They Don't Make Scandals Like They Used To By Richard Craig September 26, 1998

Is there anyone out there (aside from perhaps Henry Hyde or Newt Gingrich) who isn't sick to death of the Clinton scandal?

Every day, there's a new revelation of some sordid detail that makes us like the president (and the media) less and less. Every day some new arcane factoid is trumpeted as the one big thing that's going to bring Clinton down.

There was a time not so long ago when political scandals used to be much more fun. Well, maybe not more fun, but certainly less tiresome.

In the olden days -- way back in the '60s and '70s -- scandals would develop over silly things and have few consequences for anyone but those involved. Watching George Romney's incipient presidential campaign crash and burn in 1968 was downright humorous. A man running for president is dumb enough to think he can tell reporters about being "brainwashed" on a visit to Vietnam? Hysterical. Congressional big wheels Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays think they can play with bimbos in the television age and get away with it? Hilarious. We threw the bums out and got a good laugh out of it.

Even scandals with more serious consequences had elements of drama which were compelling. When Edmund Muskie broke down and cried at a rally in New Hampshire in 1972, many people wrote him off as a serious candidate for the presidency. But wait! A couple of years later he was vindicated when assorted Nixon administration dirty tricks from that campaign were revealed -- threats against Muskie and his family that would make any man buckle. In the '80s, when Oliver North thought he could sell arms to Iran and give the profits to the Contras, we were at least rewarded with lots of compelling testimony on TV. (And some of it even turned out to be true.)

When Gary Hart challenged reporters to follow him around in 1988, then got caught with his pants down, the resulting feeding frenzy had something for everyone. For those into drama, we had the psychological study of a man breaking down day by day, refusing to admit he'd become a national joke. It even extended into tragedy -- the downfall of a man of great vision, done in by the fatal flaw of an untamed libido. For those who prefer comedy, there were plenty of laughs to be found. What kind of doofus invites the media to follow him and still tries to surreptitiously chase skirts? And what kind of fool tries to resuscitate his campaign after such a grotesque public humiliation?

Compared to these scandals, the whole Clinton mess is just plain painful. Yes, there are some humorous elements -- how many Monica jokes have been told nationwide in the last six months? But it's clear that the American people don't want to throw the president out with the bath water. They like his policies (or at least the results they're seeing), so they don't just want to kick him out and start over.

The problem is that he's scheduled to serve two more years in office. This means that unless he resigns (not a chance -- he's read the polls) or is impeached (Congress has read them too), we're stuck with a steady stream of embarrassing and smarmy revelations until January 2001. What a way to enter the new millennium -- with a populace that would like nothing more than to tune out politics entirely.

Of course, the scandal that this is most often compared to is Watergate, which was quite painful in its own right. Yet Watergate had a compelling cast of characters -- the heavies (H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichmann), the white knights (Sam Ervin and Howard Baker), the spies (Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti), the reluctant hero (John Dean), even a loose cannon (Martha Mitchell).

Who do we have now? Linda Tripp is nobody's hero -- who wants to identify with a catty, mean-spirited woman with bad makeup? Not even other women with the same characteristics want to jump on her bandwagon. Nobody really wants to align with Monica the White House Homewrecker, save for maybe fellow groupies. Vernon Jordan may look like a nice guy to help you get a job, but a hero? I don't think so. Even Clinton's put-upon secretary, Betty Currie, elicits more pity than pride for being forced to arrange trysts against her better judgment. There are no real heroes here, just a lot of dubious people with questionable motives.

Watergate also had moments of real drama. The firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, the subsequent resignations of several Nixon cabinet members, and the reaction of Washington to all of it was absolutely compelling for the American public. When the existence of a White House taping system was discovered, it was a plot twist not even Hollywood could have dreamed up. The notion that some of the disputed dealings might actually be on tape cast the scandal in a completely new light.

So where's the drama today? It was supposed to come with Clinton's admission of the affair, but most of America found his speech more petulant than repentant. Then it was supposed to come with the release of the Starr report, which basically connected the dots of what was already known and provided a few rather sleazy details. Then it was definitely going to be found in Clinton's videtaped grand jury testimony, which turned out to be a four-hour trip to the land of Sominex.

By the end of Watergate, people were saying things like "this goes to prove that our system of government works." It's hard to imagine that coming from this mess. Though there's a lot of time left, this whole exercise seems to suggest a lot of things that make us feel anything but proud. We can't be too thrilled that the man we elected twice to lead us was idiotic enough to let this happen. We can't be glad that Congress has become so partisan as to be useless at times. We can't be happy that our media-driven system has left us with officials so power-driven and egotistical (both in the White House and in Congress) that they'll put aside the good of the country for the sake of themselves.

Should anyone really yearn for a simpler time when the shortcomings of our elected officials made us feel somehow superior? Probably not. The American ideal is one of informed choice -- the more information we as citizens have, the better job we will supposedly do in voting for leaders to represent our interests. But when wave after wave of mind-numbing scandal details engulf the populace, it's easy to wonder about information overload. It's also easy to conclude that information -- whether about a scandal or just the daily doings of the nation -- was a lot more valuable and useful when it was more scarce.

©1998 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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