The Paula Jones Card

by Alexander Cockburn

In truth, neither side has covered itself with anything approaching glory, and it's worth looking at why this is the case. Scandals tend to hang around in the body politic like post-operative infections, with the injured parties neither forgetting nor forgiving, and resentment is always available.

Of course, half the art of politics is misrepresentation of one's opponents, but the problem with trying this on someone as politically agile and unprincipled as Bill Clinton is that he could effortlessly outmaneuver the misrepresenters. Already firmly anchored right- of- center, all he had to do was take -- with the assistance of Dick Morris -- a couple of sidesteps even further to the right, and his opponents had nothing left to do but look foolish. The right paid the penalty for all those profitable years of infantile abuse of Jimmy Carter, and of Democratic presidential candidates through the 1980s, as commies abroad and welfare-loving tax-hikers at home. They had forgotten how to deal in the language of political reality in the 1990s, and they got called on it.

So, they turned to the bludgeon of scandal and, of all insane ideas, tried to whack Bill and Hillary with the death of Vince Foster. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the clients of Richard Mellon Scaife, the massed legions of Jerry Falwell and the right-wing radio hosts all plunged into that swamp and, as credible accusers, finished themselves off.

I've never actually managed to figure out why the right went so nuts over Bill and Hillary. They're everything the pro-business, right-wing crowd would ever want to see in the White House, right down to HRC as a martyred helpmeet, a latter-day Pat Nixon, smiling loyally as her husband sweats his way through the denials. It was Hillary who smeared the late Tammy Wynette, saying back in 1992, "I'm no little woman standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette." At least before she died, Tammy had the last laugh.

So, with the Christian Coalition reduced to a defiant rump, and under the leadership of a man, Newt Gingrich, beloved by corporate donors but mistrusted by the public at large, the right somehow ended up in the ludicrous situation of having the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit as its main card to play in this election year of 1998.

Then came the sex scandals and the women's groups, who nearly destroyed Clarence Thomas and who chased Bob Packwood out of Congress but have, with very few exceptions, kept their mouths shut about a man convincingly accused, with a wealth of detail, of advances far exceeding in abrupt crudity anything alleged to Thomas or Packwood. Wright may have been construing the harassment laws correctly, but if the beneficiary of her ruling had been a Republican, the leaders of the major liberal groups would today be calling for her removal from the bench.

It's no use for the liberals to say Clinton has been the object of mere slur and innuendo. There are just too many accounts -- whether it's Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey or Cristy Zercher or Juanita Broadrick -- not to believe that we have here a man, a public man, who is oft-times pretty much out of control and capable of very ugly behavior. The behavior may not warrant political disgrace, but in terms of hypocrisy, the liberals will pay a heavy price for not making more of a stink about his conduct. They've become as complaisant as Hillary.

Watergate was a good scandal. It led to a re-examination of secrecy, of money in politics, of abuses of power -- whether by the White House or the CIA. It produced good laws. The Jones/Lewinsky scandals have been vacuous. They've engendered nothing but hypocrisy.