Whitewater--the Dreariest Firestorm

The savings and loan scandal is like one giant snake that slithered through too much of the American political Establishment and coiled itself around too many politicians. It’s now increasingly obvious that the great S&L; scandal and melodrama--the one that erupted in the 1980s, that tarnished some U.S. senators and that led to the conviction of super-S&L; fraudster Charles Keating--is far from played out. Now the S&L; snake seems coiled outside the White House, poised as if ready to strike there as well.

Consider the latest details. They suggest that the now-infamous Whitewater development property was very closely tied to Arkansas’ Madison S&L;, where so many things went wrong. One of them was that the S&L; failed. Another is that it might have failed in part because taxpayer-insured money was being used illegitimately.

The President and the First Lady are tied to this because they invested in Whitewater and because James B. McDougal, who owned the S&L;, invested in them through campaign contributions. From there on the thing gets murkier.

But is it enough to muck up the presidency? The President’s press conference performance Thursday night seemed exceptional. He left a lot of people rooting for him to ride this out. Why? Because America hasn’t had a presidency untroubled by the taint of scandal in a long time.

But despite all the congressional hearings and special prosecutors over the years, yet another President is under ethics fire. Is there something inherent in the American political system that renders all of this inevitable? Is it reasonable to establish a set of ethical expectations for our politicians that rises along with their prominence, thus setting up a situation in which the bombshell explodes only at the point at which it is most damaging to the country?

Some Republican leaders may want a crippled President but ordinary American citizens do not; rather, many appear to be growing weary of the recurring cycle of allegation (vague but fiery), cover-up (usually inept), hearings (usually windy) and investigations (usually inconclusive) that seems to sap so much of our national vitality.

At least President Clinton appears to be handling the firestorm a little better lately. Perhaps he finally fully recognized the threat. A recent Times Mirror poll indicated that about two-thirds of all Americans think the Clintons did something wrong. And maybe they did. The harder question is whether what they did was so wrong--so unlike all the gray areas of politics with which the American people are becoming increasingly familiar--that for the next three years Clinton and the country will be dealing with little else. We hope not.