All Too Human: A Political Education (42 page)

Mark and I had shared an office during the Dukakis campaign, where he served as chief joke writer. Hoping to coin a phrase as memorable as “Where's the beef?” or “Read my lips,” Mark, Andy Savitz, and I spent several afternoons crowded around a single computer screen, collaborating on dozens of possible debate lines. But the only one Dukakis actually used was one of mine (“If I had a nickel for every time you called me a liberal, Mr. Bush, I'd qualify for one of your tax breaks for the rich”). Given the fact that Katz was the only real comic in our group, that didn't seem quite fair. So when Mark was interviewing for advertising jobs, we made a trade. He could claim my line as his in return for a mild form of indentured servitude. For the rest of my life, whenever I needed a joke, Mark had to write me one:

“As you can imagine, my mom was quite upset with
Time
. ‘George,’ she said, ‘you really should've gotten a haircut if you knew you were going to be on the cover.’”

Hm. I thought that was pretty good. Better hurry to the next one
.

“Jay Stephens has nothing to worry about. I don't get even, I just get mad.”

My banquet jokes didn't even draw scattered giggles — just nervous silence. Only then did I realize how badly I had misread my audience. Although we were in the basement of the Washington Hilton, this wasn't your standard Washington roast — where political figures are expected to treat scandals with a dose of self-deprecating humor. Tonight was more like a family reunion, a celebration of clan pride. The AHEPAns who hugged me in the receiving line or approached the dais with Instamatics in hand either didn't know about my predicament or didn't care. To them I wasn't Nixon's Haldeman or Clinton's young man. I was their boy George. I'd made it to the top and made them proud — the highest-ranking Greek in the White House.

Catching my mistake, I pushed aside the rest of my prepared remarks and spoke from the heart about gratitude and responsibility, about how much I valued my Hellenic roots and how much I owed the Greek
omogeneia
. AHEPA had awarded me my first college scholarship; ever since I'd started to work in politics, the Greek community — Democrats and Republicans — had been my stalwarts. That night, they demonstrated their support again by pretending that the weekend's events had never happened. Reassured and humbled, I returned the favor by pledging to them that I would never let them down.

A few weeks later, Richard Nixon died. On the morning of the funeral, I went to the Oval with Clinton's new communications director, Don Baer, for a final review of Clinton's eulogy. The draft was OK, but one line made me squirm. The president wanted to conclude his remarks by declaring that “the day of judging Richard Nixon based on one part of his life alone has finally come to a close.”

It was a generous line — too generous, I feared. For Bill Clinton to issue such a new and sweeping, if only rhetorical, presidential pardon of Nixon would be both presumptuous and provocative. Nixon-hating liberals (who already felt betrayed by Clinton) would see the gesture as a hollow pitch to appease the right wing and would feel that only Nixon's victims — the “enemies,” the Cambodians, the framers of the Constitution — had the right to forgive him. Clinton-hating conservatives (who would never trust Clinton, no matter what he said) would suspect that it was a self-referential plea for personal absolution, a slick maneuver aimed at closing off criticism of Clinton's own conduct. To the punditocracy, this would be the line that launched a thousand columns comparing the characters of Clinton and Nixon. Although the comment might possibly have passed without notice, the risk wasn't worth the reward.

But how do you tell your boss that he's insufficiently self-aware, or too altruistic for his own good? Very carefully. I didn't mention the misguided comparisons that Clinton critics were making between Whitewater and Watergate — that would just rile him up. Instead I wondered aloud if we were going a “little too far. I know what you're trying to say, but people might misinterpret what you mean,” I suggested. “What if we soften it a bit by saying,
‘May
the day of judging Richard Nixon based on one part of his life alone finally come to a close’?” By transforming the draft sentence from a presidential directive into a personal wish, I thought we could preserve the spirit of Clinton's expression without provoking a partisan backlash.

“Yeah, that's good,” Clinton said, getting it immediately. Seeing and hearing a liberal like me make this suggestion reminded him of the many people who harbored such strong feelings about Nixon. As I walked Clinton out to the South Lawn, he reminisced about running for Congress in the wake of Nixon's 1974 resignation. Clinton was defeated in that Democratic year, and he never forgot the words of an old man on the campaign trail who was more prescient than the polls: “You're not going to make it, son,” predicted the codger. “Hammerschmidt [the Republican incumbent] doesn't have enough stink of Nixon on him to lose.”

The taint of scandal hadn't stuck to me either. But two days later, on Friday, April 29, Clinton called me into the Oval to ask about a rumor he'd picked up on the way back from San Clemente. “I don't have any inside information,” he told me. “But you're not worried about getting indicted, are you?”

I was now. Clinton picked up lots of information from lots of different places. Sometimes the message was garbled because of his poor hearing; sometimes he couldn't read the notes he had scribbled to himself for follow-up later. But if this rumor was even close to right, I couldn't just blow it off. Excusing yourself from a personal audience with the president of the United States isn't easy, but right then, the only person in the world I really wanted to talk to was my lawyer.

After checking with “sources close to the independent counsel,” Stan called back with reassurance and a reminder not to believe everything I heard. That same afternoon, however, a long-running rumor
was
confirmed. Mike Isikoff of the
Post
called to tell me that after months of speculation, Paula Jones had finally decided to file a sexual harassment suit against Clinton. “Do you have any comment?” That was Clinton's call. I checked with him in the Oval Office study.

“Mr. President, I've got some good news and some bad news: The good news is that we heard from the Fiske people that the indictment story is bullshit,” I said. “But the bad news is that Paula filed.”

“Well,” he said, a resigned smile on his face. “I guess I'd rather be sued than have you indicted.”

I could've hugged him, but neither one of us could have imagined how fateful Ms. Jones's decision would turn out to be.

When the
American Spectator's
“Troopergate” story was published in December 1993, the details about a woman named Paula who wanted to be Governor Clinton's “girlfriend” hadn't made a particular impression on me. Set against the potentially more serious charge that President Clinton may have offered the troopers federal jobs in return for their silence, it seemed inconsequential. Even if it was true, who cared if Clinton made a pass at a young woman when he was governor? Only on February 11, 1994, when Paula Jones disputed the account and accused Clinton of sexual harassment, did I begin to pay attention.

Paula leveled her charge from the epicenter of anti-Clintonism — the annual convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee. No network covered the performance live, but from every report that reached my desk, it sounded like a farcical turn on the original Gennifer Flowers circus — minus the incriminating tapes. Though I didn't relish reliving that experience, I couldn't have scripted it better for us. The whole scene screamed “setup job.” Paula's chief handler, Cliff Jackson, had been making a cottage industry out of attacking Clinton ever since his involvement with the draft story in 1991. We also heard that Paula had put out feelers for book and movie deals, and that a lawyer close to her had even approached associates of Clinton to ask about a job. By now, I had more experience than I ever would have imagined with situations like this — and it looked and smelled like the kind of “cash for trash” transaction we had beaten back before.

The president's initial reaction reinforced my instincts. When I went to the Oval to get his response, he said he didn't remember her: “What does she look like?” he asked. As difficult as it may be to believe, I was convinced. I had seen Clinton dissemble in the past, but this time he seemed genuine. There was no nervous chatter; he didn't overexplain; he didn't recount a rehearsed story at high speed; and, unusual for him when under siege, he even joked about the trooper angle: “I may be a fat old man now, but in my younger days I never needed any help getting women.” I left the Oval believing that he might have met Paula, possibly even flirted with her. But I was also convinced that he didn't harass her, and that she was remembering whatever consensual encounter they had as a crime in order to make a buck.

My belief in Clinton, coupled with contempt for his enemies, was motivation enough to mount his defense. Paula's cause was being promoted by the same people who were trying to block everything we believed in. They were threatening to sue Clinton not because they had a strong case, but because that was the “hook” they needed to get press attention and drag Clinton through the mud. I also still believed that the president deserved some statute of limitations on past conduct that wasn't criminal.
It's just not fair for him to be treated this way. No other president has ever had to put up with as much crap as they throw at him. Even if you believe the worst about him, her story's just not credible. He's not a predator; he'd never pull down his pants unless he knew what was coming next
. Armed with my arguments, I went to work.

My goal was to put Paula Jones in the same category as Connie Hamzy — women whose stories were so suspect that their accounts shouldn't be dignified by the media. Most important, I wanted to keep reports of Paula's press conference off television. So I made my case directly to Tim Russert at NBC, Dotty Lynch of CBS, and Tom Johnson, the president of CNN. It wasn't a hard sell, and ABC was even less inclined to sensationalize a supposed sex scandal because of their twenty-two-minute Whitewater extravaganza the night before. Although we couldn't quash all coverage, our goal was to bury a one-day story inside the Saturday newspapers. Asked to comment, I called the performance a “cheap political fund-raising trick.”

Initially, the strategy was effective. The coverage was relatively scanty and slanted our way. But a few days later, Ann Devroy called to say we had a problem with the
Post
. “Downie thinks it's like a Packwood problem,” she said, which was a statement with two meanings: first, that executive editor Leonard Downie felt an obligation to investigate the womanizing charges against Clinton because the
Post
had pursued similar allegations against former Republican senator Bob Packwood. Second, Downie thought it was legitimate to look into the Paula Jones episode on the grounds that it may have been part of a pattern of compulsive sexual behavior that still defined Clinton's character. When I reported the conversation to Clinton, he was dripping with contempt: “This is sick, man.”

According to Ann, the story was being debated intensively inside the
Post
. Not every editor agreed that the Jones episode was relevant to Clinton's presidency or that there was sufficient rationale to pursue the story. Ann reported that there was a “real back and forth,” among her, Downie, the editors Bob Kaiser, Bob Barnes, and Karen Deyoung, and the reporter who was pushing hardest to get Paula's story (
his
story) into the paper, Mike Isikoff. Ann also said (ironically, I thought) that she and Karen Deyoung were the “most dubious” about the story. The other editors didn't think it was ready for the paper, but they were more inclined to give it major treatment if it checked out. “Isikoff,” she added, “totally believes this.” After talking to Ann, I knew that the only way to kill the story was to convince Downie that it wasn't credible or relevant to Clinton's conduct in the Oval Office.

But first I had to talk to Isikoff, because he was the beat reporter. Before I called him, Bruce Lindsey and I compiled all of the facts — even reviewing Clinton's May 8, 1991, gubernatorial schedule to see if we could prove that Clinton could not have met with Paula when she said. It appeared that Clinton had left the Excelsior Hotel by the time of the claimed encounter, but the people accompanying Clinton that day said he had made an unscheduled afternoon return. We didn't have our silver bullet. But even if we couldn't convincingly disprove her claim, it still came down to a “he said, she said.” “Doesn't the president of the United States deserve the benefit of the doubt?” I asked. Isikoff didn't think so, and we squared off over the validity of various contemporaneous accounts. But it was a dialogue of the deaf: I believed Clinton; he believed Jones.

But the most credible testimony came from Danny Ferguson, the trooper alleged to have escorted Paula to Clinton's courtesy suite. Betsey Wright was in contact with him, and what he was saying was problematic for both sides. Ferguson told Betsey that yes, he had indeed introduced Jones to Clinton, but that Jones was ecstatic after the brief meeting and wanted to be Clinton's girlfriend. That made me more skeptical of Clinton's claim that he “didn't remember” being in a room with Paula, but it also disputed Jones's claim that Clinton had harassed her. An additional tidbit helped us: Betsey told me that Paula had approached Ferguson after the publication of the
Spectator
story and asked, “Do you think I can get some money out of this deal?”

So the situation was messier than I first hoped, and I was angry about the fact that Clinton had let me go through the charade of trying to prove he wasn't in the room when in all probability he was. It reminded me of one of the worst moments of the 1992 campaign — the day during April's New York primary when we had to deal with Clinton's draft-induction notice from 1969. Ever since New Hampshire, we'd been denying that Clinton had ever been drafted, but when John King of the Associated Press handed me a copy of Clinton's draft notice, I was shaken.
How can this be? How come Clinton didn't tell us?
“I forgot about it,” Clinton had said then. By the time the draft notice reached him at Oxford, he explained, his local draft board had told him to ignore it, so he did.