PRESIDENT CLINTON MAY HAVE FINALLY denied flat out that he had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but the country is still waiting for prominent Democrats to say they believe him. Strip away the qualifiers, and public support for the president has ranged from hesitant to ainusingly tortured. Is there anyone in Washington who will take Clinton at his word? Ann Lewis will. “The president denied these allegations clearly, personally, directly,” says Lewis, director of communications at the White House. “And I believe him. That’s easy. When are we going to get to the complicated questions?”
Here’s one: Who besides Ann Lewis can say the same thing? Lewis doesn’t pause. “My phone has been ringing all week with people who are strong supporters of the president,” she says. Fair enough. What are their names? Well, says Lewis, I’d love to tell you, “but if you called them up and said ‘Ann Lewis told me to call,’ they would call me back and say, ‘Why did you give my name to that guy from that right-wing magazine?’ It’s a little hard. I’m trying to figure out how to do this.”
Ann Lewis never called back. Nor were Democrats on the Hill much help. An informal survey of Democratic members of Congress taken after Clinton’s State of the Union speech last week found only one — John Lewis of Georgia — who would state simply, “I believe him.” Seconds after the words left the congressman’s lips, one of his aides thrust a press release into a reporter’s hand. “I believe the president is entitled to the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty,” read Lewis’s official, clarified statement. It ended: “For those without sin, let them cast the first stone.”
Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California wouldn’t go that far. “That’s not the question we’re here to discuss,” she replied when asked if Clinton’s denials are plausible. “We’re here to talk about the state of the union. I’m not up on the latest news and all.” Who, then, will defend the president? Sanchez looked relieved — finally a question she could answer. “John Lewis,” she said, “I heard him say it in a meeting.”
So few people in Washington believe the president, says political writer Michael Barone, that being one of them “is like being a gay lineman on a football team. You just don’t want to start discussing it.” Democrats who don’t believe Clinton are in an even tougher spot. “There are people in the administration I haven’t called because I don’t want to make them lie to me,” says Jacob Weisberg, who is covering the Lewinsky story for Slate magazine. According to at least one person who knows him, even the ever- faithful Harold Ickes, recently summoned back to Washington after his humiliating post-election firing, is still “on the fence” when it comes to the Lewinsky matter.
Why the reluctance to defend the president? “People are cowards,” says one former White House aide bitterly. “Washington is full of cowards.” There are other reasons, of course, beginning with the lack of loyalty Clinton commands among Hill Democrats. But the biggest problem for would-be Clinton apologists is more basic: They don’t know what to say. If Clinton’s denials are true, then what exactly was his relationship with Monica Lewinsky?
An explanation from Clinton himself may be months away. A full accounting may never come at all. In the meantime, defenders of the administration will need a story to tell reporters — and themselves — about what, exactly, went on between the president and his intern. Simply denying the whole thing won’t work; too much evidence exists to show that the two knew each other. Clinton will have to admit to something.
Interviews with current and former White House staff suggest a developing storyline. The president will ultimately concede — either directly or through intermediaries — that he and Lewinsky did indeed share an “emotional relationship,” a perhaps unseemly but non-sexual bond of the kind that sometimes grows between young women and their middle-aged, emotionally needy employers. “All of it reflects bad judgment on his part,” says one prominent Democrat who has been in close contact with the White House recently. “It is bad judgment for any older man to fall into that situation. But it is not criminal. And it is not sexual. It’s a sustainable argument.” Here is the fulllength version of that argument:
It is not surprising that the president would meet and come to know a 21- year-old intern. Thanks to Clinton’s hastily conceived 1992 pledge to cut the White House staff by 25 percent, the West Wing is now teeming with unpaid volunteers doing work that used to be done by professional support staff. Most of these interns are young and ambitious. Some are starstruck, desperate to brush up against the president. Monica Lewinsky was all of these things, and she was spectacularly bad at her job. Lewinsky sent White House birthday cards to members of Congress on the wrong dates. She misidentified congressional committee chairmen in correspondence. In one famous snafu, she drafted a letter from the administration to the Hill that misspelled “public” by leaving out the l.
Lewinsky’s superiors, former deputy White House chief of staff Evelyn Lieberman in particular, were aware of her shortcomings, and they told her so. Lewinsky sought comfort and protection in conversation with Betty Currie, the president’s secretary, whom Lewinsky had met while delivering packages to the Oval Office. Currie is known to be a sympathetic and credulous listener with a weakness for people — women and members of minority groups, especially — who claim to have been discriminated against. Clinton, of course, has the same well-known soft spot for underdogs. Currie introduced Lewinsky to the president, and the two struck up a friendship.
The president often works alone in his office in the afternoons, and periodically he and Lewinsky would meet there to chat. He gave her advice about how to succeed at work. They traded stories about their backgrounds and broken families. Clinton probably paid more than attention to Lewinsky than appropriate. He may even have flirted with her. But his interest in her remained avuncular, not romantic. At some point, however, Monica Lewinsky’s fantasies and desires clouded her perception of reality and she began to misconstrue the president’s attentions. She sent him a letter addressed “Dear Schmucko” and a lewd cassette tape or two. By this time she had been moved to the Pentagon (despite her incompetence, Lewinsky’s friendship with Clinton and her ties to Democratic contributor Walter Kaye had saved her from being fired outright), but Clinton continued to have contact with her. He didn’t know what else to do.
The president was embarrassed. He had let the relationship go too far, and he knew it. Having already admitted past difficulties in his marriage, he also knew that if his relationship with Lewinsky were to become known, the public would be predisposed to believe the worst. Nervous, he confided in no one except Betty Currie. Meanwhile, he did his best to placate Lewinsky. He sent her presents, a dress, a book of poetry with a standard, formal inscription. Afraid to alienate her by breaking ties completely, he called her at home from time to time, even invited her back to the West Wing occasionally to chat.
Then, one day, crisis erupted. Lewinsky’s delusions about her relationship with the president had reached Paula Jones’s lawyers. Fearful of what Lewinsky might say in a deposition, Clinton called his closest friend, Vernon Jordan, for advice. Jordan spoke to Lewinsky. She told him truthfully that her relationship with the president had never been sexual, then signed a sworn affidavit stating the same thing. Yet with rumors about Lewinsky already leaked by the president’s enemies to a scandal-hungry press, there was no stopping the media feeding frenzy. What happened next is probably the worst political smear in history, a tangled knot of false implications, Republican vendettas, and school-girl fantasies that has obscured the essential, innocuous truth of the matter. The president is not only innocent of any actual wrongdoing, his only real mistake was good intentions — he cared too much.
That’s the story, anyway. Never mind the obvious questions it leaves unanswered. (What woman, Kate O’Beirne of National Review asked the other day, would fantasize about an affair that consisted of performing hurried oral sex on a man who obviously didn’t care about her?) “It’s still the best alternative narrative I’ve heard,” says one liberal columnist, who speaks frequently with the White House. It’s likely to be the best alternative this administration ever offers.
But there is a larger problem with the story. In order to accept the Clinton White House’s account of events, you have to accept that Monica Lewinsky is a narcissistic, self-aggrandizing sexual compulsive with a penchant for telling tall tales. To observers of Bill Clinton, that may sound too familiar to believe.
Tucker Carlson is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
