Re: Clinton & Lewinsky
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
Jesus tells his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love....This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you'(John 15: 9, 12). And...
...To answer these questions, of course, we'll need to know more than the president has told us...
...Put aside for a moment what could really get the president into legal trouble--not the relationship itself, but that he may have lied about it under oath...
...He will have lied, set up circumstances in which he knew he would have to lie, and he may have done so under oath...
...In h'uth, most of the press does not love to report on this stuff, a point made by Clinton's THE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGION AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE A'""R, invites applications for the Research Colloquium to be held at Columbia University July 6 - July 31, 1998 Fellows will work on a research project of their own choice in the context of a supportive, critically engaged, and diverse community...
...Even if your predisposition is not to care or want to know about a politician's sex life, hadn't Clinton implicitly promised Americans that he would spare us from further spectacles...
...I knew that Hart's aides and close supporters worried about the public impact of his private behavior...
...And why in the world does the press love to report on this stuff...
...When the press does write about the sex life of a public figure, it's almost always done in the name of some other value whether he's being honest or not, whether he's harassed a woman or not, whether he abused power or not, whether he's "compulsive" or "reckless...
...The reporter, Diana Nyad, was part of a cycling tour of Vietnam...
...Many who had covered Hart in the 1984 presidential campaign (I did not) saw his sexual behavior as--these were the popular words then, t o o - - "compulsive" and "reckless...
...Mostly, the press wanted the stories to go away...
...My hunch is that even Americans who might be forgiving of an indiscretion wanted Clinton to promise them that whatever he had done before, there would be no new public embarrassments and media circuses...
...And we will be judged for what we have failed to do for the Lord if we fail to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those who are in prison...
...Miami Herald reporters did---on the very weekend my magazine profile appeared...
...Did he send her gifts...
...Inquiries to: ARIL, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY 10805 email: aril@ecunet.org tel: 914-235-1439 web: www.aril.org Applications deadline: March 1 st...
...If the charges are false, all he would need to do is deal with the specific details that have emerged: How well did he know Lewinsky...
...Especially in the absence of a perjury charge, there is something dreadful and sadly comic in even contemplating an impeachment rooted in a sexual affair...
...It was masterful...
...And it is on the basis of these acts of love that we will be judged, and, according to Matthew 25, this incarnate love is the only criterion for our judgment...
...instead, he told of entering a village with orders to kill the first person he met who coUld spread the alarm about the advancing American troops...
...He embarrassed himself, his family, and his country...
...Is that our business...
...The critics' read of the press is right, though they're wrong if they think reporters avoid such stories because of any political sympathy for Clinton...
...And that, worse still, he or his agents encouraged Lewinsky to lie...
...If the allegations are even partly true, we will once again engage the messy questions involving the relationship between a politician's sexual life and his public character, the press's role in reporting on such matters, and the obligations of politicians to be honest about what they do, even in private...
...Any true act of compassion--whether done for consciously Christian reasons or not, and for that matter whether done by a Christian or not--is a work in which the love of God is incarnate...
...If this affair did happen, a powerful, middle-aged president slept with a very young aide...
...What did Clinton do wrong...
...High crimes and misdemeanors...
...But turn to the possibility many of the president's friends fear: that he did have some sort of sexual relationship with Lewinsky and has lied about it...
...I still lean more to the "I really don't want to know" school and remain uneasy with my minor role in changing the journalistic conventions on covering matters sexual...
...Well, sex...
...Hart subsequently quit the 1988 race...
...Even then, the September statement served him well: Clinton could always say that he had already said his past behavior hadn't been perfect...
...They either have innocent explanations or they don't...
...Room, board, and library privileges at Columbia, Union or Jewish Theological Seminaries are provided...
...And about sex, the American people have shown a certain mercy...
...Is that a hanging offense...
...By the time I posed my questions, the issue of Hart's infidelities had already entered print, ginned up by some of his opponents' aides but raised also by journalists themselves...
...Commonweal 9 February 13, 1998 opponents...
...And Matthew 25 makes it clear that this love must take concrete form: Whatever we do for "the least of these my brethren" is done for the Lord...
...While they were reluctant, someone finally popped the question...
...If he told the truth, he risked a new media frenzy when the facts leaked out...
...No one studied this history more closely than Bill Clinton...
...That opens up a lot of ground, since few people, public or private, broadcast their affairs...
...I hope it didn't happen...
...I have no idea if she was a Buddhist, a Christian, or an atheist, but the compassionate love of God was certainly present in that moment, and in the specific gesture of taking the weeping man in her arms...
...In September, before he announced his presidential candidacy, Clinton had breakfast with a group of journalists...
...The answer would be refreshingly simple: The president did nothing wrong...
...During a meeting with Vietnamese schoolchildren, one of the tour members who had suffered terrible injuries was asked about his worst memory of the war...
...Here's what Clinton said: "Like nearly anybody who has been together for twenty years, our relationship has not been perfect or free from difficulties, but we feel good about where we are and we believe in our obligation to each other, and we intend to be together thirty or forty years from now, whether I run for president or not...
...c) 1998, Washington Post Writers Group Commonweal | 0 February 13, 1998...
...What about...
...These things are either true or they're not...
...My hope would be that sometime very soon, I can tell my son: nothing at all...
...What is important is that the people being rewarded, as well as those who are being punished, do not know when they have done, or failed to do, something for the Lord...
...For all the problems, truth telling remains the better alternative...
...But these are the seeds of his current problem: Clinton never explicitly promised to be faithful to his wife, but he suggested that his present and future would be different from his past...
...Given Hart's strong statements, any reporting on his sex life could be justified in the name of unmasking "hypocrisy...
...Clinton didn't quite admit anything, but made clear he wasn't pretending anything either...
...He would have to give a deposition and his conduce, both past and present, could be open to scrutiny by everyone...
...It's hard to imagine that Clinton did not know that he risked precisely this if he had affairs in the White House...
...They contend that mainstream reporters (with a few exceptions) have consistently downplayed or ignored the president's sex life...
...If Clinton had no sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, the controversy melts away...
...Given all the forces at work to bring him down, wouldn't new sexual adventures be dangerously reckless...
...Did he leave her phone messages...
...The very enemies Clinton often railed against would not let such conduct pass unnoticed, if they ever got wind of it...
...But whatever happens to Clinton, if this story is true, the answer is yes, he did something wrong, and something stupid, and something sad...
...If he did have any more affairs and lied about them under oath, he would be guilty of perjury...
...Clinton would have no need to perjure himself or encourage her to lie...
...We will grapple with these not as abstract issues, but as concrete questions about Bill Clinton...
...I heard a report on National Public Radio recently that told of a remarkable example of compassion...
...Did he spend much time with her...
...Clinton lieutenants urged reporters to ask him about his personal life...
...One of the children, seeing his tears, began to weep too, and went over to him and put her arms around him...
...Still, I had to ask Hart the questions if my portrait of him was going to be honest...
...In1991 he sought to close off press inquiries by ever so delicately proclaiming that he was not a hypocrite...
...Most of the listeners expected him to speak of his own injuries...
...My fear is that won't be true...
...Before the whole Hart business broke, the subject of what journalists should report about Hart's personal life was a regular topic of debate at dinners among reporters...
...The first person he encountered was a boy of about eight, who was armed, and as the veteran tried to tell the story, he wept: He killed the child...
...I've heard it said, and not just by Clinton supporters: Who cares with whom the president sleeps...
...Certainly there's no comparison with the Watergate break-ins and attempted subversion of the election process...
...If so, why...
...They uncovered his relationship with Donna Rice...
...I've thought about this question more than I wanted to because I'm the reporter to whom Gary Hart issued his "follow me around"challenge in 1987...
...If he's a good president and the affairs are consensual, what difference does it make...
...Once Clinton failed to settle the case out of court, he was trapped...
...The worst thing about the Hart eruption is that it short-circuited a real debate about the link between sexuality and public service...
...He was responding to my own fumbling, uncomfortable questions about his personal life during an interview for a New York Times Magazine profile that I was writing...
...Many of these reporters thought politicians deserved a zone of privacy, but worried that this could lead in some cases to a kind of cover-up, an informal conspiracy of silence...
...And when the Supreme Court let Paula Jones's sexual harassment case move forward, it turned the personal into the legal...
...He would have broken the implicit pact he made to stick to the right and true--or at least to keep things quiet...
...That this has been done before is a poor rationalization...
...the tour included a number of veterans who had been wounded in Vietnam...
...The righteous and unrighteous alike ask, "When did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, sick, in prison...
...The truth is plainer: Most reporters and columnists did not get into this business to write about sex...
...W any parents have had to confront the question I had from my son: What did President Clinton do wrong...
...If no lying or perjury is involved, then the story is about sex...
...In doing so, he risked his presidency at its most promising moment...
...Hart made it easy on everyone when he invited us to follow him around...
...He effectively shut off discussion of sex until Gennifer Flowers announced in January 1992 that she and Clinton had had a long affair...
...If they were worried, perhaps the rest of us should be worried, too...
...The potentially lethal scandal in which the president finds himself will force everyone to figure out his or her own answer...
...u[:E'J" CK|MT@MDIONNE' Jr.& KI~|MSHY ~ ~~~ Breaking the news or making the news...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 3
