The Beltway Class System Has Never Accepted Bill Clinton

As sex and personal politics threatens not only to unseat a president but also to irrevocably change the constitutional process, it is worth reflecting upon how this scandal, like previous sex scandals, reveals the relentless triad of race, class and gender. As in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy and the O.J. Simpson trial, it is impossible in this scandal to look at gender without looking at race, to look at race without looking at class or to try as we might (and we do) to see these scandals as only about sex.

The sense of disbelief with which Congress continues to greet the polls on Americans supporting the president points to a fundamental discrepancy in the man whom they see, particularly on issues of gender and race. Mainstream feminists and women senators have been criticized for continuing to see Bill Clinton, a man who admits to a highly risky affair with a woman nearly 30 years his junior, as a feminist politician who has done right by women. News stories have stated that many black Americans see Clinton as the first black president, in part because they believe he is being persecuted like a black man. Politicians and the media may see Clinton as a philandering and manipulative man, but these constituencies see him as one of them.

At the same time, there is no denying that Clinton is the president for whom class has always been an issue. Criticisms of Clinton throughout his political career have consistently deployed class stereotypes of the white cracker or a bubba, someone who can’t control his appetite, who eats junk food, who hugs other politicians with little reserve. The Washington Beltway crowd has never forgiven Clinton for being too Arkansan. And nowhere is this more obvious than in his choice of extramarital women.

The American public is well aware that presidents have had mistresses throughout history, yet they have for the most part chosen women of their own class. (There is the exception of JFK, who is now known to have brought prostitutes into the White House; his class status remains unassailable.) The presidential affairs of the past were conducted with discreet women who could be counted on to play by the rules. Which brings us of course to Monica Lewinsky, and inevitably to Linda Tripp. Fulfilling the stereotypes of the female sexual predator and conniver, this extraordinarily unsympathetic pair have made clear the limits of the concept of sisterhood (and probably done irreparable damage to future claims by women of sexual harassment). Yet their public personas are also about class. She may have grown up in a wealthy Jewish family in Beverly Hills, but Lewinsky has low-class written all over her public portrayals, precisely because she talked, not just to her mother and many confidants, but to Linda Tripp.

It is painful to imagine the collective hours spent by Americans listening to the Monica/Linda tapes. It makes one long for Nixon and Haldeman. At least they were talking about real crimes. Lewinsky is like the embarrassing relative with no table matters who doesn’t understand the social decorum at the nation’s dinner table. And with her book deal she promises to stay long after the party is over.

Yet, coming from Beverly Hills has also given her a sense of privilege. We were witness in the Starr report to a remarkably pushy insistence that she be given a job, not just any job but a job of her choosing. We saw the unbelievable spectacle of a 24-year-old intern threatening the president of the United States if he didn’t get her what she wanted. Roseanne used to joke that she was America’s worst nightmare: white trash with money. But Lewinsky is worse, the perverse offspring of the circus of American politics and media: white trash with a sense of entitlement.

The Republicans continue to parade this spectacle on the world stage against the wishes of the majority of Americans. They may come to regret this, since there are some primary lessons about the taint of trash that they clearly have yet to learn. How many more of them will have to confess to their own behavior like Bob Livingston? These representatives have become the nation’s uncouth relatives, nursing sibling rivalries and washing dirty laundry in public. Despite the fact that his indecorous behavior started this national debacle, Clinton may survive his presidency through his refusal to talk trash, by refusing to talk about sex--unlike Starr, Congress and the media.