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Monday, May 29, 2000
Spin-offs of the Paula show just keep turning
up
Nine years later, the news is still bad for Bill Clinton Mark Steyn
National Post In a couple of weeks, the Queen Mother will be 100, but
over in London the BBC's refusing to mark her birthday. Bill Clinton's most
famous pants drop is not quite as old as the Queen Mum but, like the BBC, no
U.S. network wanted to mark its birthday. It was on May 8, 1991, that the then
Governor of Arkansas had Paula Jones brought up to his suite in the Excelsior
Hotel in Little Rock, dropped his trousers, and invited his subordinate to "kiss
it." Feel free to sprinkle the last sentence with as many "allegedlys" as you
want, but, given the 800,000 bucks he and Hillary have had to pony up to Paula
and the additional 90,000 he was fined by a Federal judge for contempt of court,
I don't think the President's likely to be launching any further legal actions
at the moment.
Anyway, like the Queen Mum, the King Bum has put in
many long years of service to the nation. Hardly a moment passes when a case
arising from a prosecution arising from a deposition arising from an appeal
arising from a judgment arising from a suit arising from what Paula saw arise in
that motel room all those years ago is not working its way through some court
somewhere. The ninth anniversary itself passed quietly enough, save for the news
that Penthouse had offered Mrs. Jones $100,000 to take her clothes off. I was
going to do a mean-spirited joke about giving her $200,000 to put 'em back on
again, but then I saw a picture of Paula and she looks pretty good these days.
There's a gal you'd want to drop your pants to, were it not for the cautionary
tale of Mr. Clinton. Whatever Paula's somewhat unflattering testimony about the
President's "distinguishing characteristics," they cast long shadows. Those
chaos theorists yakking on about the butterfly flapping its wings have a far
more persuasive example in the case of Governor Butterball flapping his fly.
Last week was typical: On Monday, the Disciplinary Committee of the Arkansas
Supreme Court recommended that William Jefferson Clinton, attorney-at-law, be
disbarred; on Wednesday, the State of Maryland dropped its prosecution of Linda
Tripp for wiretapping. Good news for Linda, bad news for Bill. But both cases
are spin-offs of the Paula show: Linda taped Monica because she was being
coerced to commit perjury in the Paula case; Bill's "serious misconduct" (as the
Arkansas committee put it) occurred because he did commit perjury in the Paula
case. The fallout from Clinton's pants never ends.
So, in the next month or thereabouts, the petition to
disbar will be sent to the Pulaski County Circuit Court, and the President could
lose his licence to practise law, which he seems to regard mainly as a licence
to practice breaking the law. "It's not right," said Mr. Clinton. "Even if you
assume what the judge says is right, which I strongly disagree with." The
President's idea of a judge is Morris Thompson, who might have been expected to
look more kindly on Mr. Clinton's difficulties. But sadly Judge Thompson is
unable to hear the President's case: This month, he became the first Arkansas
judge to be removed from the bench -- for practising law on the side, illegally
switching licence plates, and writing 59 bad cheques. Geez, how ethical do you
have to be to be a judge in Arkansas? But, alas for the President, spurred on by
Ken Starr's successful Whitewater prosecutions down there, the state's judicial
establishment is in squeaky-cleaner-than-thou mode. Eight of the 14-member
disciplinary committee had to recuse themselves because of their ties to the
President. The remaining six, however, were unimpressed by the brief filed by
his lawyers, in which they vigorously defended the famous presidential
distinction that oral sex does not count as "sexual relations" -- a line that
didn't play quite as well in the Arkansas Disciplinary Committee as it did in
the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Clinton's defenders back in Washington are
outraged. Just over a year ago, during impeachment, they were saying that,
whatever the President may or may not have done, it should be dealt with not in
Congress but in the courts. Now the courts are dealing with it, the Clinton
crowd are shocked, shocked. But, as they like to put it, what do you expect from
those redneck bozos in Arkansas? Obviously, they wouldn't understand that oral
sex doesn't count as sexual relations because down there everything counts as
sexual relations unless it's sex with your relations. The President is
understood to be reluctant to advance this argument because he still has hopes
of running for the Senate from Arkansas in 2002. Slowly, far from the lens of an
indifferent media, Bill Clinton's chicks are coming home to roost. The odds of
him being served with an indictment when he leaves office and led away from
George Dubya's inauguration in handcuffs have dramatically improved.
And yet, as someone who's been waiting years to see
Bubba's butt get nailed, I have to confess to mixed feelings. On Wednesday,
Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer denounced what happened in Arkansas as a
"kangaroo court." I don't know about kangaroos, but the Arkansas decision could
yet boomerang on the Republicans. The President remains amazingly popular, at
least with his own party. "If I ever did what he did," said one Democrat
Congressman at a Clinton love-in last week, "I would be sent to Nova Scotia."
One assumes that, in Washington, exile to Nova Scotia is regarded as a fate
worse than death, or even Arkansas. Unless it's a reference to the Crown's
pursuit of poor old Gerald Regan.
At any rate, there's no sign whatsoever of "Clinton
fatigue," only a very definite "Gore fatigue." For example, Clinton, like Nixon,
is looking to his accomplishments on China to outweigh his scandals, so pushing
through normalized trade relations in the House last week was regarded as a
triumph for his legacy. On the other hand, it's bad news for Al Gore: The
Vice-President got hammered by big union bosses for "holding hands with the
profiteers of the world." "It's time to forget about party labels," said Auto
Workers president Stephen Yokich, "and instead focus on supporting candidates
such as Ralph Nader" -- the anti-capitalist leftie. Meanwhile, as Gore has more
and more problems shoring up his base, Dubya is soldifying his lead among
moderates and independents. The best thing that could happen to Gore is a
renewed focus on Clinton scandals, for the first rule of American politics is
that, whenever Slick Willie's pants are round his ankles, it's Republicans who
fall over. Right now, it's the GOP that's eyeing nervously the Pulaski County
Circuit Court and wishing the whole thing would just go away, at least till
November.
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?f=000529/302142 Bard
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