Clinton goes a-courting

National Review, Feb 10, 1997

WHILE working at a registration desk at a gubernatorial conference in 1991, Paula Corbin was approached by an Arkansas state trooper who told her Governor Clinton wanted to see her. Miss Corbin visited Clinton in his private suite, left quickly, and complained to friends that he had made a rude sexual advance. None of this is seriously disputed. Given Mr. Clinton's reputation for Don Juanism, it is easy to believe Paula Corbin Jones's account of what happened behind closed doors: the governor told her that he was good friends with her supervisor, then made a series of advances, each more gross than the last. His parting endearment was, "You are smart. Let's keep this between ourselves."

Sordid stuff, even by Bill Clinton's Dogpatch standards. As Stuart Taylor has persuasively argued in the American Lawyer, Paula Jones makes a stronger case against Clinton than Anita Hill ever made against Clarence Thomas. Clinton deserves all the lurid fallout that is now being generated in the mainstream press, which seems to have decided, post-election, that Mrs. Jones is a woman, even though her alleged harasser is a Democrat. Mrs. Jones's legal case nevertheless has flaws. Having missed the deadline for filing a regular sexual-harassment claim, she is alleging that Clinton violated her constitutional right to equal protection -- a dubious application of that much-abused provision.

The merits of the case are not, however, the issue now before the Supreme Court. Rather the question is, Should the case be put off until after President Clinton has left office? The short answer is no. The rule of law must apply to everyone, the leader of the free world and a woman maligned by the White House press office alike. Mrs. Jones brought her suit, not, as her detractors would have it, as a publicity ploy, but to clear her name after a report in The American Spectator that cited a "Paula" as one of Bill Clinton's bimbos. She has a legitimate interest in the rapid disposition of this case. But as WFB points out elsewhere in this issue (p. 62), the Administration's claim that the President needs protection from having his time consumed by legal suits cannot be dismissed lightly. The case should go forward and depositions should be taken, but the President should not have to testify until his term ends.

Such a decision would satisfy neither Mr. Clinton nor his most bellicose critics. It has been fun to watch feminists squirming over the last few weeks, as reporters asked them to square their indifference to Paula Jones with their instant and vehement support for Anita Hill. But conservatives, who believe in constitutional fastidiousness and question the expansion of sexual-harassment law, should not be caught in hypocrisies of their own. They also should stop day-dreaming that scandals alone will deliver the land from Bill Clinton's canny posturing and smooth rhetoric. Goatish Presidents who served in the era of double standards -- FDR, JFK --had to be challenged on political terms. Those are still the most meaningful terms of debate.