Infidelity issue plagued Clinton

0 Comments | Milwaukee Journal, The, Feb 7, 1995 | by DAVID MARANISS

Last of three parts

Eighteen years after the 32 Rhodes scholars of the class of 1968 sailed across the Atlantic aboard the SS United States on their way to the ancient colleges of Oxford, where they were trained as "the best men for the world's fight," the old boys were reaching 40.

Doctor, lawyer, scientist, professor, journalist, investor, art curator, military officer most of them had reached some level of achievement in their professions. But only one class member seemed intent on engaging in the world's fight in the largest sense of Cecil Rhodes' imperative. In 1986, in the annual class letter in the American Oxonian, secretary Bob Reich finally broached a subject that he and many of his classmates had contemplated since their days together in England: Bill Clinton running for president.

"The latest polls in Arkansas show that the governor has a 72% approval rating, which places him in the same category as McDonald's hamburgers and Dan Rather, ahead of Ronald Reagan and the new Coca-Cola," Reich wrote in the jocular style that characterized his yearly reports. "Rumor has it that Bill will be the Democratic candidate for president in 1988. I just made up that rumor, but by the time you read this, the rumor will have spread to the ends of the nation." Seeing an Opportunity

Early on the evening of March 20, 1987, the office of Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas issued a brief statement announcing that Bumpers would not run for president in 1988. The announcement came as a surprise to some in the political world. Since the beginning of the year, Bumpers had been traveling the country, meeting with prominent Democratic party financiers and operatives, seeming to prepare the groundwork for a presidential campaign.

Whatever Bumpers did or did not do was always of great interest to Clinton. Their relationship had gone through brief periods of hostility and longer periods of reconciliation and alliance, but it had always been marked by a certain amount of tension. With Bumpers out of the presidential derby, Clinton now seriously considered making the race.

Clinton and Betsey Wright, his longtime aide, dispatched scouts to Iowa, New Hampshire, and several Super Tuesday primary states to gauge how a Clinton candidacy might be received. Little Rock state Rep. Gloria Cabe, whose loyalty to Clinton went back to the bleak days after his defeat in the 1980 governor's race, ventured up to New Hampshire and spent three days in a Holiday Inn calling campaign activists from a list Clinton had compiled. Clinton's first swing through the state went so well that he returned "flying like a kite," convinced that he could finish second there and win the Southern primaries.

In the early morning of May 7, another Democrat was scratched from the field. It was Gary Hart, who was forced to withdraw in the face of allegations and documented evidence regarding his extramarital sex life, which Hart had helped turn into an issue by denying that he was a philanderer. Longtime political pros who had been allied with Hart now looked to Clinton as an alternative. But there was the lingering question: Did Bill Clinton have a Gary Hart problem?

As journalists and party activists in Washington asked the question among themselves, and in so doing advanced Clinton's reputation as a womanizer, Clinton and his advisers struggled with how to deal with it. Bob Armstrong, the former Texas land commissioner who had developed an easygoing, big-brotherly friendship with Clinton since they worked together in the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, had several telephone conservations with Clinton in the aftermath of the Hart implosion. One of the issues Clinton brought up, according to Armstrong, was whether there was "a statute of limitations on infidelity whether you get any credit for getting it back together."

Clinton and Betsey Wright also had several private debates about the lessons of the Hart episode. Clinton "wanted to believe and advocated that it was irrelevant to whether the guy could be a good president," Wright recalled. She argued that it had a significant bearing in Hart's case "because it raised questions about his stability." Any previous affairs might have been irrelevant, she said, but "to have one while he was running was foolhardy."

Clinton agreed. Hart, he said, was foolish to flaunt it.

The momentum kept building for Clinton to run. Wright and her assistants rented a ballroom at the Excelsior Hotel for a possible announcement. But rumors about Clinton's extramarital sex life intensified in Little Rock. A few days before the scheduled announcement, Wright met with Clinton at her home on Hill Street. The time had come, she felt, for Clinton to get past what she considered his self-denial tendencies and face the issue squarely. For years, she told friends later, she had been covering up for him. She was convinced that some state troopers were soliciting women for him, and he for them. Sometimes when Clinton was on the road, Wright would call his room in the middle of the night and no one would answer. She hated that part of him, but felt that the other sides of him overshadowed his personal weaknesses.