Bill Clinton: I Misled People

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When Chelsea Clinton was six years old, her parents used to make her cry in hopes that they could make her tough. Dad was in the middle of an especially ugly re-election fight, his enemies were drawing blood, and so they all tried a game at the dinner table: Chelsea would pretend that she was her father, making speeches about why people should vote for her, and then he would attack her, say really mean things, so she would learn to protect herself. At first the exercises reduced the little girl to tears: "Why would anybody say things like that?" But after a while, Hillary later wrote, "she gradually gained mastery over her emotions"; she came to understand people's dark motives; and, finally, she would come back fighting, fully prepared to handle the wicked lies that enemies might tell.

What would it take to prepare her, so many years later, for the possibility that this time, the enemies were the ones telling the truth? And what would it take to prepare us?

If we Americans watched and weighed Bill Clinton more closely this week than we ever have, we may have been watching Hillary even more carefully. Before the drama could play out in prime time, it had to play out in private, and at times it felt as though she invited us into her kitchen to role-play some more. You think this has been hard to discuss with your children? she would say. Imagine what we have had to say to our own. You hate this coarse and vulgar story? You at least can turn off the TV; you don't have to sleep with it.

Since last weekend, the Clinton circle has been betting that Americans would take their cues from Hillary. They put out the word that the First Lady did not know about her husband's betrayal until late last week. By Saturday she had disappeared. On Sunday morning she went to church with him. On Sunday night she said a prayer for him. On Monday she lit a fire under him. And on Tuesday, after her office issued a statement that "clearly, this is not the best day in Mrs. Clinton's life," she and her daughter took him by the hand and walked across the South Lawn into the most interesting summer vacation we may never hear about.

But there was, of course, a crucial difference for us. Hillary Clinton's decision about whether to believe him or not, forgive him or not, was born of their life and her vows. We didn't marry him; we hired him. She signed on for better or worse. We elected him to make things better.

When he decided three weeks ago to testify before Kenneth Starr's grand jury, Clinton was agreeing to make three of the hardest speeches of his life: to his wife and daughter, to the grand jury and to the rest of us. Before that was over, the Commentariat would also need to be fed, to satisfy its hunger for a story line with drama and pathos and a denouement, perhaps a body or two, certainly some blood and guts. By last Sunday, when the speech was nearly at hand and the predictions were buzzing like cicadas over the capital, there came a moment when private pain could even solve a political problem, and Clinton could argue that he had already suffered enough and should be released on probation with credit for time served.