President Clinton's Problem

The real question is not "Do we respect him?" It is "Does he respect us?"

Reader's Digest, December 1998

For months I have kept on my desk a picture from a tablid. It is of a close friend of President Clinton, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and the actress Markie Post. They are laughing and holding hands as they jump up and down in the Lincoln Bedroom. They are jumping up and down on Lincoln's bed.

I thought: something's wrong with these people; they lack thought and dignity. But most of all they seem to lac respect, a sense of awe. Not the awe that can cripple you with a false sense of your smallness, but the awe that makes you bigger, that makes you reach higher as if in tribute to some unseen greatness around you.

That, it seems to me, is Mr. Clinton's problem -- a fundamental lack of respect for his country, for its citizens, for his colleagues, for all of us. The pollsters have it wrong when, seeking to determine whether he can continue to govern, they ask, "Do you respect the President?" THe real question is "Do you think he has any respect for us?"

I think he has shown us, with chilling finality, that he does not. I believe he demonstrated that people and principles are, to him, objects to be manipulated.

In the days after Ken Starr's report to Congress, President Clinton told evangelical ministers at a prayer breakfast that he had reached "the rock bottom truth of where I am." He said he had "sinned." He bit his lip, lowered his moist eyes and said his spirit is "broken." That night he went to a raucous reception where he laughed gaily, waved and announced, "Hillary and I have been ... just lapping this up!"

The problem is not that he is an actor. As an actor he puts not only Ronald Reagan to shame, but Laurence Oliver. The problem is that he thinks people will believe anything, that if he says a thing it is true. He absorbs his lies, and becomes them. The country suffers for this.

Mr. Clinton seems -- and this is an amazing thing to say about a President -- to lack a sense of patriotism, a love of country, a protectiveness toward her. He dupes the Secretary of State, who must be America's credible voice in the world, into defending him to the public and press. He lets the First Lady go on television, where she denies the Lewinsky charges and says, "Some folks are going to have a lot to answer for."

After the Lewinsky story breaks, he asks a pollster, a man famous for letting a prostitute listen in while he talked by phone with the President, if he should tell the truth. When the pollster tells him no, the President responds, "Well, we just have to win then."

In his comments, it is clear that the most important thing to BIll Clinton is, now and always, BIll Clinton. He even spoke of the scandal as his "journey." It is interesting that of the women Bill Clinton has been involved with, it is Ms. Lewinsky who has done the most damage. The reason, I think, is that in picking her he made a crucial mistake: he chose someone much like himself, with as grand a sense of entitlement as his own. At the end of the affair she demands that he feel contrition; she also demands a job with these words: "I don't want to have to work for this position. ... I just want it to be given to me."

And he picked someone who is, like himself, and exhibitionist. It never occurred to Ms. Lewinsky to be discreet about their affair, not to tell a dozen friends and family. But then discretion has never really occurred to him either.

I saw the President at one of those big Washington hotel dinners a few years ago, sometime after he talked about his underwear on TV. He was in full self-deprecating mode, teasing himself for his mistake.

But he went on a little too long; he talked too much about it, and the crowd seemed to be thinking what I was: Doesn't he know that as he stands up there going on and on about his shorts, we are starting to imagine him in his shorts? The poor man doesn't know.

And then I thought: Yes, he does! He wants us to imagine him like that. And he has lived out his Presidency so we can.

Jesse Jackson once said, "God isn't finished with me yet," and it was beautiful because it was true. God isn't finished with any of us. Maybe he will raise up Bill Clinton and he make him a saint, a great one. Maybe he will make Bill Clinton's life an example of stunning redemption. But for now, and now is what we have, Bill Clinton is not wise enough, mature enough, stable enough -- he is not good enough -- to be the American President.

by Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. She is the author of, most recently, Simply Speaking (Regan Books, 1998).