Clinton's Pyrrhic Victory

It is perhaps the single most telling moment of the Clinton presidency. Right after the Lewinsky story breaks, Clinton is talking with Dick Morris. Clinton confesses that he did "something" and asks for advice. The question then, as always--in fact, the question of Clinton's life--is whether or not to tell the truth.

How does Clinton decide? They agree to take a poll.

For a man for whom words are what you want them to mean and truth is whatever story the public will buy, it was the natural thing to do. Morris returns with polls showing that if it is just adultery, the public will forgive him. But if it is perjury or obstruction of justice, he's dead. Clinton's response: "Well, we just have to win then."

So out he goes, and win he does. He takes to TV and delivers one of the most skillfully faked bald-faced lies in American history, a lie delivered, in the words of his loyal friend of 30 years, Robert Reich, with "passionate intensity" and "stunning conviction" recalling "the great Method actors of a previous generation." Result? His polls soar. Disaster is averted. He wins.

A former Clinton aide has expressed doubts about the Morris story. But Morris or not, the polls back in January were absolutely clear: if Clinton lied under oath, 63% of Americans thought he should resign.

So Clinton went with the polls. It was win-win. Either he would be able to stonewall forever or, if truth was finally forced out, the more time that passed, the more opinion might change. And change it did. Seven months and dozens of corroborating leaks later, Americans had grown accustomed to the idea of not just a dallying President but of a lying, perjuring one.

In January most Americans were not sure if Clinton was telling the truth, but two-thirds thought that if he wasn't, they wanted no part of him. By August those numbers were reversed. More than two-thirds now thought he had lied, and, after Clinton confirmed that in his televised confession-of-sorts on the 17th, two-thirds no longer wanted him to quit.

And don't think Clinton didn't know. He did not just poll about whether to lie in January. He was polling furiously in August right up to his grand-jury testimony, putting his finger to the wind to determine what story told under oath would fly with the public.

Even now, after the Starr report has set down in excruciating detail Clinton's affair and his corruption of the legal process, the polls are holding. As they say on Wall Street, the news had already been discounted--anticipated and worked into one's calculations.

There is a peculiar American cultural convention that "old news is no news," meaning that if any story, no matter how appalling, has seen some light of day a few weeks or months earlier, it is ipso facto drained of moral and political valence. Sure enough, despite the initial shock waves set off by the Starr report, public support for Clinton has remained steady. Two-thirds of Americans still don't want him to resign or be impeached. In fact, two-thirds approve of the job he's doing as President.

So the seven-month delay worked, didn't it?