I keep researching to find why Clinton was able to slip through scandals as (relatively) unharmed as he did. During his first campaign, he had to deal with the Jennifer Flowers story but still got elected to the White House. Obviously, later in the presidency he had to deal with Lewinsky but came out of it with higher approval numbers than Reagan ever had (though he had low “trustworthiness” numbers). I can’t quite come up with an answer - whether, according to all the beautiful poli sci economic models, Clinton would’ve won the election anyway and just had to not be a complete dolt to win (obviously helped by Perot), whether Clinton was the best smooth talker ever and ran a great campaign, etc. etc.
I think the answer might lie in Gary Hart. How did he ruin his given Dem nod with the scandal? I mean, Clinton made it through just a few short years later. Why didn’t Hart? Does Clinton’s charisma really matter that much?
It’s all about the nature of the coverup rather than the crime itself. Gary Hart denied all and even invited reporters to follow him. Whereupon he was busted red handed with another woman. So he got caught in a direct lie and even worse, got caught being a moron.
Clinton handled it brilliantly by confessing to affairs in general, but none specifically. He’s never been linked definitively to any specific woman other than Monica Lewinsky.
The Gennifer Flowers episode broke in the media during the primaries. The Clintons made a 60 Minutes appearance that was widely credited with saving his campaign.
It may be relevant that Hart’s affair wasn’t for quickie sex. It involved frequent episodes in which he left home and spent entire weekends on a yacht, abandoning his wife while drinking with his millionaire friends and a dozen blondes in bikinis.
That’s an obnoxious lifestyle which offends a lot of average people.
If the whole thing had been an SNL skit, it would be forgotten as one that was stupidly over the top.
I never have been able to parse Hart’s thinking on this. Did he really think no one in the campaign-coverage hordes was going to be able to track his rather obvious adventures?
I think Hart just got to caught up in the JFK comparisons and believed reporters would look the other way. He ignored the fact that political journalism had changed since the sixties.
As well as many of the reasons given above Clinton was also one of the greatest politicians of the 20th century. These greats are not subject to quite the same rules as lesser politicians.
I disagree. It wasn’t that Clinton wasn’t subject to the same rules or recast the rules. What happened was he saw that Hart got in trouble for having an ongoing affair while he was running for President. So Clinton made sure he ended all his affairs before he started his campaign.
An interesting what-if would be what might have happened if Hart hadn’t run for President. Clinton wouldn’t have had his example to learn from and he might have tried to carry on with his affairs. And he almost certainly would have been caught and it would have been his campaign that was killed. Would Bush have been elected to a second term? Would Jerry Brown or Paul Tsongas or Mario Cuomo have been elected instead?
I think that there was another change between when Hart committed his affair and when Clinton ran for President, too.
At the time that Hart ran, if a politician had admitted to using marijuana, he’d have been too taboo for popular support (does anybody recall Douglas Ginsburg, the Reagan Supreme Court nominee in 1987 who had to remove his name from consideration because he admitted to using marijuana?). By the time that Clinton ran, he was able to admit that he “tried” marijuana (but didn’t inhale!). We are now at a point where Obama can freely admit to earlier drug use, and it’s generally a non-issue.
So, too, perhaps with marital infidelity. In the mid-1980’s, there was still a popular illusion that politicians were supposed to be honest and faithful, and any deviation from that was a scandal that could sink a presidential run. By the early 1990’s, society may have become jaded enough that a presidential candidate who had been previously unfaithful no longer shocked the conscience.
I’m not saying that this the only change. I agree with others upthread that note that Hart was literally caught on camera with a mistress in his lap, whereas Clinton was able to water down the allegation with vague rhetoric instead of documentable proof. Hart’s affair was ongoing; Clinton’s was (apparently) in the past. Hart’s wife didn’t run to his defense; Hillary Clinton did so.
But it’s also possible that Hart (and all of the Kennedy gossip, and the rumors of GHW Bush’s dalliance with a secretary, and maybe even the mess with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill) softened this country’s morality just enough that being a philanderer was titillating, but no longer a deal breaker.
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup. John Edwards showed that affairs can still destroy you. He lied, impugned his accusers, actually said the baby was a staffer’s… It was just too much. Clinton’s approach, admitting wrongdoing while refusing to confirm specific allegations, was a good one. Plus, he was ultra talented as a politician as others have mentioned.
One forgotten aspect of the whole “affair of the Hart” matter is that the press wasn’t following him, they were following her. Because of a phone call, supposedly from a roommate.
Following the whole scandal, Ms. Rice got a modeling contract with “No Excuses” jeans. This same company went on to give Paula Jones $25,000. (I was not aware of this little fact until just now.)
The man Ms. Rice ultimately married was Jack Hughes whom, I believe, served in the Reagan or Bush one administration is some kind of diplomatic capacity, although I’m not able to cite that right now. (I will keep looking.)
As I often say, sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s a smoke machine.
