Clinton’s legacy of scandal

IF, as they say, politicians, ugly buildings and whores all become respectable with age, then former US president William Jefferson Clinton, who turns 65 today, seems bang on target for veneration in his autumn years.

Certainly, post-White House, the many causes he promotes through his eponymous foundation — the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, the Clinton Climate Initiative, et al — are the very essence of probity and altruism.

It’s all a far cry from the brazen, skirt-chasing shenanigans — most notoriously with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — which arguably defined Clinton’s presidency, and which ultimately led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in December 1998.

Though Clinton was subsequently acquitted (albeit by the skin of his teeth: the perjury charge was defeated with 55 “not guiltys” to 45 “guiltys” while on the obstruction of justice issue, the chamber was split 50 — 50), as one of only two presidents in American history ever to be impeached, such mud tends to stick.

Certainly the recklessness of Clinton’s lifelong philandering suggests blithe indifference to its consequences: an attitude neither admirable nor prudent, much less presidential.

Yet more than a decade after his departure from the Oval Office the aptly dubbed Comeback Kid is still a major player on the world stage, garnering adulation, kudos for his worthy causes, and, perhaps most crucially, respectability.

Nice work if you can get it. So how does he get it?

Certainly the tenacity, hard neck, and sheer, bloody minded obduracy manifest throughout his impeachment proceedings play no small part in maintaining Clinton’s position as apple of the public eye. A much-quoted statement from Clinton’s grand jury testimony in which he questions the use of the word “is”, perfectly illustrates these attributes. Contending that his statement that “there’s nothing going on between us” had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.” How he got his tongue, much less his head, around such mind-boggling obfuscation is another matter entirely.

The steadfast, if unfathomable, goodwill of his wife in the face of such shameless, self-serving waffle is crucial to Clinton’s public image. Having famously described him as “a hard dog to keep on the porch”, Hillary Clinton reportedly blames her husband’s philandering on early childhood trauma. In an interview with New York’s Talk magazine ahead of her successful bid for the US Senate, the US Secretary of State spoke candidly about her husband’s emotionally fraught childhood.

“He was so young, barely four, when he was scarred by abuse”, she said. “There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother. A psychologist told me that being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation.”

The fallout of this “worst possible situation” manifested itself in what Mrs Clinton described as “bimbo eruptions” in the White House — behaviour which, perhaps naively given its relentless ubiquity, she believed her husband had managed to control until the Lewinsky scandal unfolded. “I thought he had conquered it”, she said afterwards. “I thought he had understood it, but he didn’t go deep enough or work hard enough.”

Attributing her husband’s carnal lapse to grief following the death of his father and their friend Vince Foster, Mrs Clinton said she believed he initially denied the affair to spare her suffering. But for all his wrongdoings she was quick to praise his positive attributes.

“Yes, he has weaknesses”, she conceded. “Yes, he needs to be more disciplined, but it is remarkable given his background that he turned out to be the kind of person he is, capable of such leadership.”

However despite such public displays of forbearance, in private Hillary Clinton has been said to rail spectacularly — and sometimes physically — against her husband’s incorrigible womanising.

In her 2007 book, The Clintons At The White House, author Sally Bedell Smith relates that in the early days of his presidency, Clinton entertained the singer and Hollywood actress Barbra Streisand in the White House while his wife was in Arkansas, at the bedside of her dying father. When the First Lady returned to discover that Streisand had spent the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, and had made calls from the president’s private study, the White House abounded with rumours of a major bust up between her and her recalcitrant spouse — rumours not easily dispelled given the unexplained scratch on his face next morning.

But, says Bedell Smith, such outbursts were the exception rather than the rule.

When confronted with tales of her husband’s infidelity Mrs Clinton’s usual response was to dismiss them as politically-motivated smears, and her first line of defence was always to go on the attack.

Certainly without her support, it’s doubtful if Clinton would have got within a donkey’s roar the of White House much less serve two terms there, survive impeachment, and leave office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any US president since World War II.

But despite such accolades, and for all that he seeks to burnish his image with good deeds and worthy causes, a grubby residue remains. More than a decade after departing the White House, cyberspace is positively stiff with smut about Clinton’s Oval Office antics.

Why does Clinton wear boxer shorts? To keep his ankles warm. What’s the difference between Clinton and the Titanic? They know exactly how many people went down on the Titanic. What’s Clinton’s definition of safe sex? When Hillary is out of town. He even gets a mention in British Labour party politician Chris Mullin’s newly published and wonderfully irreverent diary of the daily doings of an MP in New Labour. In his November 4, 1998, entry, Mullin wryly notes: “Frank Dobson, Health Secretary, hotfoot from Washington, is regaling anyone who will listen with the latest poor-taste Clinton jokes. Sample: What was Clinton’s only mistake? Not asking Ted Kennedy to drive Monica home. Jean Corston, MP for Bristol East caps that as follows: Have you heard about the new landing procedure on Air Force One? Please return the hostess to an upright position.”

If it’s true that ridicule is the deadliest form of character attack, then in Clinton’s case the truism that one is not so much punished for one’s sins as by them was seldom more apt. However, given his advancing years, the continued loyalty and support of his wife, and the attributes that have taken him thus far, there’s little doubt that William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of The United States, Comeback Kid, and skirt-chaser extraordinaire, is destined for an eternity of respectability.

A dubious honour indeed.