Keep An Eye On What’s Important

My first reaction to the recent unpleasantness was: If my fellow citizens could not be outraged by the president’s raising of foreign money to steal re-election, then I wasn’t about to get all worked up over any romance with an adoring intern.

That reluctance to strike a pose of high moral dudgeon was compounded by the initial sleaziness of the gathering of evidence. People who secretly tape telephone calls from friends and colleagues engage in a loathsome invasion of privacy.

On top of that, I was fearful that the stampede to nail President Clinton as a perjurious libertine would trample investigations into more serious political and financial transgressions like bribery and its cover-up.

For example: With the nation hooked on salacious snooping into the number of 900 calls placed from the Oval Office, how many assignment editors knew or cared that Thursday the House committee investigating the campaign fund scandal was to confront Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt?

Here was a Cabinet member desperately trying to explain away the sale of a government decision enriching gambling casinos that then paid off with heavy political donations. His testimony should force the attorney general to finally seek an independent counsel to pursue wrongdoing that the Clinton Justice Department has avoided for 15 months. But a distracted public could allow Justice to let the Riady family, John Huang and Mark Middleton go unexamined.

Such distraction, combined with distaste for snooping, not to mention Saddam Hussein’s perception of presidential paralysis, seemed valid reasons to cool the firestorm.

But then came the standard Clinton response: He denied all, first weakly, then, when that played badly, furiously - but never factually. And Hillary, refusing to believe anything that might shorten her first ladyship, lashed out at a “vast right-wing conspiracy” that somehow induced a 21-year-old to tell a faithless friend how she seduced the president. The Clintons are noisy in denial, silent on facts, a strategy that has worked for them before.

This is cause for sober second thought for those of us who had not been conscripted in the vast conspiracy, and had been willing to withhold judgment about Clinton’s private life.

In several ways, the outpouring of public outrage at the president’s apparent peccadillo, especially among his colleagues and his longtime admirers who are parents, may help break through the stone wall he erected to protect his more far-reaching abuses of power.

1. The cover-up of the personal scandal was patterned closely on cover-up of the Whitewater scandal.

When Webster Hubbell faced a jail term for fraud, and showed signs of talking to prosecutors, he was suddenly steered heavy money from Asia. Vernon Jordan took him to Revlon and arranged a $60,000 “retainer.” He remained hushed.

In the same way, when Monica Lewinsky was required to make a sworn statement in the Paula Jones case, she visited the president, was sent to Vernon Jordan, who found a rewarding job for her out of Washington with Revlon. She swore the way Clinton wanted and passed along “talking points” to influence other testimony. No wonder the FBI men with Ken Starr moved with such alacrity to investigate Jordan.

2. Fear of Clinton’s possible early departure may cause witnesses in other cases to tell what they know.

Susan McDougal can no longer be confident of a pardon if she refuses to tell the truth. Same with the convicts Jim Guy Tucker and Hubbell, who face new indictments. Political adage: When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats.

3. The Clinton stalwarts, now feeling betrayed, are more inclined to betray their betrayer.

Up to now, no insider has turned state’s evidence against the Clintons. An incredible network of lawyers inside and outside the White House has coordinated and enforced resistance to investigators. From Bruce Lindsey and Harold Ickes to the lowliest secretary, discipline seems to have held.

Will the shock and dismay affecting Clinton supporters outside reach critical mess and crack the stone wall? Hell hath no fury like a true believer double-crossed.

Thus may the outrage ignited by a powerful man’s abuse of an individual flip over the flat rock that has concealed governmental abuses of power.

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