WHERE HAVE ALL the Clinton haters gone? Nowhere, really. It’s just that the phrase “Clinton hater,” brandished so often by defenders of President Clinton to dismiss criticism of his ethics, morals, or honesty, has been dropped from the political vocabulary in Washington and across the country.
On the Sunday talk shows, it’s been uttered only once in recent weeks. And that was by a journalist who mentioned the phrase so Republican representative Dan Burton, whose Government Reform Committee is investigating Clinton’s pardons, could reject it. Columnist E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, a chronic Clinton sympathizer, refers only to “anti-Clinton purists” and “Clinton’s ideological opponents.” Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes of the ex-president’s “enemies” — and then suggests they’ve been right about him all along. Even John Podesta, Clinton’s last chief of staff, watches his words now in talking of Clinton’s foes. They are “people” who are “ever present” and who want to “destroy and undermine . . . all the good things [Clinton] did as president,” Podesta said on Meet the Press.
Why the disappearance of Clinton haters? The answer is simple: the pardon scandal. The pardons of fugitive financier Marc Rich, an herbal medicine quack named Almon Glenn Braswell, and drug kingpin Carlos Vignali, among other scoundrels, have outraged Democrats and liberals who in the past rushed to Clinton’s defense. Suddenly they find themselves in agreement with, well, the folks they used to denounce as Clinton haters. This makes it difficult — or at least hypocritical in the extreme — to persist in attacking these folks as insatiable critics of the former president.
For years, however, “Clinton hater” was an effective epithet, used to dismiss criticism of Clinton as so ill-motivated and irrational as to be unworthy of serious rebuttal. And it was used more and more by allies of Clinton as his presidency progressed and scandals proliferated. White House aides used it. Democratic apologists used it. Journalists sympatico with Clinton used it against their conservative foes on TV chat shows. Letters-to-the-editor writers used it liberally. Actually, to the extent the term Clinton hater still has a life, it’s in letters to newspapers and chat rooms.
Two other things have contributed to the vanishing of the Clinton hater. One is the uncomfortable similarity between the pardon scandal and the earlier scandals of the Clinton era — uncomfortable to Clintonites, that is. No doubt they would like to pretend there’s no similarity. But I suspect most of them, privately anyway, now realize what Bob Herbert was bold enough to indicate publicly: that Clinton’s moral and ethical shortcomings aren’t new. Worse, some may have even come to understand that by attacking his opponents in past scandals, they served as enablers and helped clear the way for unjustifiable pardons.
The absence of Clinton spinners in the pardon scandal has also played an important role. As president, Clinton could command an army of apologists and attack dogs who frequently were able to shift the media’s attention to the supposed unsavoriness of Clinton’s foes and away from Clinton himself. They demonized his opponents relentlessly, and, more often than not, it worked. Just ask Newt Gingrich, Ken Starr, Billy Dale, Bob Barr, Henry Hyde, Paula Jones, Gary Aldrich, Bob Livingston, and David Sentelle. Now Clinton has only a few obscure ex-aides to help, part-time, and they’ve been unable to rehabilitate Clinton or demonize his critics.
Just how similar is the pardon affair to the other scandals? Very. Five factors that cropped up in the earlier scandals — sex, money, lying, abuse of power, and collateral damage — were also involved in the pardons. The other scandals include Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky.
Sex? I’ll leave that to your imagination or the National Enquirer. But money was certainly involved in Whitewater, Travelgate, Lewinsky, and Pardongate. It was a wealthy Democratic donor, Walter Kaye, who arranged for Lewinsky to become a White House intern. And of course it was wealthy Clinton donors and fund-raisers who strongly influenced the pardons of Rich and convicted cocaine smuggler Carlos Vignali. Then there was Hugh Rodham, who got $ 400,000 for producing two clemencies. And so on.
Lying is generic to all Clinton scandals, and it’s been ubiquitous in the pardon flap. Denise Rich lied about asking Clinton to pardon her ex-husband. The father of Vignali lied about the campaign he organized — it included heavy Democratic donations — to free his son. Clinton lied by saying Republican lawyers who’d worked for Rich had advocated a pardon. He lied by saying Rich’s role in the Middle East peace process was a major factor in the pardon. He surely misled his own aides, including John Podesta, who thought when they left the White House on the evening of January 19 that Clinton had turned down Rich’s bid for a pardon.
Abuse of power? This, too, is a specialty of Clinton scandals. It’s hard to abuse a power that’s absolute, but Clinton managed. Firing White House travel office employees and falsifying the reason is one thing. Attempting to stash Lewinsky in a government job at the United Nations is another. But pardoning totally unrepentant criminals is a more egregious abuse. Not only did Clinton purposely fail to consult the Justice Department, he pardoned people on the advice of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and the Rodham brothers. The standard grounds for a pardon — remorse and good works — were ignored.
Finally, there’s been the usual amount of roadkill, only this time it includes Clinton himself. In the past, Clinton glided through scandals practically unscathed as his friends and allies were ruined for life. In Pardongate, the Clinton victims include deputy attorney general Eric Holder, Denise Rich, Beth Dozoretz . . . oh, why bother naming them all? The body count is still rising.
No longer free to trash people as Clinton haters, fans of the former president have a fallback position. Sure, the pardons were horrible, but dwelling on them is designed to negate the good things Clinton did as president. This is a favorite line of John Podesta. E. J. Dionne says Clinton’s foes are exploiting Pardongate to wage “one final re-education campaign” against him. Maybe Dionne is right. Only this time, the campaign is working.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
