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Commentary

4-1

Ethical questions quickly emerged for the new administration. Zoe Baird, Clinton’s first nominee for Attorney General, was forced to withdraw because she and her husband had employed an alien couple as a nanny and chauffeur, paying them below minimum wage, and belatedly paying Social Security tax. [10] Janet Reno, the longest serving member of Clinton’s cabinet, was the third person advanced by the administration to be Attorney General, after Judge Kimba Wood’s name was floated and then also withdrawn for employing an illegal alien and neglecting to pay Social Security tax. [11]

As President George Bush said in the 1992 debates: "there’s a pattern here." Serious questions about Whitewater and other scandals began to emerge.

As a brief summary of Whitewater and related events from 1992 to the 1994 Congressional elections, following are six excerpts from a chronology prepared by Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz, from his book Sexual McCarthyism.

"May 1993 White House fires seven employees in the Travel Office, possibly to make room for Clinton friends. An FBI investigation of the office ensues, allegedly opened under pressure from the White House to justify the firings.

"July 1993 [Vincent] Foster is found dead in a Washington area park. Police rule the death a suicide. Federal investigators are not allowed access to Foster’s office immediately after the discovery, but White House aides enter Foster’s office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files may have been removed from his office.

"January 12, 1994 President Clinton asks Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special counsel to investigate his involvement in the Whitewater real estate venture and its relationship to Madison Guaranty, a failed Arkansas savings and loan.

"March 1994 Webster L. Hubbell abruptly resigns as associate attorney general after allegations are raised about his conduct at the Rose Law Firm. Two of Clinton’s top political advisers call business friends and line up more than $500,000 for Hubbell, including $100,000 from the Lippo Group. Hubbell is later convicted of fraud and serves eighteen months in jail.

"May 3, 1994 Clinton hires lawyer Robert S. Bennett to handle the sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones.

"August 5, 1994 A U.S. Court of Appeals panel refuses to reappoint [Robert] Fiske as special counsel, citing a possible conflict of interest because he was appointed by Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno. Kenneth W. Starr, a former federal appeals court judge and U.S. solicitor who worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations, succeeds Fiske as the Independent Counsel to investigate Whitewater-Madison matters. He reissues subpoenas for documents, such as the Rose billing records of Hillary Clinton." [12]

By the fall of 1994 it had become apparent both that there were serious ethical questions about the Clinton administration, and that a pattern was emerging of apparently withholding and possibly destroying evidence.

In 1994, the Republicans "nationalized" the Congressional elections by running on what they called the "Contract With America." The Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress.

Republicans had not controlled both houses of Congress since 1953-54, during the first term of the Eisenhower administration. Why did the American people give control of Congress to the Republicans in 1994? Elements of the "Contract With America" were certainly a factor. But on the issues alone, with the economy improving and the nation at peace, I don’t think you can account for a 52 seat Republican gain in the House. Not a single Republican incumbent Representative was defeated for re-election. It seems likely that one underlying reason for the 1994 Republican victory was the public’s desire to exercise what they saw as the only Constitutional check available to control the Clinton administration. In short, by 1994 the public lacked trust and confidence in Clinton, and they preferred a divided government, with a Republican Congress to keep the Clinton Administration under close supervision.

Before Clinton was elected, the American people had a pretty good idea that he had been an adulterer. You could characterize the Sixty Minutes interview as a kind of an attempt to "inoculate" the electorate against rejecting them for private sexual misconduct - by generally implying that, "yes, Bill has committed adultery, we’ve worked it out," to avoid having to go into any sordid details. Although some Whitewater questions were raised during the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton was presented to the American people as a man of at least "public" integrity. At the beginning of his presidency, Clinton promised the most ethical Administration in American history. With what we know now, it appears both of the Clintons had things to hide. Many people probably wonder something along these lines: "with all that was in his past, how could the Clintons have ever thought Bill Clinton could be elected President and survive the glare of national publicity? The answer is this: the Clintons thought the Nixon impeachment proceedings established as a precedent that a President cannot be impeached for "private wrongdoing" if it is not egregious. They may have felt that whatever they had done was more or less accepted in the context of Arkansas and Southern politics. Therefore, if push ever came to shove, their past was legally a non-issue. As we have seen, there is a basis for thinking this. However, during the 1992 campaign, the Clintons never attempted to "inoculate" the electorate against rejecting them for a whole range of possible "private wrongdoing" including criminal acts.

How could they have done this? They couldn’t. It couldn’t be done.

The central problem of the Clinton Administration from day one has been a fundamental, unbridgeable gap in expectations. The American electorate, with varying intelligence and education, had and has a generalized gut reaction against the idea of electing Presidents with a past that may have included criminal wrongdoing. Obviously, many people in the media, throughout the government, and in Congress also reject the idea that it is acceptable to have a past-or-present criminal President. However, we also have a post-Watergate generation of a highly intelligent elite in this country, including the Clintons, who believe that when push comes to shove, in the final Constitutional analysis, even a criminal past is legally irrelevant to serving as President if the wrongdoing is "essentially private" and not egregious.

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