Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [303]
One of the most interesting side effects of this latest outbreak of scandal, however, was that First Lady Hillary Clinton began rising in the esteem of observers abroad. Said Moutet, “The French like, you know, well groomed, tough-as-nails women who have got a brain.” Hillary Clinton’s appearance on the Today show to fight back against Ken Starr’s prosecutors, in defense of her husband, only enhanced her reputation among many Europe ans. “They felt a bit sorry for her, and they thought she was impeccable,” said Moutet. “She fought for her man; she kept her own counsel. They thought that she was great because she immediately said, ‘This is a vast right-wing conspiracy against us,’ and she moved. The French always suspect that there are conspiracies. And therefore, the worldview from start to finish was that they thought that she had dignity, which is something that the French appreciate, and that she was behaving very well throughout.”
Starr, on the other hand, was increasingly perceived on the other side of the Atlantic as an “inquisitor,” even as a “sort of repressed, frustrated figure,” who was leading a crusade against President Bill Clinton because he was taking perverse delight in it. Michel Gurfinkiel, editor of Valeur actuelles, the leading conservative newsweekly in France, noted: “Most people understood Starr as a disgusting, sex-obsessed puritan or as an equally disgusting arch conservative using any available means to undermine the Democratic president.” Although Gurfinkiel did not necessarily share that view and was appalled that Clinton likely uttered falsehoods with impunity in the Jones case, the whole issue of Clinton’s “lying under oath” as a violation of Anglo-American law simply did not resonate with most Europe ans. Nor could they fathom that this particular scandal would, or should, lead to the ousting of Clinton from office. Noted Gurfinkiel with a faint smile, “The only way we know of getting rid of a leader is to behead him.”
At Oxford University in England, George Cawkwell, a retired Fellow who specialized in ancient history, had interacted regularly with Bill Clinton when the future American president was a young Rhodes Scholar in the late 1960s. Now, the eighty-five-year-old scholar expressed deep dismay that this Lewinsky matter had gotten so thoroughly out of control. Living in a quaint retirement community in North Oxford with colorful flower gardens and plenty of time for reading, Cawkwell had watched the Lewinsky story on the “telly” with increased frustration. The Bill Clinton whom he had known was a likable, engaging graduate student who had come to meals at Cawkwell’s home several times and was appropriate in every way. Seated at his desk in his second-floor study, Cawkwell pulled out a small red notebook, flipping to the entry dated June 19, 1969. “Yes, Bill came to lunch that day,” he said, reviewing the notations that he kept of all graduate students whom he and his wife had entertained. “He had asparagus soup. Cold pork with ham sauce. New potatoes. Salad. And a strawberry almond meringue … bloody good meringue, that was.”
Cawkwell saw nothing in the aspiring young politician that was negative in any way. “There was no suggestion that he was a romping ‘sexo’ then,” insisted Cawkwell. “He was a fine fellow.”
Regardless of whether Bill had strayed from his marital vows, Cawkwell believed that the effort to discredit an international leader in this fashion was “low-level.” As he and many of his fellow Brits saw it, this dogged investigation by Independent Counsel Starr was producing nothing but a black eye for the United