Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [459]
He placed the framed document down and concluded, “I take consolation in comments [by political experts] that George W. Bush would not have been elected if we had not impeached President Clinton. The core Republican support would have walked away and said, ‘Nobody believes in anything anymore.’ At least these guys [the managers] believed in something and did their duty.”
Henry Hyde recalled with pride that shortly after losing the vote in the impeachment trial, he had attended an event at an elegant Washington hotel at which Justice Antonin Scalia was among the distinguished guests. The conservative intellectual leader of the Supreme Court had draped his arm around Chairman Hyde and said, “You guys covered yourselves with glory.”
Said Hyde, looking back on that moment with satisfaction and closing his eyes to savor it, “I accept that.”
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton would see nothing heroic in the efforts of the House managers who had pursued him doggedly until they ran out of steam. “I understood them,” he later said. “They’re both ideological and very focused on concentrating power. And they believed they’re supposed to hurt their enemies by whatever means they have at their disposal.” The House managers and Ken Starr, said the former president, had deluded themselves into believing that they were on a divine mission to stage a coup d’état and to replace his unholy administration with one of their own making. “And because they talk in these righteous terms, they get a lot of people to defend whatever they do. Because if they’re righteous … obviously, whatever they do to me is whatever I deserve.”
Even years later, having commenced a new life in New York with a wife who had become a national political figure in her own right, Bill Clinton refused to talk about his amorous relationship with Monica Lewinsky despite his willingness to grant interviews to discuss almost every other aspect of the Starr investigation that had nearly toppled his presidency. Yet Clinton occasionally let down his guard and spoke frankly about the personal impact of this scandal upon him and his family.
Dressed in a brown vest perfect for tramping around his backyard in Chappaqua and appearing rested and fit, Clinton lifted his eyes upward. “There were some really positive aspects,” he reflected. “I mean, you know, if you live a busy life, you risk the fact that a lot of your life goes unexamined, both the good and the bad parts of it. And then all of us have secrets, and we’re entitled to them. But once you’ve been publicly humiliated like I was, you really don’t think you have anything to hide anymore. It doesn’t really much matter what people ever say about you again for the rest of your life. And it’s kind of liberating.”
Clinton took a moment to chew on an unlit cigar (his doctors advised him against smoking after his heart surgery), before adding that the nasty battles with Henry Hyde and Ken Starr had turned out to be oddly therapeutic for him. “And the fact that, you know, my family stayed together and Hillary stayed with me and my daughter got through this, it was all pretty wonderful in a certain way. I mean, the overall thing was terrible, [but] the American people got [it].
“I’d give anything if I hadn’t done it and anything if it hadn’t happened—but there were some unbelievably touching moments. As well as the larger fact that my family came through it and the public stayed with me.”
FOR Susan McDougal, the whole experience of becoming an internationally known Whitewater convict still seemed unreal.
She didn’t blame Bill Clinton for her tribulations. The entire time she was in prison, she had never reached out to Clinton or called collect to the White House. “Although