Bill Clinton has left office essentially unchanged: now, as always, a man convinced that no criticism of him can ever have justice, no fact that wounds his pride can ever be true — and convinced, as well, that any who see things differently are dishonorable. This is a personality disorder, one that once would have seemed incompatible with the law and spirit of American democracy. And yet this disordered man has been our president, and he has successfully bent democratic politics to his needs. Time and again, the nation has been disgusted by Clinton. Time and again, he has indignantly rebuked us for it. And time and again, we have ultimately decided to distrust ourselves, turn on Clinton’s accusers and victims, and let him off scot free — that is, with his perfect vanity undisturbed.
In short, America has “enabled” Bill Clinton and his presidency, as the pop psychologists would have it. The question becomes whether, in the process, we have also enshrined as acceptable — and thus invited — future such presidents and presidencies.
Independent counsel Robert Ray, sweeping up confetti in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, believes he has helped answer this question with a “no” — by extracting from Clinton, in the final twenty-four hours of his White House tenure, a painful confession that he was guilty not simply of private and sexual wrongdoing in the matter, but of public and legal misdeeds, as well. Ray is mistaken. Clinton has confessed nothing that might matter to him and is consequently experiencing no pain.
Under the three-way deal Ray achieved last Friday with Clinton’s lawyers and the Arkansas Supreme Court, Clinton, for having been found in civil contempt during the Paula Jones litigation by federal judge Susan Webber Wright, will have his home-state license to practice law suspended for five years. For the same misconduct, though, Clinton was already facing near-certain disbarment, from which he would have been eligible for reinstatement after an identical five-year period — so this “new” penalty is really just an old one in disguise.
Similarly ornamental is the $ 25,000 fine the now-former president has agreed to pay for having “knowingly” given “evasive and misleading answers in violation of Judge Wright’s discovery orders.” What is $ 25,000 paid to admit those perjuries against the millions of dollars in attorney’s fees Clinton eagerly spent to deny them? Especially since, more to the point, Clinton hasn’t actually admitted perjury at all. For as Robert Ray should know as well as anyone, “evasive and misleading answers,” even if given “knowingly,” are insufficient to establish perjury. And not all violations of a judge’s discovery orders are crimes.
In the course of his press conference on Friday, Ray released a private letter sent him earlier that day by Clinton lawyer David Kendall. Memorialized therein was the president’s formal position on his pending bargain with the prosecutor and the Arkansas court. Clinton, Kendall wrote, while he is prepared to accept them in order to “achieve closure,” believes that his fine and the suspension of his law license are penalties “far harsher than appropriate.” Moreover, Kendall went on, where Clinton’s “evasive and misleading answers” are concerned, “all he can in conscience do is say what he told the earlier grand jury: he tried to avoid testifying falsely.” And so he lacked the intent without which no charge of perjury can stand — and thus remains innocent of any crime.
Appearing in person before the cameras later the same day, David Kendall was bolder still: “He did not lie. We have not admitted he lied. And he did not do so today.” Kendall was right. Clinton has skated.
Not everybody sees it this way, of course. Robert Ray apparently doesn’t. Partisan Democrats don’t, either — for they have cravenly but consistently applauded Clinton’s every successful escape from the normal rules of public life. A majority of ordinary Americans remain happy with the economy Clinton has supervised and have never much troubled themselves to think unflattering thoughts about him in any other context, this one especially. Even some of the president’s staunchest critics are now prepared to let go their complaints and allow him this one last, spectacular deception. Henry Hyde, for instance, declares that Robert Ray’s entente with Kendall about the president’s Paula Jones deposition “vindicates impeachment.”
Would that it were so. But the president was not impeached for his Paula Jones deposition; that count against him was rejected by the House of Representatives. He was impeached for lying to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice, and Robert Ray’s deal is silent on those charges. So end eight years in which Bill Clinton has unashamedly played the whole country for a fool, forcing us, whether we realize it or not, drastically to reduce our expectations of honor in the presidency. It is damage from which America will not recover overnight. Clinton’s is a legacy of disgrace.
David Tell, for the Editors
