THE DEFINING POLITICAL EVENT of 1997 was supposed to be a budget deal between President Clinton and congressional Republicans. It won’t be. In the last two weeks of February, the Clinton scandals finally achieved critical mass and became the dominant story in Washington. The media frenzy over Clinton’s use of the Lincoln Bedroom as a campaign fund-raising tool was merely the most visible reflection of the shift as the machinery of Washington lumbered into motion.
A grand jury began examining illegal foreign donations to aid Clinton’s reelection. Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, agreed to stick with his investigation to the end. The clamor for another special prosecutor to probe Democratic fund-raising intensified. Congressional committees swung into action. All in all, Washington experienced an attitude adjustment. The scandals, previously viewed as not mattering much, are now seen as threatening to Clinton.
For Clinton, there are ominous signs his position may be unraveling. Most alarming for the White House was the decision of Harold Ickes, dumped as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to hand incriminating campaign documents over to a House committee. The papers showed the president’s heavy involvement in using the Lincoln Bedroom and White House coffees for campaign fund-raising. Ickes, a Clinton friend for 25 years, didn’t consult the White House before reaching agreement with the committee. He said he wasn’t seeking revenge, but he doesn’t want to be the fall guy in the fund-raising scandal either. Earlier, he had been fingered as the culprit in a scheme, never carried out, to make a large campaign donation to Clinton taxexempt. As if to warn the White House against steering blame toward him again, Ickes told the Washington Post he has more documents he could make public.
Another portentous sign, familiar from earlier scandals, is the existence of wiretaps made by “federal agencies.” These have uncovered evidence, according to the Washington Post, that the Chinese embassy in Washington may have channeled money illegally to Clinton and the Democratic party (and perhaps to members of Congress). This revelation gives the fundraising scandal a national-security aspect. And it also was bound to grab the attention of White House and Democratic officials. The result: They must be all the more careful to say nothing to investigators that could be undermined by evidence from wiretapped conversations.
Still another bad sign for Clinton is the invoking of the Fifth Amendment by John Huang and Webb Hubbell. Charles Trie and Pauline Kanchanalak have instructed their lawyers not to accept subpoenas. This means either they’ve got something to hide from congressional committees and federal investigators, or they’re negotiating immunity for their testimony.
Among the first to recognize the shift was Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary. Despite a high public approval rating, the president can no longer control the story line in Washington, McCurry has discovered. “You can get in one of those periods when you can’t get anything through the clutter,” he says. “We’re in that now, but I don’t know for how long.” George Stephanopoulos, the just-departed Clinton aide who remains in almost daily contact with the White House, says the fund-raising scandal alone “is going to be a lot of trouble over this year for the president.”
That’s putting it mildly. Stephanopoulos, by the way, free as a bird and making lots of money, is the envy of anxious White House aides he left behind. McCurry may be the next to leave. Asked if he’s staying on, he says, “For the time being. If I resign now, I’ll look like I’m leaving in the face of scandal.” True.
But he and others have to deal with the denials and excuses they have trotted out in recent months. Last August, Amy Weiss Tobe, the spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, sneered at the charge that her party had arranged White House overnights for big donors. That “has become an urban myth, like the alligators in the sewers of New York,” she declared. The White House insisted then that Clinton had had little to do with organizing the coffees with donors or the overnight stays. All that, of course, turned out to be false.
The White House has done one thing right and one wrong in defending the president. It’s a smart move to keep Clinton out front, answering questions and trying to defuse controversy. It probably won’t help much, but it’s better than being hunkered down, looking guilty. The wrong step is the line taken in briefings and on TV by Ann Lewis, the deputy White House communications director. The folks who stayed overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom “were all personal friends,” she told reporters on February 25. “The vast majority were friends.” In a few cases, there were invitees with whom the president and first lady “weren’t friends yet,” but the Clintons wanted them to be.
So far as I know, this line has found no takers in the press. Even Dick Morris, once Clinton’s top political adviser, doesn’t buy it. He joked on a New York radio station that the president would “auction off a place in his own bedroom [and] sleep on the floor if somebody gave him a million.” Morris, however, thinks the fund-raising matter will blow over, if only because there’s a legislative solution in the form of campaign-finance reform. Clinton has fund-raised “perhaps more crassly” than other presidents, but nothing more. So scandal fever will pass, he thinks.
I think not. There are too many separate scandals, some barely explored yet. The Los Angeles Times reported the Clintons sent messages to Webb Hubbell, convicted of fraud and tax evasion, through White House aide Marsha Scott. There’s also the matter of the administration’s decision to change its policy on Guam following big campaign donations (I’m not kidding about this). There’s the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, which the Supreme Court will rule on soon. And this spring, congressional hearings are expected on the White House database known as “Big Brother,” with Scott called to testify. I could go on.
Congressional Republicans have slowly awakened to what Clinton’s trouble means for them. “It’s very likely,” a senior Republican says, that “the world will be a different place a month from now.” As the scandals play out, Clinton will become weaker. He’ll have less leverage in dealings with Republicans. His demands will be easier to ignore. He may not have the press on his side, as he did in 1995 and 1996.
So the Republican strategy is, as one Senate aide put it, “to slow-walk reality.” The terms of any accords with Clinton are likely to be more favorable for Republicans later rather than sooner. House speaker Newt Gingrich was quoted as telling Republicans privately, “Relax. We’ve got time. Just let things unfold.” In truth, this was already the strategy of Republicans, given their lack of a compelling agenda. Now, they’re even less likely to move.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
