JUST LIKE HE LIKES TO BE LIKED HIMSELF
Bush still tangles his sentences, but Mark Steyn
wonders whether he should continue to mince his words about the Clinton scandals
New Hampshire A BAD week for Dubya. The media have reverted to their line of late winter — air- head fratboy, can't string a sentence together, not ready for primetime. Like ravenous hyenas, they pounce on his every soundbite: 'I know how hard it is to put food on your family.' We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbour just like you like to be liked yourself.' The other day he surpassed his own magnifi- cent standards with this ringing peroration: `When we carry Iowa in November, it'll mean the end of four years for Clinton-Gore. We cannot let terrorists and rouge nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile. I'm a free trader. I will work to end terrors — tariffs.'
Poor guy. These days, few in the media are willing to like Dubya like he likes to be liked himself. Personally, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt: the diffi- culties of putting food on your family sounds like one of those amusing Bush childhood games to while away the sum- mer longueurs at Kennebunkport. During the roll-call of states at the Republican Convention, brother Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, told delegates that he was the only governor present who'd been given a `wedgie' by the next president of the Unit- ed States. A wedgie, for those unacquaint- ed with the term, is when someone sneaks up behind you, grabs your underpants and yanks 'em up so high that the sudden wrenching motion of the gusset sears your perineum, if that's the bit I'm thinking of. Anyway, in the last week, with his 18-point lead wiped out, Dubya's the one who looks like he's been given a wedgie, by Al Gore.
Yet, despite his generally freewheeling approach to the English language, there's one part of his disintegrating stump speech about which be's become unusually punc- tilious. Every time I've heard him, he's wrapped things up by raising his hand and swearing 'to uphold the honour and integrity' of the Oval Office. Somewhere along the way, the line evolved a little to the point where he was promising to `restore' the honour and integrity. After his hugely successful convention, reporters began to ask what he meant by 'restoring the honour and integrity'. Did that mean that at the moment there was a decided lack of both? Was it a reference to . . . you know, interns, cigars, certain Gap dresses?
The Bush campaign hastened to assure the press: not at all, good grief, last thing on our minds, where did you get that idea? And ever since the governor has been scrupulous about solemnly pledging not to `restore' but merely to 'uphold' the honour and integrity of the office. On bad days, like that one in Iowa, if he gets just one word right, you can bet it'll be 'uphold'. Dubya had nothing to do with the 1998 congres- sional elections but, if he's learnt anything from them, it's that it's best to steer clear of what the US media refer to as the 'Clinton scandals' — a formulation which always sounds to me like a harmlessly saucy night out: Ziegfeld Follies of 1912, Clinton Scan- dals of 1998, what's the diff? The Presi- dent's distinguishing characteristics are (according to those in the know) not very large, but they loom over the election like Godzilla over Tokyo. So the Bush strategy was to try to sneak by without catching the eye of the trouser snake. Republicans know from bitter experience that it's like black ice: you think you're cruising to victory in the fast lane when you suddenly hit a patch of Clinton DNA, skid out of control and plunge into the ravine.
So this time round the Bush team decid- ed to pass off the Clinton Scandals as a strictly Beltway show that he, as an out-of- towner, was completely unfamiliar with. 'I have no stake,' as he put it in his conven- tion speech, 'in the divisions of recent years.' Not everyone thinks he means it. When news of a new grand jury to consid-. er a criminal indictment of Clinton was leaked on the day of Gore's convention speech, most commentators assumed the Bush camp was behind it. Why? They'd have to be nuts. As it transpired, it was a Democratic appointee who accidentally leaked the news, but by then the Republi- cans had already been stiffed as boorish, obsessed floggers of dead horses.
And it's true that there are one or two out there. Mrs Clinton, for example, has been dogged by Katherine Prudhomme, a house- wife from Deny, New Hampshire (though she's actually a longtime Democrat), who wants to know whether Hillary believes Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clin- ton of raping her while he was attorney-gen- eral of Arkansas. Campaigning in Buffalo last week, the First Lady was greeted by a trucker waving a blue dress with a promi- nent stain on it and a sign saying, 'Mrs Clin- ton, the right-wing conspiracy made him do it.' In Ithaca, a protester waved a placard reading, 'I wonder who he's raping now?'
The First Lady glided serenely by. 'It's just part of the background music of my life,' she said, which is a good way of putting it. I happen to believe that the President of the United States is a rapist, and indeed, given that there are a couple of other Jane Does in the sealed-evidence room of the impeachment trial who allege the same thing as Juanita Broaddrick, I happen to believe he's a multiple rapist. Former education secretary Bill Bennett has said that he thinks the President is a rapist. Connecticut congressman Chris Shays, who voted not to impeach him, nev- ertheless said on a New Haven radio sta- tion a few days ago that he also believes Mr Clinton raped Mrs Broaddrick.
This is something a little more fundamen- tal than Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition dis- agreeing with the Prime Minister over some aspect of policy. You would not think it pos- sible for normal politics to continue in such a world: how can the opposition remain loyal to a rapist? But the media have decid- ed, like the First Lady, that this is just back- ground music: a woman in tears credibly alleging that the President raped her is as bland and soporific as Mantovani playing `Windmills of your Mind'. Hey, even Hills loosened up enough to do impeachment shtick. At a recent fundraiser in the Park Avenue apartment of Walter Kaye, the retired insurance exec who recommended Monica for the White House intern pro- gram, the First Lady cracked up the crowd when she deadpanned, 'You never know who you might meet through the Kayes.'
Of course, for the President's various women it's a little more than background music: a few weeks ago, Mrs Broaddrick heard that her nursing-home business was to be the subject of an onerous and time- consuming audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Statistically, the chances of being audited by the IRS are about 1 in 110. But, amazingly, Mrs Broaddrick joins such recent subjects of fruitless IRS audits as Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Eliza- beth Ward Gracen, the former Miss Amer- ica who enjoyed a brief sexual relationship with Bill. Either the President and the IRS share an eerily similar taste in women, or, if the statistical norm holds true, there must be another 440 unaudited Clinton women out there. Needless to say, neither the New York Times, the Washington Post, nor any of the big three networks consid- ered the story worth reporting, but take it from these gals: if you have sex with Bill, keep the receipts.
So Dubya's right. You're never going to nail Clinton on sex: Elvis Penis has left the building. Polls show a majority of the American people think Congress was right to impeach the President, but the Bush team has concluded that any attempt to use that to electoral advantage will blow up in your face. The drawback of this approach is that it gives the President and his anointed heir a pass on everything else, too. Because of the American media's squeamishness about the subject, Bill Clin- ton has been able to use sex as a shield for many murkier matters. In 1996, Bob Dole was unable even to address the issue of Clinton scandals because scandals meant cocktail waitresses, state troopers procur- ing women, etc., and to raise such matters was considered bad form. Unfortunately, scandals was also the category covering fundraising illegalities, dodgy Chinese money, abuse of FBI files, etc., so they never got raised either. For Bill Clinton, sex has been a giant metaphorical condom rolled down over the White House to pro- tect him, while managing to infect almost everything else in sight.
Now it looks as if Al Gore will be the lat- est happy beneficiary of this indestructible prophylactic. He wasn't at his master's side when Bill was being serviced by Monica, but he was certainly there the rest of the time. One example: on the eve of the '96 election, a million aliens were hustled through the naturalisation process without the required background checks because the Clinton–Gore re-election campaign had figured they were likely Democratic voters. Initially, immigration and naturalisation commissioner Doris Meissner had resisted pressure to speed up citizenship because she thought it would look politically moti- vated, and she was disinclined to implement the suggestion of a Gore aide that she dele- gate an unprecedentedly broad authority to local managers to process applications. 'The President is sick of this and wants action,' Elaine Kamarck, an official in Gore's office, responded. 'If nothing moves today, we'll have to take some pretty drastic measures.' Commissioner Meissner held firm, as another Gore aide, Douglas Farbrother, reported to his boss. 'Unless we blast INS headquarters loose from their grip on front- line managers, we are going to have way too many people still waiting for citizenship in November,' wrote Farbrother, making explicit the need to get these voters in place for election day. 'I can't make Doris Meiss- ner delegate broad authority to her field managers. Can you?' Will explore it,' replied Gore. 'Thanks.' A few days later, Ms Meissner caved in. Of that one million new citizens at least 250,000 were never fin- gerprinted, had fingerprints that were never classified, or had arrest records. Any British subject arriving at JFK for a week's vaca- tion will know that such blithe indifference is not the customary hallmark of US Immi- gration. According to House Judiciary Committee impeachment counsel David Schippers, about 20 per cent of the hardest offenders have subsequently marked their first years as US citizens by committing murder, rape or child sex abuse. That's Al Gore for your not just fighting for the lit- tle man (as he puts it) but also fighting for the right of the little immigrant felon to get a passport, move into your neighbourhood and murder you.
But Bill's sex life is doing wonders for Al: scandals mean interns, not a million screwy additions to the Democratic voting rolls. Last week Janet Reno announced that she'd decided not to appoint an inde- pendent counsel to investigate the vice- president, and everyone cheered. The American people are sick and tired of all these scandals and investigations,' said a campaign spokesman — not for Al, but for Dubya. As the governor himself said, we cannot let rouge nations hold this nation hostile. He knows whereof he speaks. America has become a rouged nation, plump with prosperity, lying back fanning itself on the ottoman, while Bill Clinton whispers sweet nothings in its ear. Dubya has calculated that such a nation does not want to be made hostile by being reminded of unpleasantries. If Bill's a rapist and Al's corrupt, history will deal with them. What's important right now is that they lose. So to date the governor's message has been: I'm a nice guy, and I'm not Bill Clinton. And, if there's any connection between the two halves of that statement, 'It's a rollover.' I'll let you figure it out for yourself.
The question now is whether that's enough. At his own convention, Al kissed Tipper and the political playing field was suddenly level. Message: I'm also a nice guy and I'm also not Bill Clinton. So where's your unique selling point now, Governor?
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