Clinton knows that he is more tolerated than beloved, and that last week’s verdicts in Little Rock signal the start of all-out Whitewater war. Told the news during an Oval Office political scheduling meeting, Clinton reacted calmly, speculating in an almost academic way about the jury’s thinking before publicly expressing sympathy for the three defendants. Mrs. Clinton made a scheduled trip to California, resolutely talking about kids, not convictions. Meanwhile, the First Family’s aides fretted privately. ““Grenades are going to land,’’ said one senior White House aide. ““Sometimes they’re going to land close.''
The essence of the Clintons’ current political plan was once summarized by the late Lee Atwater, the combative GOP operative. When you’re in trouble, he said, ““play dumb and keep moving.’’ So one half of the strategy is to keep the president ““moving’’ by continuing to propose his own ““conservative’’ stands on cultural issues such as crime, adoption and welfare. For now, the polls are Clinton’s armor. Indeed, there is little evidence that the public, clearly unmoved by Bob Dole’s still-lethargic campaign, is ready – yet – to punish the president for Whitewater. The verdicts produced a flood of punditry, but no shift in public opinion. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 58 percent of voters agreed that the Clinton administration is ““knowingly covering up information about Whitewater’’ – up 6 points from March. But so far, the lack of candor doesn’t seem to bother the voters: Clinton’s lead over Dole remains at 17 points (49-32) in a three-way race. ““Here’s a quarter,’’ Clinton adviser James Carville told his fellow guests on CNN. ““Call someone who gives a damn.''
Against the day that people might actually care, the president’s message will boil down to: not me, them; not here, there; not now, then. White House aides pulled an all-nighter assembling a press briefing book of quotes from Little Rock jurors who said the president had been a credible witness – even though his testimony wasn’t enough to prevent the convictions. The next Arkansas trial will focus on the 1990 Clinton campaign for governor, and the president’s own conduct will be more directly at issue. He’ll have to testify again, producing another videotape his enemies will clamor for. White House spinmeisters have their lines ready: this is about events long ago in another place. And they will note that Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign was fined for violating spending rules.
The White House will argue that any convicted defendant who turns state’s evidence is an untrustworthy rat – and that includes the old friends to whom Clinton expressed sympathy last week. ““No one is going to believe people who are lying because they are under the gun,’’ Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos told NEWSWEEK.
The Republican strategy, for now, follows another Atwaterism: never interfere with an enemy who may be in the process of destroying himself. Dole maintained radio silence about Whitewater. His lieutenants issued edicts – copies available to the press – commanding their forces not to comment. The GOP preferred to put forth independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s sober visage. But the GOP will hit the ““character’’ issue hard, and the convictions will turn up in anti-Clinton ads. ““We want this election to be about the following question: who is Bill Clinton, really?’’ a top GOP strategist said.
Perhaps that was why the president seemed distracted on his Southern jaunt. Given the surroundings, he may have recalled ““All the King’s Men,’’ Robert Penn Warren’s novel of bloody and unforgiving politics in the Louisiana of the ’30s. The bleak message of the book is that any politician, however well-meaning, can be ruined by scandal. And though the voters are not rushing to judge Bill Clinton, that must be a sobering thought.
