Maybe Clinton Can’t Gloat, But Others Can

Why not gloat? Everyone, including top White House spokespersons, tells us that the acquittal of the president should not be treated as an occasion for rejoicing, but, sorry, I find myself just thrilled by this turn of events, and I don’t mind saying so.

If the opposing team that tried to destroy the president were just a bunch of good-hearted fellows who’d had a run of bad luck, well, yes, it would be in poor taste to excessively celebrate their defeat. But that’s not the game that was played.

Nope. What we went through these past six years, ever since Bill Clinton first sought the presidency, was a systematic effort by right-wing ideologues to destroy the man by any means necessary. Thanks to the inherent good sense of the American public and the U.S. Senate, those attacks failed, and the basic right of the people to pick their leader was affirmed.

It’s too boring to once again run through the sordid history. But hopefully the current Justice Department investigation will document the historical record of persistent and secretive efforts by a vicious cabal of Clinton haters to destroy the president, all too eagerly abetted by media hounds who lost all perspective.

Now one of those hounds, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, adds details of the tale in an article this week in which he writes of “a handful of determined enemies of the president who not only helped the [Paula] Jones camp but also led a willing Linda Tripp to Kenneth Starr.”

Isikoff reports on a key dinner meeting in an exclusive Washington restaurant on Jan. 8, 1998, involving those who worked for Independent Counsel Ken Starr and members of the Jones defense team. According to Isikoff, the next day, Jackie Bennett, Starr’s top aide, was informed of the meeting and the existence of the Tripp tapes of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky.

Yet four days later, when the independent counsel’s office asked the Justice Department for permission to expand its investigation to include Lewinsky, Bennett is on record as having declared that there had been “No contacts [with] Paula Jones attorneys by [independent counsel’s] office.” That was a patently false statement concealing collusion. The judgment of history will be that the president of the United States was led into a tawdry perjury trap that humiliated this country in the eyes of the world.

But it’s enough to know that every single charge brought against this president--from Whitewater to the absurdity that Vince Foster was murdered and including Filegate, Travelgate and the final charges of perjury and obstruction of justice--proved false. No president has been more thoroughly investigated by such a well-financed, bitterly hostile prosecutor with unlimited power than was Clinton at the hands of Starr. The Senate’s acquittal underscores the fact that no objective prosecutor ever would have taken this case to court.

Clinton’s failings as a husband should never have been made a national issue; they were known to the public well before he was twice elected, and it was only the Starr inquisition that raised the stuff of gossip to the level of impeachment.

Those who argue that Clinton’s philandering represents one side of a cultural war apparently are unaware that extramarital liaisons was a well-established feature of life in this country, extending to the presidency, long before Clinton.

“I wonder if after this culture war is over that we’re engaged in,” the defeated House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) dared mutter, “if an America will survive that’s worth fighting to defend.” This from a man whose own secret extramarital affair led to the breakup of his mistress’ family.

The only cultural war here is one of hypocrisy. Politicians, of both parties, possessed of a rich knowledge of their own and their colleagues’ sexual predilections, formed a chorus of outrage that belied their own histories. So, too, the media pundits who, in many cases, were players in personal dramas more disruptive of family life than was Clinton’s.

I’m tired of hearing Clinton maligned for transgressions that are common among his critics. Hillary and Chelsea have stood by him, and that’s all we need to know. Whatever his faults, William Jefferson Clinton has been as effective a guardian of the public interest in the office he occupies as any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Under his tenure, living conditions for ordinary people have improved at a time when chaos threatens much of the world. It’s about time his critics gave him the respect his stewardship deserves.