Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [12]
Starr’s dream was temporarily thrown off track when Bill Clinton, only forty-six, unexpectedly defeated President Bush in the election of 1992. As the festivities of the inaugural parade dispersed, Starr stepped down as solicitor general and returned to private practice in Washington, joining the prestigious Kirkland & Ellis firm, whose glittering windows provided a bird’s-eye view of the White House, where President Clinton had just taken up residence.
Those who knew Bill Clinton and Ken Starr most intimately and who watched them rise up from humble roots and ascend to the highest peaks of their respective professions did not see ruthless partisans or monsters with horns sprouting from their heads. To the contrary, they observed brilliant, thoughtful, empathetic leaders whose true qualities somehow became blurred by an ugly scandal that came to bind them together at the ankles.
Although most of the world watching the Clinton-Starr saga unfold viewed the characters as good or evil, wearing black hats or white hats, President Bill Clinton and Independent Counsel Ken Starr—a closer look at the historical record reveals—had far more in common than most Americans, including Clinton and Starr themselves, would ever choose to admit.
THE Bill Clinton whom Marge Mitchell had known since he was seven years old seemed destined to leave an indelible mark on the world, with an asterisk next to his name indicating “American success story.” After his mother, Virginia, married Roger Clinton, the family bought a house in Hot Springs on Park Avenue, above the resort area where steaming hot mineral springs and bath houses and nightclubs and casinos established a pulsating, thriving livelihood for the town. Marge and Virginia had become fast friends in 1953 after meeting in a hospital delivery room; Marge was a nurse, Virginia a nurse anesthetist. From then on, they had called each other “Sister” and watched each other’s children like their own. On days off, they fished for crappie together in nearby lakes. Together, the two ladies immersed themselves in the busy Hot Springs life of the 1950s, working and juggling the challenges of young motherhood. As Marge would describe the future President Bill Clinton: “He just was always a fine little fellow, well-behaved, had great manners, ‘yes, ma’am, no, ma’am.’ And he was, you know, always a friendly sort. He liked to shoot basketball goals and so, you know, he’d come home from school and start shooting basketball goals.”
Young Billy Blythe, who soon changed his name to Bill Clinton, displayed a natural love of learning. “He was an avid reader early,” recalled Marge, “and he was reading, studying, you know, went to his room before dinner. And he would come out always happy.” Standing on the back deck of her home on Lake Hamilton, where Clinton had frequently “flopped” as a teenager, Marge was prepared to stick up for Bill any chance she got. She would lower her voice and add, “Now, you know, I don’t need to go into the facts that there were some problems in that house hold, but, you know, as a kid, it did not seem ever to bother him.”
Clinton’s high school Latin teacher, Elizabeth Buck, age ninety-seven, would echo those sentiments. “I always knew him to be a gentleman,” she said, seated in a wheelchair at a nursing home outside Hot Springs. Young Bill Clinton, she said, had an unusually inquisitive mind. “I told him when I taught third-year Latin that we were going to hold court against Cataline [the man accused of plotting to kill Cicero in order to subvert the Roman empire]. Clinton volunteered, ‘Miss Buck, let me be the lawyer.’” The teacher warned him, “Don’t you know you have a lost case before you start?” He said, “I’ll work real hard if you’ll just let me be the lawyer.” She said, “Well, go to it.” Miss Buck recalled with a grin that on the day he gave his speech for Cataline, all the boys and girls yelled, “Bravo, bravo, bravo!” Bill Clinton, it seemed, was born to do great things on a bigger stage.
Paul Root, Clinton’s history teacher at Hot