Presidency Is Perceived as Tarnished, Less Heroic

Twice Rabbi Norman S. Lipson has voted for Bill Clinton. Given the chance, he’d vote for Clinton again.

But would he look to the president for moral advice?

“Give me a break!” the rabbi says. “I’ll quote the Talmud: ‘Never live in a community whose leaders are philosophers.’ They won’t get the plumbing fixed.”

Lipson is the leader of a new and growing congregation in a brand new city, a Pleasantville-on-the-Everglades designed to create a 1950s sense of community in the 21st century.

The rabbi’s reaction--disdain for Clinton’s private behavior, applause for his public achievements--mirrors much of the nation’s response to the saga of Bill Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky: more a shrug of resignation than a cry of outrage.

A year of bitterly polarized debate about a tawdry sex scandal has continued to erode Americans’ confidence in their political institutions.

The impeachment drama has simply reinforced long-term trends: widespread disaffection with Washington, increasingly divisive partisan combat and, most tellingly, the downsizing of the presidency from war hero to national repairman.

Every scandal reverberates across a contemporary political landscape. In 1974, Nixon’s Watergate helped to end the “imperial presidency,” deepen Vietnam-era cynicism about political leadership and launch an era of special investigators and scandal-seekers.

Clinton’s scandal, by contrast, appears to be less a cause for changed attitudes than a confirmation of views already held: The presidency is less heroic than in the World War II generation, Washington is less important than in the Cold War and economic results matter more than personal morality.

“The office has lost a helluva lot of aura,” says University of Virginia political scientist James Ceaser.

Clinton said he wanted to restore luster to public service. But he seems to have added another layer of tarnish.

Once, Americans viewed their politicians as larger-than-life figures, and politics as a sometimes distasteful but still important pursuit. But in this post-heroic age, more Americans view politicians as merely lower-grade celebrities, Washington as Hollywood for ugly people and politics as little more than a cable-network talk show.

“The majesty has gone out of the office,” says Sandra Mandrell, a Weston hairstylist. “The Secret Service guards a president against assassination, but other than that, he’s the guy next door.”

FDR’s Picture on Family’s Wall

When Constance Feldman was growing up in an apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, her family idolized Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“We used to keep a picture of Roosevelt on the wall,” she says, over an iced nonfat latte at Starbucks.

Her family’s Democratic roots notwithstanding, Feldman is a Republican now, angry with Clinton and sanguine about neither politicians nor the society they represent.

She’s been talking with a visitor for half an hour, addressing the nastiness that has seeped through American society in the closing decades of the century.

“When we grew up, people were in awe of the president,” she says. “I hope we can regain that status and elevate the job to the way it was. I don’t want the president to be the butt of jokes on late-night television. . . . I don’t know anybody who feels the presidency hasn’t been degraded. But I hope it is short-lived.”

Trust in government, which declined steadily from 1964 to 1994, actually registered a significant rebound in 1996 and 1997--only to turn downward again as Washington wallowed in scandal.

Pollster Peter Hart found that 43% of those surveyed said the White House scandal had caused them to lose confidence in government.

And in response to a poll question last month that has been asked since 1964--”How much do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?”--only 19% said “most of the time” or “just about always.” (Analysts noted that the poll was taken during Clinton’s televised trial in the Senate, and so could reflect unusually deep--but transient--disaffection.)

It’s not just trust in government. Washington’s yearlong preoccupation with the arcana of the Clinton scandal has baffled many Americans “out here in the Great Disconnect,” as Christine Brinkley of St. Louis, a caller to a National Public Radio program, put it.

The nation’s chief executive, by achievement and example, can help turn those numbers around. The increased trust in government in 1996 and 1997, for example, reflected Clinton’s public successes: a strong economy, a balanced budget, a lower crime rate. By the same token, the decline in 1998 and 1999 in part reflected his personal failings.

Today, the president is increasingly seen as a celebrity--the Oprah of the Oval Office--rather than as a leader waging great battles or a role model for the nation’s children.

“The president should be something of an icon,” says Robin Koontz, a corporate account manager at the health insurance company Cigna Dental who moved to Weston a year ago. “That is where Clinton missed the boat.”

Clinton’s Popularity Weathered Scandal

Like Reagan, Clinton has mastered the art of going over the heads of Congress and marshaling public support for his programs. And unlike Reagan, whose popularity took a plunge when the Iran-Contra scandal struck, Clinton has managed to maintain--and at least in the short-run increase--his own popularity.

As a result, the impact of the scandal on Clinton may be muted. Indeed, he has used the scandal to run against Washington, even though he’s been a resident of the capital for six years.

Political scientists call this “plebiscitary politics,” and it is a recurring pattern in presidential history: a president who casts himself as representing the popular will against the resistance of sclerotic institutions like Congress.

Clinton has been telling audiences that he is fighting for their agenda, to save Social Security and Medicare, despite the Congress, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and the news media.

“Americans have collapsed the idea of honesty and integrity into the principle of a president getting things done. If a president does what he says he will do, that defines honesty,” says Richard B. Wirthlin, a Republican pollster.

“The White House strategy has been smart,” he says. “After Lewinsky surfaced, Clinton emphasized he was just doing the public’s business. The public wants someone who will do what they say. The economic buoyancy is seen as a Clinton accomplishment.”

Among political scientists, there is a sense that the presidency can withstand the challenges posed by any single occupant to its strength and image. In the 1970s, they say, three presidential disappointments--Nixon, Ford and Carter--caused some to wonder whether the institution was flawed; but Reagan showed that the right combination of message, skill and charisma could still command immense power.

“I think the office of the presidency is such a personal and idiosyncratic office that the virtues or shortcomings of one president don’t transfer to another. The sins of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton don’t transfer to the office,” says Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “It’s a very malleable office. There’s obviously a temptation to postulate long-term effects. But that is overly dramatic.”

If the presidency is indeed diminished after Clinton departs, it will be “not primarily because of his own misdeeds, but because we live in a time after the Cold War and after the era when the presidency stood at the apex of American life,” says Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard University professor of political philosophy.

It was Clinton who announced the end of the era of big government, and who made small-bore issues like school uniforms and suburban sprawl the stuff of White House initiatives. During his tenure, the presidency loomed smaller because national politics seemed to matter less.

“We no longer think of the president as the person with his finger on the button--that sobering image of the Nuclear Age,” Sandel adds. “Instead, we think of the presidency in the age of Bill Clinton as one of many sites in a culture of celebrity and scandal. The sobriety, the solemnity of the Cold War presidency has given way to the celebrity and sensation of the contemporary presidency. Bill Clinton may stand as the historic embodiment of that transition.”

Hometown Is ‘Values You Grew Up With’

Amid still-sprouting building lots, a half-finished gas station and a shopping mall welcoming arriving tenants each month, the real estate sales office in Weston greets visitors with this pitch:

“We’re glad you’ve chosen to visit our hometown today. We hope you like what you see . . . the memories it conjures up from your past, the dreams it holds for your future. A hometown is more than just a place, it’s the values you grew up with.”

As it seeks to sell housing for the 21st century, Weston evokes a time when the nation knew heroes and growth knew no bounds.

But when he meets with members of his congregation at Temple Dor Dorim, Lipson says, he detects a sadness when they reflect on the state of the American community.

“I’m not sure where the sadness is directed--at ourselves, at the presidency, at institutions,” he says.

But Clinton should not bear the blame, he says.

“I want a society where communities are protected. That’s what a president does,” he says. “But I’m not going to look to that office or any political office as the seat of moral judgment. We’re dealing with people here. Everybody has got baggage. Everyone has got skeletons.”

As for Clinton, he adds, “he’s doing a good job fixing the plumbing.”

Gerstenzang reported from Florida and McManus from Washington. Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren, Jack Nelson and Richard T. Cooper in Washington contributed to this story.