I had an exciting front row seat to the sexual scandal that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. The 2016 presidential campaign reminds me of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and my long days and late nights at my Capitol Hill office.
Just before the sordid sexual scandal broke, a female colleague at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. shared news she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. In an emotional conversation, I agreed to manage her office while she recovered from chemo.
My new position as Acting Director of Constituent Services at the Republican National Committee was to have been a short assignment in 1997. It extended until 2000 when my friend’s cancer worsened and she could not return to work.
In January 1998 President Clinton was facing sexual harassment charges stemming from an Arkansas incident with Paula Jones. Then news leaked at the RNC about a sex scandal involving President Clinton and a White House Intern.
Matt Drudge scooped traditional media by reporting the scandal on his Internet gossip site “The Drudge Report.” Clinton tried to hurry Lewinsky out of Washington but details of the sexual affair could not be contained in scandal hungry Washington.
I managed an office of young staffers who answered questions and took comments on the scandal from GOP members around the country. As news of the scandal spread, our phones and email messages became overwhelmed with questions on sex, some funny, some raunchy and some sick. Thankfully no one hacked our emails from the period. My notes are all that remain of the thousands of messages.
As one might imagine, we had an abundance of prank calls. We also had serious callers who were concerned about the scandal, sexual harassment in the workplace, and how the scandal might affect Congressional and administration work on national and international policies.
My young staffers and I never had a dull day as we listened to American voices from coast to coast tell us of their disappointment at President Bill Clinton and their political suggestions as to what Republicans should do about the scandal and to Clinton. I dutifully shared the information with RNC and GOP political leaders.
At the end of every week it was my duty to prepare a report for the RNC chairman, at the time Jim Nicholson, a devout Catholic who later became Ambassador to the Vatican for President George W, Bush. At times it was challenging for me to collect meaningful political intelligence from the thousands of sexual messages received from GOP members and callers claiming to be GOP members.
The most unmistakable and consistent message we received was that our members wanted Clinton impeached. I sent the message to the Chairman’s office, week after week, and he relayed it to the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill including House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The Republican leadership agreed and the impeachment proceedings began.
Though Bill Clinton denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky under oath to Special Counsel, the president eventually admitted he had done so. It was his DNA material and on Monica’s blue dress that was Clinton’s downfall.
Clinton’s political defenders rallied around the president claiming it was consensual sex and not an impeachable offense. That was not a popular point of view in the overwhelming number of messages I reviewed at the RNC. Clinton had lied under oath about his sexual affairs. Politics became a blood sport in Washington, according to some journalists. National newspaper headlines and TV broadcasts grew more salacious each day.
An Alabama columnist wrote Clinton should resign and opined “but that is as about likely as him telling the truth.” Another time, the same reporter noted Clinton’s attorneys tried to make the president’s female accusers look like “lying trash” and suggested “lying trash” was a better term for Bill Clinton.
On many occasions in 1998 pastors and business people arrived at my Capitol Hill office with large paper bags filled with cash. I explained to them we could not take money they wanted us to use to “impeach Clinton.” I told them so send us a check through proper channels. Despite my refusals to take money, they left the bags with me. I took the bags to other RNC offices. In another case, I donated a bag of cash to a local Catholic church.
One day a woman was ushered in my office. She had driven non-stop from Nebraska and she had important political information to share. I listened as she related how Bill Clinton was using code words and gestures over TV to sexually harass her. I advised her to go to the Democratic National Committee offices and make a complaint of sexual harassment against the president. To my relief, she left my office to do that. So she said.
My long non-sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton came to an end when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction. The Senate failed to convict and Clinton became something of a national hero for his political “ordeal” at the hands of evil Republicans. The scandal made Clinton more of an international celebrity and rock star politician. That’s Washington!
I resigned the RNC in November 2000 and left to holiday with friends in Hawaii as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Bush v. Gore. It was a sexually stressful and dramatic end to the 1990s and the presidency of Bill Clinton.
The numerous scandal allegations against 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pale in comparison to those of husband Bill nearly 20 years ago. If Mrs. Clinton is elected and Republicans maintain control of Congress, as appears likely, Washington may be embroiled in another Clinton impeachment, which seems likely.
I handle stress much better these days and I am ready for more long days and late nights at the RNC. Like in the 1990s with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s political problems are of her making, or unmaking.
Former U.S. diplomat Jim Patterson is a Washington–based writer and speaker. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Foreign Service Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Advocate.com and others. JEPCapitolHill@gmail.com
And this is relevant to Hillary Clinton how? Taking your paper off my RSS feed.