart-tugging passages about his father’s death, his mother’s death, his stepfather’s alcoholism, his brother’s drug addiction and subsequent jail time, meeting JFK, the pain of missing a daughter at a distant college, his wife’s love, his dog and his cat. In short, everything including the kitchen sink and his sympathy for every woman who has to clean one. When he’s finished, there will hardly be a dry eye in the country, and Starr will be wise to not show his face in public for awhile.

Having twice faced off against Clinton as part of a rival presidential election team, I have witnessed his political genius up close. The bad news for Clinton is that an amendment to the Constitution keeps him from the third term he would surely win. The good news is that his amazing ability to distort the truth assures him of a job if he wants it--in the news media.