Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [449]
David Kendall had already gotten Robert Ray to concede, privately, that Bill Clinton had successfully danced through the raindrops during most of his grand jury testimony. Although the president had made several “provably false” statements during the course of that appearance—such as when he continued his word dances and tried to defend his past testimony, that he had never been “alone” with Monica and had never sexually gratified her—Ray had conceded that these statements were largely “derivative” of the falsehoods Clinton previously made in the Jones deposition and constituted “the criminal back-half of the same thing.” The new special prosecutor already had signaled, with a quiet nod, that he was prepared to give Clinton absolution on his grand jury sins. The more serious exposure was still on the Jones case deposition. Yet Kendall was ready for that—the president had already been confronted with those charges in the House of Representatives; that impeachment article had failed. Kendall was prepared to bet that a jury would take this into account in deciding whether to allow prosecutors to pursue Bill Clinton again, on the basis of the same tawdry facts. Kendall absorbed every word of Ray’s soliloquy, allowing his mental gears to crank through the possible pathways this poker-faced prosecutor might take.
At the conclusion of Ray’s one-way conversation that lasted no longer than fifteen minutes, the special prosecutor stood up to leave. Staring Bill Clinton in the eye, the special prosecutor said, “Look, Mr. President, this is what is required. You figure out how to accomplish it.”
Ray had resolved to conduct every aspect of this meeting “on my own terms.” He later stated firmly, “There were only two decision makers, me and the president. The law enforcement had its moment on that evening.”
As he walked toward the door, Ray heard a voice piping up from the other side of the room: “Have you been out there to play?” The young prosecutor turned around. It was the commander in chief speaking to him. Ray swiveled and stared steely-eyed at the president. Clinton continued: “You know, to play golf at the Army [and] Navy Country Club?” Ray was surprised that the president had been quick enough to remember the incident, or astute enough to have his aides locate this one-inch story among the news reports. The new special prosecutor replied with a faint smile, before walking out of the Map Room, “Not since that day, Mr. President.”
THE Florida election dispute in Bush v. Gore had catapulted into the Supreme Court, nearly erupting into a constitutional crisis by the second week of December. In a unanimous effort to patch together a judicious solution, the High Court first declared that there was “considerable uncertainty” as to the basis for the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to order a statewide recount of ballots in the Bush-Gore contest, remanding the case back to the Florida court to clarify whether it had based its decision on Florida law, federal law, or both. After receiving a belated and murky response, the U.S. Supreme Court jumped into the fray, abandoning its effort at compromise. On December 12, the High Court splintered along ideological lines holding, five to four, that the Florida recount needed to be halted because the method in place violated the Equal Protection clause and there was no way to cure the problems within the requisite time frame. This swift intervention by the justices effectively handed the election to Texas governor George Bush by a slim margin of 271 to 266 electoral votes, even though Vice President Al Gore had won a clear majority of the popular vote.
Bill Clinton, watching his vice president go down in flames after the Supreme Court’s surprise intervention, was convinced that Gore miscalculated in distancing himself too much from the Comeback Kid. Clinton considered it “patently absurd” that Americans would vote