Breaking Up Is Only So Hard To Do

The initial public reaction of feminists and other women’s advocates to President Clinton’s latest trouble can most charitably be described as restrained. They have a problem:

How do you defend a man whose relations with individual women, at least in some cases, are widely believed to have been irresponsible, disrespectful, exploitative and profoundly destructive?

And yet how do you attack a president with the best record ever on issues related to women?

Feminists, like other staunch Clinton supporters, are trying to buy time, hoping that the improbable turns out to be true, and rooting this time for the man against the woman.

“We’re taking these latest allegations very seriously, but we feel like there needs to be some cooling-down time,” said Marie Wilson, who heads the Ms. Foundation for Women. The president might be lying, she said, but she hopes not. She stressed that the facts were not yet in. Meanwhile, she said, she does not want to contribute to the media frenzy.

Gloria Steinem asked: “Do I wish that Clinton were blameless? Do I wish that all this turns out to be false? Yes, deeply I wish that. But I am not blameless. How can I require a leader to be blameless?”

Steinem, a founder of Ms. magazine, said she found it significant that Clinton had not been accused of coercing anyone into a sexual encounter. She noted that not even Paula Jones, who has filed a sexual-harassment suit, claimed that the president had forced himself on her.

“He takes no for an answer,” said Steinem.

Referring to Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Steinem acknowledged what she described as the “suspicious power difference” between a middle-aged president and a young White House intern. But she added that 21-year-olds were old enough to “say yes or no.”

Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, like Ms. Wilson, warned against a rush to judgment in the Lewinsky episode. “If the allegations are proven true, this is devastating,” she said. “But somebody may be overstating the case. A week from now we could find out this was a fantasy.”

And so it went in interview after interview. On many issues that women care about, Bill Clinton has been a godsend. He has been steadfast in his support for abortion and reproductive rights, for expanded health services for women, for affirmative action and increased business opportunities for women, and he has put a woman on the Supreme Court. On Tuesday night, in his State of the Union Message, Clinton called for an increase in the minimum wage, which would be especially helpful to women, and for enactment of a $21 billion child care initiative.

“Some of us have been fighting all of our lives for the things that are just now happening,” said the head of a national feminist organization who would speak only on the condition that her name not be used. “I hate the stories that are coming out about Bill Clinton and I believe at least some of them must be true. Is he in the habit of treating women as sex objects? It would seem so. But I look around and I say, ‘What are our alternatives?”’

One frightening alternative, as many women’s advocates see it, is to turn these policy matters wholly over to the Republicans and have them handled by the likes of Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich and Orrin Hatch. One woman described that possibility as a descent into the Dark Ages.

Women’s advocates have decided, in some cases to their great discomfort, that the more important fight at the moment is about policy and not principle, about practical political matters and not the abuse of political power.

A similar view seems to be reflected in opinion polls. The percentage of women with a favorable overall view of Clinton remains high.

It’s true that women have a great deal at stake politically. And the right wing, its Neanderthal agenda at the ready, is poised to lurch into any vacuum created by a wounded Bill Clinton. But Clinton is not the only politician who is progressive on women’s issues. And women’s advocates are likely to learn, probably sooner rather than later, that when it comes to matters of lifelong principle, you can keep your eyes averted only so long.

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