In the Lewinsky Affair, Whose Behavior Is Scandalous?

Clinton-bashing has become so common in the media since the “Lewinsky affair” surfaced last January that a call for balanced consideration by a group of university students came as a refreshing counter-voice. Teaching a course on moral development, as I have done at Cal State Fullerton for the last five years, can be as challenging for the professor as for the students.

After the president’s Aug. 17 admission of misleading the public (and most painfully, his wife), there were commentators charging that he had flat-out lied. Some of the pre-law students I have spoken with have noted that his January denial of having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky was legally accurate because the word “inappropriate,” used in his recent address, could mean anything from flirtation to fondling. Some had heard Walter Cronkite address a university-sponsored event in Anaheim, in February, cautioning the audience: “There isn’t a shred of evidence. All we have are rumors, innuendoes and gossip.”

If the president is telling the truth, while his work is denigrated in an orchestrated smear campaign, the detractors are the real threat to the nation. While there is a great diversity of opinion on campus, my sense from speaking with a great many is that Kenneth Starr’s tactics have furthered not America’s interests but his own political and professional agenda.

In the face of Starr’s $40-million inquisition, students have demanded to know whether the “White House scandal” isn’t really just a media scandal.

One history buff even harked back to the Salem Witch trials of 1692, when the sworn testimony of a couple of attention-hungry girls that a local woman practiced witchcraft led to other accusations and eventually to the execution of 19 innocent victims before the lies were recanted.

Among my students from foreign countries, one asked, “Who really cares about a leader’s private life? Back home, the important issue is whether he understands government and can keep the economy stable.” Another worried that in America, anyone can slander and malign the president without fear of being arrested.

But in America we do care, and care greatly, about the moral character of our elected officials. A sexual peccadillo is immoral but not an impeachable offense, while killing is both if we are consistent. Yet when Ronald Reagan ordered an unprovoked bombing attack against Libya in 1986, killing over a hundred people including Moammar Kadafi’s child, there was no talk of impeachment. This despite the fact it was a direct usurpation of congressional authority and may well have led to a Libyan retaliation in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, resulting in over 160 American deaths.

A balanced reporting of the current “moral crisis” should give equal attention to Lewinsky’s admission, “I have lied my entire life,” and to the statement of William Ginsburg, her family’s close friend (and her personal attorney until recently), that Monica “may tell fibs, lies, exaggerations, oversell.”

No public figure is immune from the aggressive attention of those eager to be close to people in positions of authority or fame. But Clinton’s detractors have not been limited to those seeking notoriety.

Ignoring St. Paul’s warning of divine wrath against slanderers and gossips (Romans 1: 29-30), the Conservative Book Club sells books titled “Boy Clinton” and “The Secret Life of Bill Clinton,” sustaining the same line of defamation. Benjamin Hubbard, chair of our department of comparative religion, shared a videotape distributed among the religious right, titled “The Clinton Chronicles.” Without attribution, it accuses Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder.

One student asserted: “The American people have a constitutional right to have the president they elected be free from such undermining and slander, to do his job.” Of particular concern to another student was Starr’s granting of carte blanche immunity to get Lewinsky to reverse her sworn denial: “Probably the most blatant bribe in American legal history.”

If the persistent attacks against the president become so debilitating that the nation suffers at home and abroad, America has been betrayed more seriously by relentless, self-righteous assailants than by anything the president may (or may not) have done in his private life. We know of his success in balancing an economy that the previous administrations brought to near ruin with their $4-trillion debt. We know of his zeal on behalf of education, employment, and health care and of his establishing vital business links abroad. Now he has to direct the nation’s strategies against terrorism. He has earned his high ratings, and if those slip for a time, citizens whose basic concern is for the strength of America as a whole will not be weaned away by slander or gossip.

Starr’s persistent use of strong-arm tactics to extract sworn statements from cajoled witnesses from Arkansas to Washington is well known. His concurrent defense of outright lies on behalf of the tobacco industry (an obstruction of justice?), suggests that the American public may do well to demand an investigation of the investigator.