Clinton's predicament

By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

In terms of sensationalism, the Clinton sex scandal has reached unprecedented dimensions, both in the American and international media. This is not surprising in the information age. However, because the issue touches on some fundamental features of our contemporary world, a more sober appraisal of the event is necessary.

Bill Clinton is without doubt the most powerful man on earth. He heads the only remaining superpower with a global reach in our present unipolar world. The decisions he makes are of worldwide import. Moreover, he is a popular president. Despite his present vicissitudes, he still enjoys the support of wide segments of the American people. Indeed, as many as 65 per cent of those canvassed in a recent poll want him to remain in the White House even if the misdeeds he is accused of prove to be true. The US economy is currently booming and, whether or not this is thanks to Clinton's administration, most Americans are unwilling to rock the boat because of a scandal they see as essentially of a private nature.

At the end of the day, Clinton is under fire for a sexual escapade affecting only his immediate family and of very little consequence to anyone else. The issue has been blown up out of all proportion because of a series of fateful coincidences, chance events that need not have happened at all. To date, not a single eyewitness has come forward to confirm his trysts with Lewinsky, not even one of the security guards who follow him like a shadow.

It is by pure chance that Monica Lewinsky chose to boast to Linda Tripp about her alleged affair with the president. There has been some speculation as to why Tripp, a much older woman, should have befriended Lewinsky. Even if we assume that she had no ulterior motives in doing so, it is no secret that Tripp, who, like Lewinsky, had been transferred from the White House to the Pentagon, bore a personal grudge against Clinton and that her sole aim in divulging the confidential information she had been given was to discredit him. It has also been reported that Tripp once worked for American intelligence and that she could have stayed in contact with elements within the intelligence community who now worked for the Republican Party.

It was not foreordained either that Tripp would decide to tape Lewinsky's confessions behind her back, an unethical act that Tripp justified as self-protection against White House attack. This does not explain, however, why Tripp decided to turn the tapes over to Kenneth Starr, who was initially appointed to investigate the Whitewater scandal, which involves dubious land dealings by the president and his wife when he was still governor of Arkansas.

It would be wrong to see what some now call Monicagate as an event comparable to Watergate which led to the impeachment of former president Richard Nixon. The Watergate affair involved a criminal act, a clear-cut case of breaking and entering Democratic Party headquarters for the illegal purpose of gathering information about its campaign strategy for the presidential elections. In the Monicagate case, the issue is of no political consequence. Moreover, the president has formally denied any wrongdoing, emphatically asserting that he did not ask anyone to lie under oath -- a statement he still stands by.

There is always the possibility that Clinton could be telling the truth; however, I am more inclined to believe Monica Lewinsky's version of events. Even assuming that Starr's motives in pursuing an investigation that has reportedly cost the US taxpayer $4.5 million are questionable, it is hard to explain away Clinton's repeated scandals with women -- Paula Jones, Jennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willy, in addition to Monica Lewinsky -- in terms of series of coincidences. But the real question is whether such 'personal' adventures justify exposing a president with unprecedented popularity to impeachment, whether, in fact, it is legitimate to make the Monica Lewinsky affair the decisive factor in determining Clinton's place in history.

Of course, Starr is not investigating Clinton because of one or even several affairs, but on the grounds that he may have lied under oath, and incited others to do so as well. But even if he did, the lie in no way concerns state business: it is an understandable if ill-considered attempt to salvage his dignity and spare his family's feelings. Generally speaking, American presidents are keen on projecting respect for family values, in the aim of winning over conservative constituencies. This is all the more necessary in the case of Clinton, who has gone out of his way in defense of such controversial causes as gay rights. Still, while lying under oath is a crime, when the lie is to cover up a sordid case of marital infidelity, the crime is surely not grave enough to warrant the bizarre spectacle we are witnessing today of an American president devoting the whole of last week preparing for his grand jury hearing instead of concentrating on what America's response should be to the devastating attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

At the time the scandal broke, Hillary Clinton came forward with the theory that the whole issue is a conspiracy against her husband -- actually, the only face-saving counter-stand the president's wife could have adopted. Her theory might be true or not. After all, Kenneth Starr's close relations with the far right of the Republican Party is well known. But he can also contend that he has conducted his investigation with integrity. In the light of all this, is it possible to speculate what Clinton's best line of defence would be? Obviously, his strongest point is his ongoing popularity; his weakest is his formal denial of an act that a growing body of evidence indicates he committed.

On the eve of the grand jury hearing, Clinton has to decide between the three possible options open to him. One is to 'correct' his former statements without formally contradicting them, by claiming that he understood the term 'sexual relations' as entailing actual penetration, in which he did not indulge with Lewinsky.Even if DNA tests confirm that the stain on Lewinsky's dress is his sperm, this restrictive interpretation of sexual relations would give him a fighting chance to evade the charge of perjury. His second option is to go on the offensive, invoking the violation of jury secrecy rules by Starr's office, which has apparently leaked information to the press, to try and invalidate Starr's investigation altogether. The third and, to my mind, best, option is for Clinton to come clean, counting on his undeniable popularity to get him through the ordeal and leaving it to others to iron out the legal aspects. This last option will depend, however, on whether Bill Clinton has the moral courage to choose truth over evasiveness, not to say outright lies, at the risk of losing his place in history.