Clinton Psychodrama Redux

A tight-lipped President Clinton listens to questions from reporters about the Congressional vote to proceed with an impeachment inquiry. At left is Vice President Al Gore. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson)

Conservative commentators have spent years poking fun at Hillary Clinton’s assertion that she and her husband were the victims of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” But despite Clinton’s poor choice of words, which make the abuse her family received sound far more sinister and well-orchestrated than the mundane, blunt smear tactics of the far right, there is still a kernel of truth to this idea. There is no question that the Clintons, during their eight years in the White House, were the subject of a wide-ranging smear campaign meant to bring them down by any means necessary.

If major news outlets were not necessarily the instigators, they certainly allowed themselves to be played rather effectively by some of the decade’s biggest conservative stars, including Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich, and everyone’s favorite, Rush Limbaugh. From Vince Foster to Monica Lewinsky, the Clinton administration was smothered by a barrage of scandals-of-the-week. Even years later, certain prominent columnists can’t relinquish their prurient fascination with the Clinton psychodrama.

The rules were different for George W. Bush. Part of this is because Bush’s communications team and the post-Nixon conservative movement in general were simply better at image control than their liberal counterparts. But external events also conspired to award Bush an astonishing level of press deference; after 9/11, his approval rating approached 90 percent, and the coverage leading up to the Iraq war was similarly fawning.

But the press’s lack of skepticism wasn’t just a reflection of public opinion. Even in the aftermath of the 2006 midterm elections, which left the Bush administration firmly rebuked and humiliated, major media outlets seemed far less interested in the very real, tangible scandals of the Bush administration than they had been in the trumped-up, largely manufactured scandals of the Clinton years. It took months of coverage on Talking Points Memo before the New York Times and Washington Post finally took notice of the U.S. attorney scandal. Meanwhile, the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX adopted the insipid, castrated language that the Bush administration used to describe torture, calling waterboarding “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Even in the twilight of one of the most disastrous presidencies of all time, this country was subjected to a barrage of opinion pieces desperately trying to whitewash the 43rd president’s rightfully bankrupt legacy.

Many conservatives would—and have—argued that President Barack Obama has received the same treatment, or better. During the 2008 election, one of the 15 or 16 different conflicting narratives the John McCain campaign tried to push about the election was that then-Senator Obama was a “celebrity” given a free ride by the media despite his “questionable associations.” Even after the election, some just can’t let go of this meme—there’s even an upcoming documentary, which deftly employs a bundle of shoddy polling data and a pity party hosted by Sarah Palin.

There’s no question that Obama received a lot of positive media coverage. Some of it, such as Chris Matthews’ “thrill up my leg” remark, bordered on embarrassing. But to say that he got a free ride is to ignore what really took place. The press didn’t ignore Obama’s connections to Reverend Wright, Anthony Rezko, and William Ayers. Rather, these “questionable associations” got played up during the primaries, in large part thanks to the sleazy Clinton attack machine led by the execrable Mark Penn. In the end, nobody could find any evidence of wrongdoing or covert radicalism on Obama’s part—though not for lack of trying—and none of the smears stuck.

McCain attempted to raise the specter of those smears overtly late in his campaign’s flailing descent into madness, most notably by invoking Obama’s “questionable associations” to a non-threatening academic who just happened to be Arab. Unsurprisingly, such blatant race baiting backfired badly. All of these trumped up faux-scandals amounted to very little, and for a brief time it seemed like perhaps the Clinton rules had lost their salience permanently.

That could still prove to be true. But if it is, nobody’s told the reporters who wondered aloud—with a straight face, no less—if Obama was really president after John Roberts bungled one line in the oath of office. Juan Williams apparently missed the memo as well, as his “Stokely Carmichael in a dress” slur against the first lady only makes a whit of sense if you view it through the prism of nostalgia; Hillary Clinton may no longer be first lady, but the modern pundit’s reflexive tic of accusing her of being Lady Macbeth appears to have crossed over to Michelle Obama. And while the accusations that Obama violated his good government campaign pledges haven’t started in earnest yet, you can be sure that the administration hasn’t done itself any favors with the poor vetting of Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, and Hilda Solis.

Despite all the ludicrous charges flying left and right, it seems unlikely that Obama will get bogged down in the madness the way the Clinton administration was. In the meantime, at least, his approval rating is still riding high, and his political opponents, recognizing that they’re more vulnerable than he is, are trying to hitch their wagon to him and avoid direct conflict. Even so, every day brings another instance of some pundit declaring Obama’s honeymoon over, or anointing whatever week it is his worst week so far. The question right now is if, or perhaps when, all of these sly allusions to a PR disaster for the White House will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ned Resnikoff is a student at NYU and a regular contributor to Campus Progress.

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