Clinton Embodies Moral and Econo Excess of ‘90s

Supporters hope that President Bill Clinton’s grudging admission of “inappropriate” behavior with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky signals the beginning of the end of his embarrassment. Backers of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation, on the other hand, view this as the end of the procedural beginning. They suggest the investigation can now move on to prove a broad pattern of lies and impeachable behavior.

The stakes are as enormous as the outcome is cloudy. The president whose future teeters in the balance is more than just another fiftyish male with a zipper problem. How Americans judge his practices and persona will have much to do with how they come to grips--or don’t--with the moral, economic and financial excesses of the 1990s that Clinton, in some ways, has managed to symbolize. And he is a president whose low personal credibility in political circles gave Thursday’s missile strikes a three-word automatic reaction: “Wag the Dog.”

Defenders say the allegations against the president involve personal faults not worth much fuss. Perhaps significantly, backers of Richard M. Nixon said much the same thing during Watergate: that Nixon’s break-ins and wire-tappings were sophomoric stuff compared with what presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had pulled. The Clinton scandals are still far from even approaching a second Watergate--but some of the parallels are intriguing.

Nixon’s overthrow was, in many ways, a national catharsis--and a national political scapegoating--for the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s relating to the Vietnam era, national-security abuses and dirty politics. Clinton could be such a figure for the 1990s. Monday night’s talk even included hints of a Nixon-like self-destructiveness.

Ironically, the same liberals who most defend Clinton--out of understandable distaste for Starr, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and company--could ultimately be the biggest beneficiaries of his ethical unraveling. The little-discussed essence of the Clinton presidency has been to elect conservatives and entrench elements of conservative policy to an extent that would have been impossible had not Clinton’s own scandal links artificially boosted the GOP in the 1994 and 1996 elections.

Now, after the lack of apology in his brusque four-minute talk, as well as the emerging contradictions between his versions and Lewinsky’s, the embattled president will have weakened credibility in calling for an end to the federal investigations. If Starr’s zealotry has been one factor in prolonging the inquiry, so has the president’s mix of lying and stonewalling. This apparently continued in his Monday testimony, with his refusal to answer questions about certain “private” behavior.

Lawyers know what many citizens do not: Clinton’s evasion would not be allowed under the rules of subpoenaed testimony. “Privacy” is the president’s clever substitute for a strategy he cannot afford politically: taking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to answer because of possible self-incrimination.

What he cannot afford to discuss, but may have to ifStarr produces a second subpoena, are details of his actions. The how’s and where’s, while embarrassing, could be legally relevant to several of the five or six Clinton sexual encounters now under scrutiny of grand juries or lawsuits. Two of those--the Paula Corbin Jones and Kathleen E. Willey episodes--involve allegations of predatory behavior: indecent exposure, sexual harassment, groping. What Clinton won’t answer could tend to confirm the Jones and Willey allegations. The Jones and Gennifer Flowers situations also involve parallels in possible Clinton lying to the public or in legal proceedings.

Monday’s tactic of declining to give the whole truth, which Clinton had earlier promised, may or may not confirm pundits’ arguments that he is incapable of telling the truth in such situations--from his draft-board record to marijuana use.

Starr has another possible lie in his prosecutorial gun sights: In the Whitewater affair, in which Susan C. McDougal received a contempt citation for refusing to answer whether or not Clinton testified truthfully in her trial. Then there’s the demand by the FBI and other Justice Department officials for yet another special prosecutor to look into White House practices and misrepresentations with respect to 1996 campaign cash. Starr is said to see a pattern--indeed, it’s getting hard not to see one.

The independent counsel does have a prissy quality that gets on people’s nerves. However, so did many of the Puritans, reformers and ethicists we read about in the history books. This could be another situation where doggedness and integrity outweigh an annoying smirk.

Unfortunately, most of the so-called American establishment--political, intellectual and economic--is caught up in a blatant self-interest that makes Starr, with his church-supper pursuit of transgressors, look half-refreshing. Congressional Republicans, led by Gingrich--whose 1997 ethics reprimand makes him a grungy pot unable to throw names at Clinton’s blackened kettle--hope to benefit from the Clinton scandals in November without having to deal with the tricky issues of impeachment. Indeed, many think the best politics is to keep Clinton in office for two years of ineffective leadership that could offset their own lack of achievement. Moral outrage is reserved for Christian Coalition meetings.

Republican corporate and Wall Street power brokers, along with equally rich Democratic fat cats in entertainment, communications and retailing, have another reason for wanting to keep Clinton in office: With his insatiable taste for campaign funds and glamour, he’s wedded to the world of big money, corporate lobbyists and go-go finance. This, in tandem with the economics of crony capitalism, peso rescue missions and International Monetary Fund bail-outs implemented by Wall Street-bred Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, has nurtured a global economic and stock market bubble of record proportions. The last thing wanted by Wall Street, where loose morals, high hemlines and a bull market historically go hand in hand, is the impeachment of a compliant bimbo-chaser--especially on the dubious say-so of a special prosecutor who sings hymns while he jogs. Indeed, every time it looks as if Clinton might be getting away with his panoply of sex, lies and campaign contributions--Monday and Tuesday, for example--the Dow Jones seems to jump 100 points in relief.

Clinton’s fate, moreover, far from developing in a purely legal context, will be closely tied to the circumstances of the four great U.S. socioeconomic bubbles of the last 15 years: the sexual preoccupation so visible from pornography on the Internet to the adult video boom; the takeover of national politics by big money and big contributors; the lopsided economic boom that has created the biggest upward redistribution of income since 1929, and the swollen stock market. The president, in his own way, is both a symbol and a prop of each of these phenomena--several of which are already shaky. If Starr can prove that Clinton, in addition, has left a criminal trail of lies, obstruction of justice and witness-tampering, the impeachment that could ensue would be an extraordinary event--a purgative that might approach Watergate’s.

The political effects could be surprising. The ultimate beneficiaries of Watergate were the conservatives. When liberalism--out-of-date but restored to power by the fluke of Watergate in 1976--proved a failure in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the result was Ronald Reagan and a conservative era. Today’s liberals tend to cheer Clinton against his would-be impeachers, just as conservatives lined up behind Nixon: because of the nature of each man’s enemies and despite the opportunism of each man’s record.

Realistically, however, the greatest beneficiaries of the Clinton era to date have been conservatives--not the religious ones, but the pillars of corporate America and finance. Clinton favored them in Arkansas and has again in Washington. In 1979, the compensation of U.S. corporate CEOs was 29 times that of their company’s median worker. Now, under Clinton, it’s more than 200 times higher.

Even the GOP Congress is more a product of Clinton’s misbehavior than its own appeal. Republicans won the Congress in 1994 as part of a classic midterm revulsion at a president. The 1996 retention of the GOP majority in the House was buoyed by the reaction against that year’s Clinton scandal--the illegal campaign contributions.

Clinton, in turn, has profited from the GOP Congress. It gives him a foil to use in courting liberals. But it also requires him to compromise with the GOP on legislation--and so he can give his big contributors most of what they want without appearing to run away from Democratic principles. As a result, the center-left tide apparent in recent elections throughout most of the world’s industrialized nations has been stymied in the United States. A crisis for Clintonism might restore that opportunity--if not in 1998 or 2000, at least by 2002.

In the meantime, Starr’s investigation goes on, with the patterns he is pursuing falling a little more into place. In the opera parlance so beloved by politicians, the fat lady hasn’t sung yet--only the chubby former White House intern.