Something like this may have occurred to Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin when, only two days later on January 28, he cast the only Democratic vote against dismissing the charges, and also the only Democratic vote in favor of calling witnesses to the Senate. One says “Democratic” vote, though in point of fact Senator Feingold is the only member of the Senate who is entitled to call himself an independent. In the elections of November 1998, he submitted himself for reelection having announced that he would accept no “soft money” donations. This brave decision, which almost cost him his seat, rallied many Wisconsin voters who had been raised in the grand tradition of LaFollette’s mid-western populism—a populism of trustbusting rather than crowd-pleasing. His later Senate vote on impeachment, which represented the misgivings of at least five other senators who were more prudent as well as more susceptible to party discipline, forever negates the unending Clintonoid propaganda about a vast right-wing conspiracy, and also shames all those who were browbeaten into complicity: turned to stone by the waving of Medusa’s Heads like Lott and Gingrich, and too slow to realize that such Gorgons were in fact Clinton’s once-and-future allies, not his nemesis.
I began this prologue by disclaiming any “hidden agenda.” But I think I might as well proclaim the open one. For more than a year, I watched people develop and circulate the most vulgar imaginable conspiracy theories, most of them directed at the work of an Independent Counsel, and all of them part-generated with public funds by a White House that shamelessly and simultaneously whined about its need to resume public business. I heard and saw the most damaging and defamatory muck being readied for the heads and shoulders of women who told, or who might consider telling, the plain truth. I observed, in some quite tasteful Washington surroundings, the incubation of sheer paranoia and rumor-mongering; most especially the ludicrous claim that Mr. Clinton’s departure would lead—had no one read the Constitution?—to the accession of Bob Barr or Pat Robertson to the White House. (I also saw, rather satisfyingly, the same Mr. Robertson, and later all the fund-raisers of the Republican Party assembled in conclave in Palm Beach, Florida, as they beseeched the congressional party to leave Mr. Clinton alone, and in general to get with the program.) Not even this consolation, however, could make up for the pro-Clinton and anti-impeachment rally that took place in Washington on December 17, 1998. On that day, as nameless Iraqis died to make a Clinton holiday, and as the most pathetic lies were emitted from the White House, Jesse Jackson and other members of the stage-army of liberalism were gathered on the Capitol steps to wave banners and shout slogans in defense of Clinton’s integrity and–yes–privacy. “A Camera in Every Bedroom,” said one witless placard, perhaps confusing the off-the-record surveillance conducted by the White House with the on-the-record legal investigation to which Clinton had promised his “full cooperation.” As the news of the bombing arrived, and sank in, the poor fools had an impromptu discussion about whether to proceed with their pointless rally, or to adjourn it. They went ahead. It is the argument of all these ensuing pages that the public and private faces of Clintonism are the same, as was proved on that awful day and on many others. It is the hope of these pages, also, that some of the honor of the Left can be rescued from the moral and intellectual shambles of the past seven years, in which the locusts have dined so long and so well.
Among the many occasions on which he telegraphed his personal and political character to the wider world, Clinton’s speech at the funeral of Richard Nixon in April 1994 was salient. Speaking as he did after a fatuous harangue from Billy Graham, a piece of self-promoting sanctimony from Henry Kissinger, and a lachrymose performance from Robert Dole, Clinton seemed determined nonetheless to match their standard. There was fatuity in plenty: “Nixon would not allow America to quit the world.” There was mawkishness and falsity to spare: “From these humble roots grew the force of a driving dream.” There was one useful if alarming revelation: “Even in the final weeks of his life, he gave me his wise counsel, especially in regard to Russia.” (One likes to picture Clinton getting pro-Yeltsin phone calls from the old maestro who always guessed the Russians wrong, and who also initiated the ongoing romance between Chinese Stalinism and United States multinational corporations. Perhaps that’s what the calls were really about.) However, toward the close of this boilerplated and pharisaic homily, Clinton gave one hostage to fortune, which I scribbled down at the time:
Today is a day for his family, his friends, and his nation to remember President Nixon’s life in totality. To them let me say: May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.
How devoutly I wished that this prayer might be answered: the foul-mouthed anti-Semitism in the Oval Office along with the murder of Allende; the hush money and the Mafia conversations along with the aerial destruction of Indochina; the utter sexlessness along with the incurably dirty mind; the sense of incredulity and self-pity that rose to a shriek when even the least of his offenses was unearthed. I wrote down Clinton’s sanctimonious words because I was sure that I would need them one day.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
ONE
Triangulation
To have the pleasure and the praise of electioneering ingenuity, and also to get paid for it, without too much anxiety whether the ingenuity will achieve its ultimate end, perhaps gives to some select persons a sort of satisfaction in their superiority to their more agitated fellow-men that is worthy to be classed with those generous enjoyments—of having the truth chiefly to yourself, and of seeing others in danger of drowning while you are high and dry.
—George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical
It is told of Huey Long that, contemplating a run for high office, he summoned the big wads and donors of his great state and enlightened them thus: “Those of you who come in with me now will receive a big piece of the pie. Those of you who delay, and commit yourselves later, will receive a smaller piece of pie. Those of you who don’t come in at all will receive—Good Government!” A touch earthy and plebeian for modern tastes, perhaps, but there is no doubt that the Kingfish had a primal understanding of the essence of American politics. This essence, when distilled, consists of the manipulation of populism by elitism. That elite is most successful which can claim the heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd; can present itself as most “in touch” with popular concerns; can anticipate the tides and pulses of opinion; can, in short, be the least apparently “elitist.” It’s no great distance from Huey Long’s robust cry of “Every man a king!” to the insipid “inclusiveness” of “Putting People First,” but the smarter elite managers have learned in the interlude that solid, measurable pledges have to be distinguished by a “reserve” tag that earmarks them for the bankrollers and backers. They have also learned that it can be imprudent to promise the voters too much.
Unless, that is, the voters should decide that they don’t deserve or expect anything. On December 10, 1998, the majority counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, David Schippers, delivered one of the most remarkable speeches ever heard in the precincts. A leathery Chicago law ’n’ order Democrat, Mr. Schippers represented the old-style, big-city, blue-collar sensibility which, in the age of Democrats Lite, it had been a priority for Mr. Clinton and his Sunbelt Dixiecrats to discard. The spirit of an earlier time, of a time before “smoking materials” had been banned from the White House, rasped from his delivery. After pedantically walking his hearers through a traditional prosecutor’s review of an incorrigible perp (his address could be used in any civics class in the nation, if there were still such things as civics classes), Mr. Schippers paused and said:
The President, then, has lied under oath in a civil deposition, lied under oath in a criminal grand jur
y. He lied to the people, he lied to his Cabinet, he lied to his top aides, and now he’s lied under oath to the Congress of the United States. There’s no one left to lie to.
Poor sap, I thought, as I watched this (alone in an unfazed crowd) on a screen at Miami airport. On what wheezing mule did he ride into town? So sincere and so annihilating, and so free from distressing sexual graphics, was his forensic presentation that, when it was over, Congressman John Conyers of the Democratic caucus silkily begged leave of the chair to compliment Mr. Schippers for his efforts. And that was that. Mr. Conyers went back to saying, as he’d said from the first, that the only person entitled to be affronted by the lie was—Mrs. Clinton. Eight days later, the Democratic leadership was telling the whole House that impeachment should not be discussed while the president and commander in chief was engaged in the weighty task of bombing Iraq.
Reluctant though many people still are to accept this conclusion, the two excuses offered by the Democrats are in fact one and the same. Excuse number one, endlessly repeated by liberals throughout 1998, holds that the matter is so private that it can only be arbitrated by the president’s chief political ally and closest confidante (who can also avail herself, in case of need, of a presidential pardon). Excuse number two, taken up by the Democratic leadership and the White House as the missiles were striking Baghdad—as they had earlier struck Sudan and Afghanistan—was that the matter was so public as to impose a patriotic duty on every citizen to close ranks and keep silent. (Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, nephew of JFK and RFK and son of “Teddy,” no doubt had Judith Exner, Sam Giancana, the Bay of Pigs, and Chappaquiddick in mind when he said that any insinuation of a connection between bombing and impeachment “bordered on treason.”)
The task of reviewing the Clinton regime, then, involves the retracing of a frontier between “private” and “public,” over a period when “privatization” was the most public slogan of the administration, at home and abroad. It also involves the humbler and more journalistic task of tracing and nailing a series of public lies about secret—not private—matters. Just as the necessary qualification for a good liar is a good memory, so the essential equipment of a would-be lie detector is a good timeline, and a decent archive.
Mr. Schippers was mistaken when he said that there was “no one left to lie to.” He was wrong, not in the naive way that we teach children to distinguish truth from falsehood (and what a year it was for “what shall we tell the children?”). In that original, literal sense, he would have been wrong in leaving out Mr. Clinton’s family, all of Mr. Clinton’s foreign political visitors, and all viewers on the planet within reach of CNN. No, he was in error in that he failed to account for those who wanted to be lied to, and those who wished at all costs to believe. He also failed to account for Dick Morris—the sole human being to whom the mendacious president at once confided the truth. (Before, that is, he embarked on a seven-month exploitation of state power and high office to conceal such a “personal” question from others.)
The choice of Mr. Morris as confidant was suggestive, even significant. A cousin of Jules Feiffer and the late Roy Cohn (the Cohn genes were obviously dominant), Mr. Morris served for a long spell as Bill Clinton’s pimp. He and Mr. Clinton shared some pretty foul evenings together, bloating and sating themselves at public expense while consigning the poor and defenseless to yet more misery. The kinds of grossness and greed in which they indulged are perfectly cognate with one another—selfish and fleshy and hypocritical and exploitative. “The Monster,” Morris called Clinton when in private congress with his whore. “The creep,” she called Morris when she could get away and have a decent bath. “The Big Creep” became Monica Lewinsky’s post-pet telephone name for the Chief Executive. “The lesser evil” is the title that exalted liberalism has invented to describe this beautiful relationship and all that has flowed from it.
Mr. Morris’s most valued gift to the president was his invention—perhaps I should say “coinage”—of the lucrative business known as “triangulation.” And this same business has put a new spin on an old ball. The traditional handling of the relation between populism and elitism involves achieving a point of balance between those who support you, and those whom you support. Its classic pitfalls are the accusations that fall between flip and flop, or zig and zag. Its classic advantage is the straight plea for the benefit of the “lesser evil” calculus, which in most modern elections means a straight and preconditioned choice between one and another, or A and B, or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The most apparently sophisticated and wised-up person, who is well accustomed to saying that “there’s nothing to choose between them,” can also be heard, under pressure, denouncing abstainers and waverers for doing the work of the extreme Right. In contrast, a potential Perot voter could be identified, in 1992, by his or her tendency to believe simultaneously that (a.) the two main parties were too much alike, resembling two cozily fused buttocks of the same giant derrière, and (b.) that the two matching hemispheres spent too much time in fratricidal strife. (Mr. Perot went his supporters one better, by demanding that the United States be run like a corporation—which it already is.) But thus is the corporatist attitude to politics inculcated, and thus failed a movement for a “Third Party” which, in its turn, had failed to recognize that there were not yet two. The same ethos can be imbibed from any edition of the New York Times, which invariably uses “partisan” as a pejorative and “bipartisan” as a compliment—and this, by the way, in its “objective” and “detached” news columns—but would indignantly repudiate the corollary: namely, that it views favorably the idea of a one-party system.
Let me give respective examples of the practice and theory of triangulation. The practice was captured vividly in a 1999 essay by Robert Reich, Clinton’s first-term secretary of labor and one of the small core of liberal policy makers to have been a “Friend of Bill,” or FOB, since the halcyon Rhodes Scholarship days of 1969. Mr. Reich here reminisces on the Cabinet discussions he attended in 1996, when the Clinton administration decided to remove many millions of mothers and children from the welfare rolls:
When, during his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton vowed to “end welfare as we know it” by moving people “from welfare to work,” he presumably did not have in mind the legislation that he signed into law in August 1996. The original idea had been to smooth the passage from welfare to work with guaranteed health care, child care, job training and a job paying enough to live on. The 1996 legislation contained none of these supports—no health care or child care for people coming off welfare, no job training, no assurance of a job paying a living wage, nor, for that matter, of a job at any wage. In effect, what was dubbed welfare “reform” merely ended the promise of help to the indigent and their children which Franklin D. Roosevelt had initiated more than sixty years before.
That is indeed how many of us remember the betrayal of the poor that year. Now here’s Reich again, detailing the triangulation aspect of the decision:
In short, being “tough” on welfare was more important than being correct about welfare. The pledge Clinton had made in 1992, to “end welfare as we know it,” and “move people from welfare to work,” had fudged the issue. Was this toughness or compassion? It depended on how the words were interpreted. Once elected, Clinton had two years in office with a Congress controlled by Democrats, but, revealingly, did not, during those years, forward to Congress a bill to move people from welfare to work with all the necessary supports, because he feared he could not justify a reform that would, in fact, cost more than the welfare system it was intended to replace.
So, as Mr. Reich goes on to relate in excruciating detail, Mr. Clinton—who was at that stage twenty points ahead in the opinion polls—signed legislation that was more hasty, callous, short-term, and ill-considered than anything the Republicans could have hoped to carry on their own. He thus made sure that he had robbed them of an electoral issue, and gained new access to the very donors who customarily sent money to t
he other party. (Mr. Reich has good reason to remember this episode with pain. His own wife said to him, when he got home after the vote: “You know, your President is a real asshole.”) Yet, perhaps because of old loyalties and his Harvard training in circumlocution, he lacks the brisk ability to synthesize that is possessed by his spouse and also by the conservative theorist David Frum. Writing in Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard of February 1999, Mr. Frum saw through Clintonism and its triangulations with an almost world-weary ease:
Since 1994, Clinton has offered the Democratic party a devilish bargain: Accept and defend policies you hate (welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act), condone and excuse crimes (perjury, campaign finance abuses) and I’ll deliver you the executive branch of government… Again since 1994, Clinton has survived and even thrived by deftly balancing between right and left. He has assuaged the Left by continually proposing bold new programs—the expansion of Medicare to 55 year-olds, a national day-care program, the reversal of welfare reform, the hooking up to the Internet of every classroom, and now the socialization of the means of production via Social Security. And he has placated the Right by dropping every one of these programs as soon as he proposed it. Clinton makes speeches, Rubin and Greenspan make policy; the Left gets words, the Right gets deeds; and everybody is content.