I would like to be loved no matter what I did, no matter how I deceived, no matter whom I hurt. I would like to know that even if I broke my promises and demeaned my loved ones, even if I brought harm to honest people and played my admirers for fools, I would still be loved — and not by a few, but by many. I would like to be assured that those who love me do so unconditionally, that there is nothing, literally nothing, I could do that they would not be willing to forgive or excuse or overlook. I would like that very much.
But I will never be loved that way. Neither will you; nor will any politician now in the field. The force field that envelops President Clinton — the blind loyalty and unshakable affection of his myriad of supporters — is as close to sui generis as anything American politics has ever seen.
We have had popular presidents before, but we have never had a president who could not abrade his own popularity through stupidity, recklessness, or lawbreaking. We have never had a president whose approval ratings went up even as his trustworthiness, by common consent, went down. We have never had a president who was simultaneously being impeached in Congress for perjury and obstruction of justice and coming in first on the annual list of most admired men.
It is almost Faustian. Political TNT that would explode the career of anyone else leaves Clinton's intact.
The ultimate smoking gun turns up — DNA on a blue dress — but the Clinton presidency barely wobbles.
After leaders of both parties plead for him to tell the truth and show remorse, the president delivers a truculent televised speech that everyone regards as a disaster — and no harm befalls him.
Polls show that a majority of the public believes he should resign if impeached — but no sooner is he impeached than the polls show something else. What explains it?
For Clinton's sake, the most Olympian voices in our public life have muted themselves.
All fall, The New York Times editorialized that a congressional censure of the president would be appropriate only if he "abandons publicly and without qualification" his logic-chopping claim "that he did not lie under oath about having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Clearly he did." Should he persist in his legalistic denials, the Times said on Sept. 16, "we are prepared to see the impeachment process through to a resolution." Four days later, it said it again: "Impeachment proceedings may be painful and prolonged, but they need not traumatize the nation. The constitutional blueprint is sound."
But when it became plain that Clinton would cling to his denials no matter what, the Times abruptly reversed course. "The president's 'low crimes,' " it now argued, "do not meet the constitutional standard for impeachment."
And if the Times's about-face is mysterious, what are we to make of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's? In the fall, New York's respected senior senator was adamant: There was "nothing more important" than dealing with Clinton's perjury and public lies. "We have a crisis of the regime," he declared. "You cannot have this kind of conduct as normal and acceptable and easily dismissed." He opposed any censure deal that would sidestep impeachment. "We ought to get on with it."
Yet no sooner did the matter land on the Senate doorstep than Moynihan came out for censure after all. "We have to protect the presidency as an institution," he announced. A Senate conviction "could very readily destabilize the presidency . . . . Do not doubt that you could degrade the Republic quickly."
It must be a powerful magic that protects Bill Clinton if even Pat Moynihan's integrity cannot withstand it.
I don't buy the argument that Clinton's unsinkability is due to the economy. It isn't economics that accounts for the fact that not one Clinton aide has resigned in anger over being used to peddle the president's lies. And it isn't economics that has kept Clinton from being knocked down by a train of scandals — Filegate, the Travel Office firings, Hillary's commodities killing, Webster Hubble's payoff, the drug dealers at White House receptions, the technology-for-campaign-cash China connection, the renting of the Lincoln Bedroom, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey — that would have flattened any other politician.
So what accounts for Clinton's political indestructibility? Here's my explanation: It is a gift. Men and women who succeed in politics often have a native ability to get people to like them. In Clinton, that aptitude is developed to an abnormal degree. He has a talent for winning and retaining the affection of others in the way that Warren Buffett has a talent for picking stocks and Michael Jordan has a talent for shooting baskets. He was born with it.
The president's critics have reason to fume. He is a cocky and unrepentant liar and has ever been so. He has learned that for him, the bill never comes due. In the long run, Clinton's approval ratings and reputation will undergo a severe correction. In the short run, he will be applauded at every turn. That doesn't relieve senators of their sworn duty to punish his high crimes and misdemeanors. It just means that they must do it without the following wind of popular acclaim.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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