1998
Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr
BY JOSHUA COOPER RAMO
We treat our values, like our children, not equally but uniquely, and we
don't like having to choose which one we would sacrifice to save another.
Which matters more, honesty or privacy? Justice or mercy? The President or
the presidency? What punishment is reserved for leaders who would force
such choices in the first place?
Bill Clinton did something ordinary: he had an affair and lied about it.
Ken Starr did something extraordinary: he took the President's low-life
behavior and called it a high crime. Clinton argued that privacy is so
sacred that it included a right to lie so long as he did it very, very
carefully. Starr argued that justice is so blind that once he saw a crime
being committed, he had no choice but to pursue the bad guy through the
Oval Office, down the hall to the private study, whatever the damage, no
matter the cost. One man's loss of control inspired the other's, and we are
no better for anything either of them did.
For rewriting the book on crime and punishment, for putting prices on
values we didn't want to rank, for fighting past all reason a battle whose
casualties will be counted for years to come, Bill Clinton and Kenneth
Starr are TIME's 1998 Men of the Year.
Who has survived this odyssey without losing some part of himself? A public
majority that listed declining morality as a top concern found itself
defending a President who most of them believed had committed a crime.
Republican lawmakers voted along party lines, over public protest, to
impeach a popular President from the opposing party and in the process
dissolved their authority in acid on the House floor. The press corps that
viewed itself as the public's conscience became the object of its scorn.
Hillary Clinton, who for years had been vilified for leveraging the power
of her marriage, was extolled for having handled with grace its public ruin
and so finds herself loved for reasons she hates. Ken Starr, who was once
viewed as too moderate to beat Oliver North in a Senate race, was recast as
a zealot who twisted the law into a vendetta; he finds himself hated for
reasons he can't understand.
Even the Justices of the Supreme Court were rendered unanimously ridiculous
by this whole scandal, having blithely ruled that a sitting President could
be made to stand trial in a civil suit without its impeding the conduct of
his office. Now the favor has been returned, and soon the Chief Justice
will have to clear his schedule in order to preside over the impeachment
trial that the civil suit was never supposed to lead to.
Alone among the players, the one who remained unchanged and unchanging was
Bill Clinton. Many people had long ago concluded that he was a rogue and a
cheat and impervious to pain; this year he was himself, only more so. Even
people who revile his reflexes acknowledge his charm. Ken Starr marvels at
how attractive the President is, like a hunter who wants to pet the lion
before he shoots it.
The very first thing a new President does is put his hand on a Bible and
promise to do what no other citizen can: defend the Constitution and the
country--to the point of sending soldiers to die for them. He had better be
better than the rest of us.
Bill Clinton took the oath, but exaltation is not his style. He has polled
us and tested us and talked to us until he's hoarse and spent, and we know
so much about him, right down to his choice of underwear, that he made it
hard for us to hold him to a higher standard. So instead his allies
defended what was worst in him by appealing to west in us. How
could we not be generous and forgive him? Has he done anything that many of
us have not done ourselves? Are these not private matters? Any gentleman
would, of course, lie about his mistress. Judge not... He's one of us.
Ken Starr, while aware of Clinton's charm, held a different view of his
conduct. Though he would never quite say so, he came to see the President
as the elusive head of a vast criminal enterprise, who over the past four
years of investigation would admit nothing, hold back evidence, block
inquiry--all the while professing to cooperate in public while destroying
his adversary's reputation in private. To the righteous defenders of law
and order, Clinton's not one of us. He's one of them.
That conviction may explain but not excuse the choices Starr made. By
pressing his case, he forced us to define morality down. We don't approve
of adultery. We abhor perjury. But we also don't like political plots and
traps that treat the law as an extension of politics by other means, that
leave us wondering whether we damage the Constitution more by making the
President pay or by letting him go.
We rely on prosecutors to exercise discretion. A novice at the job, Starr
saw no virtue in restraint, without realizing how his zeal in pursuit of
the President would alarm the jury that was called to judge them both. If
nothing else, his legacy is plain: he will probably destroy the institution
that created him. The independent-counsel statute, born of an impeachment
drama 24 years ago, is likely to die in the throes of this one. We may
well, as a result of his efforts, conclude that the government can't be
trusted to investigate those in the government who can't be trusted.
Starr handed his sword to the lawmakers in Congress, where the Republicans'
superior numbers protected them from having to offer superior arguments.
Like Starr, they think that it is long past time for Clinton to be held
accountable for his actions; like the voters, they have strong personal
feelings about the President. Unfortunately for Clinton, the feelings on
Capitol Hill can be poisonous. In a country where everyone assumes that all
politicians lie, politicians themselves regard a certain kind of lying as a
special kind of sin. A President who breaks his word makes it impossible to
do business when the doors are closed and the hands are played and the hard
trading begins. Time and again, Bill Clinton made solemn, cross-his-heart
promises, about taxes he would support and concessions he would make and
difficult positions he would defend, and once they let him have his way he
stepped out and all but said, "Suckers!" and pushed them off the ledge.
So most of them had no appetite for mercy in this season. They feared that
if their punishment stopped at censure, he would claim vindication, light a
cigar and lose not a moment's sleep. When in the final days the last
undecided Republicans said, privately and publicly, just admit that you
lied and we'll let you go free, Clinton would not run the risk of believing
them. The terrain is laid with traps; assassination is a sport; trust
turned to chalk long ago.
When the bombs began to fall, the questions immediately arose: Was Clinton
doing this to stop Saddam, or was he doing it to save himself? The very
charge became evidence against him. A man who cannot be trusted to do the
right thing is not trusted even when he does.
This, then, is the legacy of a year that cannot end too soon. A faithless
President and a fervent prosecutor, in a mortal embrace, lacking
discretion, playing for keeps, both self-righteous, both condemned, Men of
the Year.
COVERS GALLERY: Click here to see the cover image from 1998
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