Starr-crossed

National Review, March 9, 1998

IF you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue the law, argue the facts. If you can't argue either, argue Ken Starr. Starr has been described as "rabid," "puritanical," and out to get Clinton, but this is a new rap. Before his appointment he was considered the epitome of a Washington establishment lawyer. Conservatives respected him but did not consider him a co-conspirator. Upon his appointment, they worried about his lack of prosecutorial experience and zeal -- worries reinforced by his quickly retracted announcement last year that he would leave his job for a post at Pepperdine's law school.

Now he is being lectured by Lawrence Walsh, the former independent counsel who made unsubstantiated criminal accusations against Reagan Administration officials. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D., N.J.) pillories him because he has represented tobacco companies. Tobacco companies, apparently, no longer have a right to legal representation. Should Clinton's lawyer Robert Bennett be considered a crook because he represented Dan Rostenkowski? Does David Kendall, another Clinton lawyer, have a conflict of interest because he represents the National Enquirer and NATIONAL REVIEW, both of which have in different ways criticized the President?

Kendall has accused Starr of an illegal campaign of leaks against the President. His scores of complaints are based on a very broad reading of the applicable law. At most a handful are legitimate --and there is no proof that Starr's office was the source in those cases. Starr is not the only one with a motive for leaking. If the Clintonites think negative information will eventually get out, they have an interest in getting it out tainted at the same time. Nothing is too Machiavellian for this White House.

And that, in turn, raises a little-remarked issue: the ability of a President to manipulate public opinion, contrary to all predictions, is increasing. From the Thirties through the Fifties intellectuals worried about the power of executive propaganda. But the decentralization of communications technology and the rise of alternative media were all supposed to bury that fear, according to prophets like George Gilder and Peter Huber. And the executive branch has grown weaker, the press more adversarial, over the last three decades. But Clinton's Starr wars suggest that a President who has refined the techniques of propaganda can prevail, at least in the short run. And how long a run does a second-term President need?

Meanwhile everybody is still interested in the story. Even though they say they aren't. Popular sentiment is what people think. Public opinion is what they want people to think they think. The divergence was highlighted by a CBS news poll which found that only 42 per cent had any curiosity about the President's sex life. When the pollsters asked if other people harbored such disreputable curiosity, 74 per cent allowed as how, well, yes, they probably did.

That silent majority has not yet coalesced into any definite judgment, because testimony is still trickling in. But the damning two-part trap -- that only an affair explains the President's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and that if there was an affair, then he has lied about it (cf. his press conferences) and others have been encouraged to lie (cf. her affidavit) -- waits to be sprung.

Bill Clinton faces another enemy, which is as dangerous as popular sentiment, and which is manifest rather than latent. The mainstream press, it is clear, is not giving him a pass on this one. It winked at his philandering and draft dodging in 1992; it has pursued Whitewater and his campaign-finance scandals fitfully. But the Lewinsky affair -- maybe because it's the latest of a series, maybe because it recapitulates the Gennifer Flowers story of six years ago -- has gotten its back up. The New York Times has been treating the President as if he were a Republican. Starr soldiers on like some doughboy in a trench in World War I; Clinton flies high. Don't expect it to last.