Politics

Ethical Politics and the Clinton Affair

By Ian Greene and David P Shugarman - Extracted from 'Cruelty and Deception - The Controversy Over Dirty Hands in Politics' edited by Paul Rynard & David P Sugarman (Pluto Press)

The vote by the US House of Representatives in December, 1998 on whether to impeach President Bill Clinton could be regarded as a debate about the acceptability of dirty-handed politics.

At various stages in the charges and counter-charges concerning his affair with Monica Lewinsky it was suggested, usually by those sympathetic to the president, that what would normally be morally dubious behaviour should be excused, given the importance of the man and the office and the great disruption to American politics that would be caused by his impeachment or forced resignation. What makes this particular case so difficult to analyse is the complex set of subplots surrounding it. To treat it as an instance of presidential dirty hands, however, would be to misconstrue both the meaning of that term and Clinton's bumbling attempts to cover up his sexual escapades in the White House.

In digging up evidence about Clinton's affair, the media, Republican partisans and special counsel Kenneth Starr invaded his privacy. Linda Tripp's tape recording, for public consumption, of her conversation with her friend Monica Lewinsky is morally wrong and in several states is illegal. To backers of Republican efforts to track Clinton's life, such dirty-handed acts were justifiable if they led to the exposure of what they believed to be the sins of a bad man. But from the point of view of US citizens, politicians should be allowed privacy in their personal lives, and prying into their personal affairs is not acceptable. And in a succession of opinion polls taken throughout 1998, the vast majority of Americans indicated that their disapproval of Clinton's dalliance with Ms Lewinsky, and his lying about it, were not to be confused with their opinion of his performance as President. Moreover, if Clinton had lied only in front of the media and his family, there would be no grounds for impeachment. But he lied under oath while testifying before a grand jury and in a deposition he gave in the law-suit against him by Paula Jones. So the question is whether the repeated lie was big enough or important enough to count in the constitutional category of "high crimes and misdemeanours" and thus to justify impeachment.

Another critical question is whether Clinton encouraged others to cover up both his affair and his lying about it, because orchestrating a cover-up might constitute the crime of obstructing justice. There is also the question of whether efforts made by the White House to help Lewinsky find a job could reasonably be seen either as providing a public office favour in return for the president's personal sexual gratification, or as an incentive to support his denial of the affair. Finally, the investigation of the Lewinsky/Clinton affair by independent counsel Kenneth Starr resulted from an initial investigation into allegations that Clinton had been involved in some shady dealing years earlier in the Whitewater investment debacle. The Starr Report indicated that no case could be made that any Clinton wrongdoing had occurred in the Whitewater scandal. Instead, it focused on his sexual improprieties and his attempts to deny them. Adding to the complications of dealing ethically with the matter of Clinton's public ethics was the fact that views on the seriousness of his lying were, with few exceptions, a matter of party affiliation, and Starr was closely associated with the right wing of the Republican Party.

So what are the appropriate principles that ought to be used in judging Bill Clinton's behaviour, and how do they bear on what could be alleged as his recourse to dirty hands?

We argue that the principle of mutual respect is the technical foundation of democratic government. As Ronald Dworkin states: "...individuals have a right to equal concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that govern them...[T]hey possess [this right] not by virtue of birth or characteristic or merit or excellence but simply as human beings with the capacity to make plans and give justice. It is around the core value of mutual respect that other pillars of our democratic tradition have taken shape: representative legislatures, freedom of expression, the integrity in governing. The Clinton case highlights the issues of integrity in public life and respect for the right to privacy.

Integrity is honesty modified by concern and respect for our fellow human beings. As Stephen Carter puts it, "one cannot have integrity without being honest... but one can certainly be honest and yet have little integrity." For example, an elected official could promise to find a good job for his mistress. By keeping the promise, he is honest. But he has violated the respect he owes to others who were cut out for that job. Telling a lie is dishonest. But telling the whole truth at every possible instant in time does not necessarily mean acting with integrity. We all face situations where we must be the bearers of distressing news, but we can often choose the time and the circumstances for presenting the news so that we can maximise the respect we show for the recipient.

So integrity is actually a complex ideal, closely related to the principle of mutual respect. People show their respect for one another by being straight with each other and by tolerating differences in lifestyles and beliefs - as well as by adhering to other crucial corollaries of treating fellow citizens as equals, such as dealing with others fairly, keeping promises, maintaining public trust when given it, and respecting others' autonomy, including their right to privacy. The Clinton affair raises the political problem of how these principles can be applied in the most effective and ethical way.

From the President's testimony before a grand jury on 17 August, 1998 and his five-minute speech to the American nation on television the same evening, it is clear that he lied to the American public. He did have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, although he had categorically denied this at a meeting with reporters at the White House on 26 January, 1998. Yet in his explanation and apology for lying, Clinton offered no excuse or justification related to his public office. Rather, he said he was mainly concerned with protecting himself from the embarrassment of his own conduct, and second, he wanted to protect his family and their privacy from outsiders. Clinton was dishonest, but can his dishonesty be justified? It is difficult to fathom how his admission of sexual activity with a young woman would have contributed to integrity in American public life, or for that matter, how his honesty would have enhanced the life of Ms Lewinsky or strengthened either his relationship with his family or their public image. It is equally difficult to define his show of solemnity and feigned sincerity for millions of television viewers as he decided to move from keeping a private relationship confidential to deceiving the public.

Clinton claims that his adulterous behaviour is a matter between him and his wife and daughter. In his August 17 television address, he said, "It is private and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It's nobody' business but ours." Here, of course, we need to remember that it is difficult for a politician to make an objective judgment about the difference between the public good and one's personal interests in such cases. At first glance, Clinton's deny, deny, deny strategy may appear to be an instance of a politician forced to dirty his hands. And if he was lying because he sincerely believed that the public good is not served by confessing his private sexual habits and accepting the political consequences, there is some basis for treating this episode as a dirty-hands matter. A dirty-hands situation is one in which a public official knowingly does something wrong, conceals it, but justifies to himself and a few confidants - the wrong, as well as the concealment, as being for the public good. Clinton came close to making a dirty-hands claim - lying for the public good - when he asserted that the prying into his private life had distracted him and the citizenry from attending to all the challenges of preparing for the next century. But it is hard to see how either his indiscretions or his attempted cover-up of them could be construed as dirty-handed activities when what is meant by such a phrase is the adoption of unseemly or repugnant methods to serve a great public interest. Clinton's sex acts could hardly be regarded as serving a grand public purpose, and even the suggestion that he lied in order to refocus attention on national priorities is questionable. Being up-front about the affair when he was first questioned about it would have put an end to the speculation and the prying. More to the point, his own explanation and apology for lying had to do with saving himself and his family, not the nation, from embarrassment.

Therefore, Clinton's situation is not so much an example of dirty hands as it is a case of a politician attempting to protect his private life from public scrutiny. This raises the question of a politician's right to privacy, and his or her capacity to separate private activities from public responsibilities. Politicians can justly claim that their private lives are off limits to the public when the one does not intrude on the other, when public responsibilities and the leadership role are not affected by situations in one's private life. A politician can claim that it is not in the public interest to have his or her sexual activities made transparent - which is not the same as claiming that engaging in such activities and then trying to keep them secret are done to serve the public interest.

Clinton chose to lie about the allegations of his affair with Lewinsky rather than to remain silent. An interesting contrast is the behaviour of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. When questioned by reporters about his sex life prior to his marriage, and about his marriage later on, Trudeau made it a point never to answer, no matter how embarrassing the allegations. There is no evidence that he ever lied about his private life, because he refused to comment on it. Perhaps the most glaring contrast because of paradoxical similarities is the treatment enjoyed by and accorded to John F Kennedy. Kennedy apparently had remarkably similar sexual proclivities to those of Clinton. Areas of the Kennedy White House were devoted to parties that the President had with a succession of women who were smuggled in and out. Yet Kennedy was never confronted about his sexual activities, nor did he ever face questioning about how his private life might intrude on his public duties.

From the perspective of ethical politics, there are several critical questions that bear on Clinton's conduct. First, did the President fail to keep his private life and public responsibilities separate, and did he abuse the powers of his office by using others to advance both his private and political interests? Specifically, did Clinton take advantage of a White House intern by encouraging her to think that she could expect public office favours in return for sexual favours? And since Clinton lied about his affair with Lewinsky when he appeared before a court dealing with the Paula Jones lawsuit, did he encourage others to lie under oath on his behalf? If the answers to any of these questions turn out to be yes, then the President has been involved in serious ethical misconduct. Based on scrutiny of the Staff Report, and evidence placed before the House, we are of the view that the answers to these questions are no and that the President did not violate his responsibilities of office. There was nothing comparable to Richard Nixon's lies to cover up the subversion of democratic political processes in the Watergate scandal. The verdict, reached by the US Senate on 12 February, 1999, accords with this conclusion.

Our view is that politics-and-sex issues must be judged from the perspective of mutual respect rather than from a position of prevailing social standards or taboos about sex. For example, Quebec's Premier Duplessis was known to have provided public office favours to the family members of one of his mistresses. The use of public office prerogatives to obtain personal sexual satisfaction is a clear violation of mutual respect. If we focus on Duplessis's extra marital sex alone - as distinct from his use of public office favours to obtain it - this is a personal rather than a political matter, although on a personal ethical basis it would be enlightening to know whether he treated his wife with fairness and respect. In Clinton's case, there is no evidence that he either forced himself on Ms Lewinsky or used his power as President to entice her to do something she otherwise would have refused to do. Their liaison was between two consenting adults.

The Starr investigation exposed the fact that Clinton was sexually promiscuous, that he was dishonest with his wife and daughter, and that he compounded that dishonesty by lying to the public and under oath. But his lying was about his sexual infidelities, not his activities as President. The failing is primarily a personal, familial one, a failing of a husband and father. He engaged in an all-too-common lie, understood by many as often used (and often excused) in keeping intimate details about one's private life and intimate relations out of the public eye. An important aspect of mutual respect in a democracy is the privacy we accord to each other to engage in intimate relations free from surveillance by the government, corporations or others. If we don't respect people's right to privacy and the importance of boundaries separating the public from the private, if we encourage the monitoring of our every move, and public truth-telling on erotic activities, then we open the door to Orwell's Big Brother of 1984 and widespread reliance on dirty hands as a means both of persecution and protection.

Finally, the Clinton impeachment scandal exposes a worrying characteristic of political practice in purportedly mature western democracies. Public lying, even when it is only about private matters, undermines the credibility of the individual perpetrator and of politicians in general. Those of us who teach political science courses have often heard our students say, "All politicians lie, and they lie often, so why should Clinton be singled out for blame?" Support for Clinton was frequently based on the judgement that he's the least bad of a very bad bunch. If the public's trust in their leaders drops too low, then clearly the system of government becomes vulnerable. For politics to be rehabilitated, politicians need the courage to tell the truth consistently, which may include the courage to avoid telling lies that would protect against personal embarrassment. While largely avoiding recourse to the tactics of moral Machiavellism, Clinton's response to his enemies, combined with their muck-slinging tactics, nonetheless contributed to the cynicism and lack of trust that is becoming a staple of our political experiences.

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