The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

BILL CLINTON DID EVERYTHING HE COULD TO DODGE the draft, and George Bush was up to his neck in the Iran-contra affair. Assume these conclusions (as most people do) because available evidence and common sense effectively refute the candidates' denials. Now what? Leave aside the actions themselves; they are less troublesome than the dissembling designed to conceal them. Is one lie somehow worse than the other? Does one reflect more negatively than the other on a politician's fitness to serve as President?

Within the memory of many who will choose between Bush and Clinton, official lying once stunned the nation. In 1960, after Dwight Eisenhower wrongly swore that a U.S. reconnaissance plane had strayed inadvertently over the Soviet Union, the country was shocked. Many had naively assumed that an unwritten code forbade their leaders to lie to them. Within 15 years Vietnam and Watergate had inured the nation to official lying. In 1976, 69% of respondents agreed in a national poll that "over the past 10 years, this country's leaders have consistently lied to the people." Today there is an almost bored tolerance of political lying, a disgust reflected in an increasing decline in voter participation, a corroded environment in which those who elect and those who are elected both lose. Whoever eventually wins, says the philosopher Sissela Bok, invariably discovers that his "warnings and calls to common sacrifice meet with disbelief and apathy, even when cooperation is most urgently needed."

In this campaign Clinton's obfuscations demand greater attention. Bush's lies, which stretch beyond Iran-contra and embrace the continuing distortion of his opponent's record and proposals, play a smaller role in determining our judgment of him; the President has a first-term record voters can consider. Clinton is another matter simply because he has yet to serve. We just don't know if the character flaw his dissembling reveals is a significant indicator of how he would govern or a jumble of white lies the country can safely ignore. So the search for clues continues.

During the primaries, Clinton seemed headed for the trash heap. Gennifer Flowers had become a household name, the first round of draft stories dominated the news, and the candidate insisted improbably that he hadn't inhaled. But some of Clinton's closest associates were most disturbed by the fact that during those dark days the candidate played golf at the Little Rock Country Club, which has yet to admit its first black member. "We discussed it all," says a Yale classmate of Clinton's who has supported him ever since. "Bill had privileges at the club because he was Governor -- he wasn't a member -- but he agreed that his continuing to play there would look bad. When he did it anyway, it struck some of us as a sort of Gary Hart-like death wish. When Bill didn't fold, like Gary, we put it out of our minds. But this new flurry of draft stuff has caused us to wonder again. We thought he had learned that Henry Kissinger was right when he said that political survival demands that 'whatever will come out eventually come out immediately.' We thought he had learned not to push his luck, and when he said there was finally nothing more to say ((in Clinton's now infamous "last word" statement on the draft to the American Legion on Aug. 25)), we believed him. We're his friends, and we know him better than most, but we're as mystified as everyone else."

The Bush campaign is obviously delighted. "It's Clinton's to lose," concedes a top G.O.P. official. "But he may be on the verge of doing just that, and on the very issue we've been pushing -- trust. Clinton could have come clean months ago, or even last week. Every day that he doesn't, we'll do what Bob Kerrey predicted we'd do: we'll take Clinton's draft record and open it and him like a soft-shelled peanut. It's that simple."

So far, Clinton has reverted to type. He massages and fillets the facts, leaving behind pronouncements that are technically accurate but devoid of the inner truth. His explanations about avoiding Vietnam do not hang together. From the beginning it has been obvious that if Clinton truly thought it unethical for him to remain home after four of his friends died in Vietnam, he could have exposed himself to the same risk at any moment simply by enlisting in the military. Even now, a last "last word" and a forthright mea culpa would help immeasurably. In seeking to understand his candidate's self- defeating silence, a senior Clinton aide turned again to Hart and recalled the miniautobiography Hart had written shortly before the 1988 campaign. In the last paragraph of that otherwise forgettable book, Hart said, "The immortal Yeats wrote, 'Not a man alive has so much luck he can play with.' As usual," continued Hart, "Yeats put it right. A man would be a fool to take his luck for granted." Clinton has already admitted an overeagerness to please, an aversion to saying anything that could cause people to dislike him. If he doesn't transcend that foible quickly, his luck may run out on Nov. 3, and he will be back in Little Rock with no one to blame but himself.