The Clintons are on the verge of returning to the White House on the strength of the character issue.
No, not their own moral character. Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness remains a major public concern a little more than two weeks before the election. Bill Clinton’s is still supposed to be none of our business, just like in the 1990s.
But the Clintons are benefiting from outrage over Donald Trump’s character flaws and treatment of women, a turnaround that must be stunning to some of Bill and Hillary’s longtime critics. Hillary Clinton now speaks of America being great only because it is good, a phrase social conservatives liked to quote when arguing against the Clintons.
In the waning days of the 42nd president’s administration, talk of “Clinton fatigue” was all the rage. Polls predicted and pundits assumed it would drag down Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. George W. Bush ran against him promising to “restore honor and decency” to the White House.
Gore partly blamed Bill Clinton for his loss in that election. Even after the hanging chads and Bush v. Gore loomed larger in the liberal psyche as proximate causes, to historical events that have been revisited in light of Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the election results, the two had a tense meeting about Clinton fatigue’s impact on Gore’s fortunes before they left office.
Indeed, the Clintons left office under the shadow of shady pardons and (exaggerated) claims of pilfered White House furniture. People were getting tired of the Clintons’ sketchiness, even if it didn’t stop Gore from winning the popular vote or Hillary from winning a safe Democratic Senate seat in New York.
“It is a pleasurable experience to watch Bill Clinton finally being judged, even by his own party, for the ethical fraudulence that has characterized his entire political career,” Jim Webb wrote in a Wall Street Journal farewell to the Clintons over five years before he was elected to the Senate as a Democrat. Webb briefly ran against Hillary this time around.
What a difference 15 years makes. Donald Trump has attracted a passionate following during his presidential run. But for many other Americans, Trump fatigue is setting in before the first ballots are even counted. They are tired of the wall-to-wall coverage and the outrage du jour.
Trump predicted some of these problems himself. In a 1998 interview, conducted around the time of the Clinton impeachment saga, the businessman told Chris Matthews he didn’t think he could run for president.
“You think about [Bill Clinton] with the women,” Trump said. “How about me with the women? Can you imagine?”
We don’t have to imagine anymore. Earlier in the campaign, Trump seemed to think he could inoculate himself from criticism on this front by threatening to go further than most Republicans would in attacking Bill Clinton’s checkered sexual history. Since the release of the lurid “Access Hollywood” tape earlier this month, it hasn’t worked (aside from maybe containing some of the damage the controversy could have done in the second presidential debate).
Why has Trump worn out his welcome so quickly? He was caught on tape being a cad and exposed to the public in an October surprise. Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions” leaked out slowly over eight years and took time for the public to get sick of hearing about. We also never heard Bill express himself about women in his own words in that way, even if rumors existed.
Bill Clinton’s early and confirmed sex scandals all concerned adulterous but consensual affairs. Allegations of nonconsensual behavior were made public later and are still contested matters. In Trump’s case, he largely got a pass for his consensual infidelity. The damaging allegations against him have all concerned unwanted sexual advances.
Political bias undoubtedly played a role too. Accusers accompanied by Gloria Allred tend to be taken more seriously by liberal media than those like Paula Jones who appear on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” The contrast has highlighted double standards on both sides, as feminists defended Bill Clinton’s behavior while pillorying Trump and some social conservatives have rushed to excuse Trump after decades of excoriating the Clintons.
Yet two wrongs don’t make a right, even on the Right. Only one side of the political spectrum has found the worst charges against Bill Clinton credible, while some polls show large majorities believing the allegations against Trump.
If feminists were wrong to look the other way with Ted Kennedy, some argue, shouldn’t evangelicals hold Trump accountable? Trump, unlike Kennedy or Bill Clinton, faces significant intraparty opposition and many conservatives are conflicted about supporting him. Scandals tend to take a bigger roll when your own side is upset about them.
Moreover, Trump is running against Hillary rather than Bill. While many of the former president’s accusers believe she was an enabler who aided their persecution, the wider electorate — including voters who aren’t already anti-Clinton or pro-Trump — has, wrongly or not, found that a reach.
Bottom line: not enough people see the moral equivalence or even the relevance of past Clinton sex scandals. Those who do are already firmly in Trump’s camp.
Finally, the allegations against Trump have kept the most current Clinton scandals, which have nothing to do with sex, out of the headlines. Even possible quid pro quos between the FBI and State Department over Hillary’s emails and furtive talk about open borders simply aren’t as salacious to the media and lower-attention readers as Trump’s foul braggadocio to Billy Bush.
So the Clintons, scandal-tainted as ever, are poised to return to Washington because voters think their opponent is a bad person morally unfit for the White House.
If Jim Traficant traveled by time machine from the ’90s to 2016, he’d no doubt say, “Beam me up.”
