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A sex scandal strikes Clinton's inner circle. It makes a splash, but it is hardly novel. The private lives of public officials have often had the whiffs and the whispers of steamy impropriety. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to our panel of historians.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: That's right, that's Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, Journalist and Author Haynes Johnson, and Bill Kristol, Editor and Publisher of the “Weekly Standard.” Doris, there is precedence in history for this.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: Well, there's an amazing parallel. In October of 1964, when President Johnson was in the middle of his presidential campaign, his closest aide, Chief of Staff Walter Jenkins, was caught by the police in a YMCA basement in the bathroom with another man, and he was booked on disorderly conduct.
The amazing thing was that the story was then leaked from the FBI to the Republican National Committee but they chose to do nothing. It was then leaked to the several Chicago newspapers; they chose to do nothing. Finally, however, somebody from the “Washington Star” told the White House what had happened, and the White House then sent aides around and begged the newspapers not to print the story, and eventually that talk made it eventually come out. It came out in the UPI. Jenkins resigned. He was hospitalized.
And the interesting thing that happened is Mrs. Lady Bird Johnson put out the first statement, a really sympathetic statement, saying, here's a man who's given his life to public service, he's exhausted, we love him, and we will stand by him. And that set the tone of sympathy for the rest of the coverage. Goldwater was then urged by his aides, use this, this is your perfect gift because you can talk about the decay of the country, but he said he couldn't do that to an individual. And as a result, the story never got the head wind that it might have gotten.
And then Johnson got a great gift because 24 hours after the story broke, China, Red China detonated its first nuclear bomb, the Torrey government was thrown out of power in England, and Kruschev resigned. So he went back on the campaign trail as if it never happened, never said a word about it.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Speaking of England, I mean, there was a similar--something similar in England, right?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: Yes.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Was it treated differently? What was it and was it treated differently?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, it was different. The most momentous one that we can think of, 1963, the British defense minister, John Profumo, was revealed to have been involved with a professional lady who was involved with a Soviet agent, and there was the argument at the time that this was something that perhaps subjected British security to some danger because he may have given her certain information that she transmitted to the agent which went back to Moscow, and that made this not only a sex scandal, as in perhaps the Walter Jenkins case, but what was called a sex and security scandal, the sense that misconduct by a public official had really jeopardized the security of England.
In a way, what's happened with the Morris case shows another--it's another example of what's happened since the Cold War. I think if you would have had a case like this 10 years ago when we were still in confrontation with the Soviet Union, the allegation that Morris had given private information, private things that the President had said, if true, to a prostitute, I think would loom much larger than perhaps this one does.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Haynes Johnson, what about the relationship of presidential aides to Presidents? I mean, as this one was, I mean, is there--
HAYNES JOHNSON, Author/Journalist: I mean, we love scandals in America. It goes back--the very roots going back to--Jefferson was supposed to have a mistress and allegations that he had fathered an illegitimate child. We talked the other night about ma, ma, ma, where's my pa, gone to the White House, Grover Cleveland, who fathered an illegitimate child, and recently, though, there have been more and more questions about internal operations between the aides of the President, Eisenhower and Sherman Adams, he had to fire him--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Because--
HAYNES JOHNSON: Because of the Laguna coat scandal and--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: That he had accepted a Laguna coat from--
HAYNES JOHNSON: Right. And Eisenhower said I need him. They had to fire him.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And who was it he was supposed to have accepted a coat from?
HAYNES JOHNSON: He was a top aide. He was a top aide. Bernard Goldfinger.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Right.
HAYNES JOHNSON: Goldfine. James Bond. But the reality of it is that in all these things--and there have been recently of course in the Reagan administration, there are all the allegations of scandal and now in this administration there were--about aides, the President, so forth. The question is what impact it is, really.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Right.
HAYNES JOHNSON: Does it have an impact?
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: On the President.
HAYNES JOHNSON: On the President. And, and the answer is yeah, sometimes. Harry Truman was tainted with crime, corruption, and Korea, and that hurt him because of scandals in his administration, he couldn't win a second term and didn't run on his own in ‘52, but the fact is in recent times the two great landslides elections were--came after Walter Jenkins and Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker, who was a wheeler-dealer, and Lyndon Johnson's character. He won 61.1 percent of the votes of the country and Watergate is a classic example. The Watergate break-in occurred June 17, 1992, involving all kinds of aides. There were front page stories in the "Washington Post" day after day.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Much more serious than this.
HAYNES JOHNSON: Nixon, if I remember, 49 out of 50 states.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: William Kristol, how does the opposition in history use this, and how do you expect it to be used now? You notice they've taken the high road today pretty much.
WILLIAM KRISTOL, The Weekly Standard: Bob Dole has not said anything about it basically. I think it's a touch choice for Bob Dole. He'll be accused of going on the low road if you exit. On the other hand, Vice President Gore said last night you can judge a President by the enemies he's made. It is fair to say that you can judge a President by the friends he makes and by the close associates he, he hires and who he allows to advise him.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Historically, how has it been used? Have they taken the high road historically?
WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, no, I mean--yes, I think in the case of 1964 with Goldwater and I don't know that we've quite had an instance like this. I mean, the point is it's not--no one can look--you can't be responsible for the sex lives of your political consultants, if one were, an awful lot of presidential candidates would be in trouble. The question really is how it affects people's perception of Bill Clinton and whether this could be the straw that Republicans have been yearning for that finally will break the camel's back and cause people to look at Clinton and finally bring the character issue into play in a serious way. That's the question.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, I'm sure we'll be pursuing that question throughout at least the night. Thank you.
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