Intimacy of Clinton’s Presidency Blurred Public, Private Issues

The first president to announce to the world that he prefers briefs to boxers now will be the first to defend his presidency over questions even more intimate.

When President Clinton testifies before a grand jury over closed-circuit television from the White House Map Room today, he will be asked questions of such a private nature that they probably would have shocked most past chief executives.

The scandals that drove Richard Nixon from office and shook Ronald Reagan’s administration concerned abuse of power. This president’s judgment day comes over questions of private conduct.

The transformation of the presidency to the point at which the personal has become political--and Clinton’s role in accelerating that trend--has set the scene for his biggest trial.

It was perhaps inevitable that the blend of Hollywood and government that helped Clinton win power and exercise it also would make him vulnerable to the pitfalls of celebrity.

“Bill Clinton is a president . . . in a world where politics blurs with entertainment, where the boundary between public and private life blurs,” said Michael Sandel, Harvard professor of political philosophy. “After all, one of his greatest strengths as a politician was his ability to be at home on ‘Larry King’ and MTV. The scandal in which he finds himself is a reflection of the forces that brought him to the presidency.”

Clinton opened the way for this trend during the 1992 campaign by becoming the first president to imply past marital infidelities on nationwide television, admitting to “causing pain” in his marriage. He maintained that tone in office by answering questions about his underwear on MTV and volunteering to a group of General Motors employees that he would like a pickup truck because of fond memories from when he was a “younger man and had a life.”

“I owned an El Camino pickup in the ‘70s. It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back,” he said in a 1994 speech in Shreveport, La. And then, laughing coyly, he added: “You don’t want to know why, but I did.”

Although Reagan was the first actor to be president of the United States, Clinton seems to have perfected the theatrical skill of connecting with an audience and turned that into a basic tool of governance. And relating to Americans in the days of Oprah Winfrey has meant revealing intimacies.

Ironically, Clinton has delivered perhaps his best performance over the last several months. As he faced the biggest challenge to his presidency, Clinton acted as though it did not exist. “This is an incredibly articulate person who can play the public role and loves it,” said Charles O. Jones, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin.

Never expert at working Congress, Clinton throughout his presidency has waged a sustained campaign to make his case to the public. Particularly after Congress fell into Republican hands in 1994, Clinton went over congressional heads.

“He wants to establish himself outside [Washington] with the public as a celebrity in order to have influence inside,” Jones said.

But by creating the role of celebrity-in-chief, Clinton made himself the target of the same intense interest in his personal life that Hollywood stars face.

“At a time when people have lost interest in big public questions, we’ve riveted our attention on the X-rated soap opera of the Clinton presidency,” Harvard’s Sandel commented.

People close to Clinton have complained that the prurient prying into the president’s sex life is inappropriate. But many analysts said the president was wrong to think he could have a new kind of intimate relationship with the public without the private scrutiny that goes with it.

“In the electronic era, this is the way it’s going to be,” said Colin Campbell, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “The eyes of the world are on you. Sorry, presidents have to live with that.”

The president’s mistake, if he did have an improper sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, was to fail to manage his private behavior so it did not become a public embarrassment, presidential scholars said.

Some analysts suggested that the relationship Clinton has forged with the American people will allow him to recover from his current troubles. But others insisted that the damage is done.

“In the past, we’ve had father presidents and sometimes uncle presidents--figures who commanded a certain kind of authority and to whom we would not ask questions like: Do you wear boxer shorts or briefs, and whom do you sleep with?” said Benjamin R. Barber, a Rutgers University political science professor and a member of Clinton’s baby boom generation. In Clinton, “we voted for and got a brother president. It makes him one of the more accessible presidents. He is more like a sibling, one of us.”

Barber argued that Clinton’s accessibility means that the public is likely to want to cut him the same kind of slack that it would a brother.

“You forgive a sibling for all kinds of things you wouldn’t forgive a parent for,” Barber added. “Six months from now, this will be over and gone.”

But others argued that familiarity also erodes the majesty of office that until now has protected the personal confidences of presidents.

“You’re already seeing a price paid in terms of [effectiveness on] Capitol Hill,” said Leon E. Panetta, Clinton’s former chief of staff. “The longer this plays out, the more damage it does to him, the presidency and the country.”

*

Panetta thinks that--even if Clinton can keep his legal problems out of mind and maintain his performance as president--Congress and the voters may not be able to separate his private life from the public president. “I’m not sure that the public has the capacity to compartmentalize the way the president does. He cannot continue to run and hide from this thing. It will chase him. He may not want to believe it, but this is the most crucial crisis in his presidency. Without question, this is a test of whether he is going to survive politically and historically.”

With two years left of his presidency, some believe that the curtain has already fallen.

“One of the things Clinton hoped for--his legacy--is very much tainted by what happened, even if he maintains himself in office,” said Ross Baker, a political analyst from Rutgers University. “His administration is going to end the way Ulysses S. Grant’s did. No impeachment but a general disarray and a great deal of blame to spread around.”