Will Clinton Ever Get Out of the Doghouse?

He survived scandal, impeachment, the loss of Congress and more, but when he left office, former President Clinton rode tall in the saddle, waving a figurative white hat to cheering throngs. Though 70% of Americans gave him their approval, the applause quickly gave way to the familiar clatter of falling scenery. Then Clinton was on the ground again, grinning sheepishly amid the rubble of his own destruction.

Clinton isn’t the first powerful leader to watch his fortunes repeatedly soar and plummet. Fame and disgrace often go hand in hand, a phenomenon not confined to American political figures. Foreign leaders--even royalty--are subject to the vagaries of public approval and opprobrium. And the world of business is not immune either. The good news, say historians, is that almost everyone can bounce back, especially popular presidents.

“There is no such thing as straight forward linear success . . . at least with careers of major magnitude,” said Martin Duberman, historian at City University of New York. “When you’re on the world stage, you’re subject to all kinds of shifts in cultural taste, to maneuvers of people you haven’t even met. It’s inescapable a major career will have its highs and lows.”

In a particularly dramatic fashion, Israel’s former general Ariel Sharon, who was accused of condoning the 1982 slaughter of Palestinians in two refugee camps in Lebanon, was restored to favor the week before last when he was elected prime minister. Disgraced President Nixon helped rehabilitate himself by writing books in the years after he resigned under threat of impeachment. Even Hollywood executives such as Michael Ovitz can turn up after a year of failure with a stock and cash package worth $130 million . . . and a new business plan.

It seems as if there are no ashes deep enough to bury a determined phoenix. But that doesn’t make the fall from grace any easier.

Clinton’s has been unusually rough. Even some friends joined the chorus of public disgust as one revelation followed another. First, there was the specter of a taxpayer-funded luxury office in midtown Manhattan, then the missing White House flatware and furniture. Perhaps most unsettling: Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich and release of Los Angeles cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali from federal prison.

Response was swift from both the private and public sector. Investors protested vehemently over Clinton’s appearance at a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter conference in Florida earlier this month for a fee reportedly exceeding $100,000. The protest prompted a mea culpa by the financial giant’s CEO and led to the cancellation of at least one other high-priced appearance by the former president.

An FBI investigation and congressional hearings were launched to see whether or not Rich bought his pardon.

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Clinton’s first few weeks out of office have been, according to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, “one of the messiest divorces from America you could possibly imagine.”

A frenzy of attacks on his “tacky” and “greedy” conduct grew to include reports that the Clinton staffers had removed letter “w” from White House computer keyboards. Newspapers such as the New York Post ran humorous polls asking readers what type of work would suit citizen Clinton best. More than a third chose “doorman at Scores (a famous New York topless bar),” 21% “talk show host,” 17% each for “McDonald’s spokesman” and “dog trainer” and 7% for “pardons commissioner.”

Criticism snowballed to include commentators such as Daniel Schorr, who, though “usually averse to pounding on someone who is being universally condemned,” nevertheless said on National Public Radio that “if ever anybody warranted demonization, it’s Bill Clinton for the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.” Clinton said the uproar bewildered him. But as a student of history, perhaps he should have expected it. After all, historians say, other presidents also have left office under a cloud. George Bush was criticized for pardoning former colleagues and Iran-Contra defendants; Reagan came under fire after accepting $2 million for a week of speeches in Japan; Truman left office as a failure amid the stirrings of the Cold War and McCarthyism. Even Eisenhower, though popular, was seen as an “old man, out of step with the times,” said author and historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony.

Attacks are par for the course for any long-term president, he said. “Harry Truman always said Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt had the good sense to know when to die,” Anthony said. Both presidents died in office.

All of the former presidents returned to public favor within a few years, he said.

Still, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon said that unless Clinton can adequately explain his pardons, they would become a negative part of his legacy. They underscore the feelings of Americans that there are two brands of justice in the land, he said. “One feeling people have is that there is a sort of justice for the rich and another for those who aren’t rich,” Cannon said. “He’s demonstrated our worst fears--that justice isn’t impartial and that the well-connected are treated differently.”

At this point, it’s difficult to say how exactly Clinton might rehabilitate his image, although he has made a start by canceling plans to lease an $800,000-a-year midtown Manhattan office overlooking Central Park and has made plans instead to rent a $210,000-a-year space on 125th Street in Harlem. The Clintons also returned $28,000 worth of rugs, lamps and furniture given to the White House but taken by them when they left.

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Even if Clinton comes up with a plausible explanation for the pardons, it would not allay criticism by his enemies, many believe. Some of the attacks on Clinton have a certain irrational edge, said Robert Dallek, biographer of Lyndon Johnson and author of “The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents.” “What do they want from him?” he asked. “What do they hope to gain? There’s just a kind of unrelenting rage toward him.”

Alan Brinkley, professor of American History at Columbia University, suspects people’s opinions of Clinton are fixed. “The people who despise him--and there are many--believe he can’t do much to redeem himself. And those who like him, and there are many, will continue to do so. Frankly, I suspect he’ll continue to do whatever he does, anyway.”

According to Cannon, the best Clinton could do is apologize for his mistakes and get on with a constructive life. “He has to figure out something to do besides giving speeches for a lot of money. Clinton needs to do something that isn’t cosmetic, that’s a big thing, that will help people in the way that Jimmy Carter helped people. They’re both Democrats and both Southerners, and I think that Carter has set the bar quite high. It’s going to be hard to outdo Carter because he’s done so many good things.”

On the other hand, Clinton is no Jimmy Carter, observed Duberman, who called himself a Clinton admirer. “Carter is a very decent human being who lives by a rather strict Christian morality. . . . I think Bill is a liver. That’s why we love him. He’s got big appetites, makes big mistakes. He’s very human. He falls on his face.”

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Those who have watched Clinton bounce back from previous public relations disasters have no doubt he’ll overcome this one.

Longtime Los Angeles political consultant Joe Cerrell said Clinton’s personal charisma is as strong as that of President Kennedy. Last October, Cerrell said he saw a roomful of political conservatives give him a prolonged standing ovation at a Washington, D.C., charity dinner. After that, Clinton talked to a group of 200 young people. “There was mass hysteria in the room,” he said. “It never fails to amaze me. They swoon.”

Even in the midst of the problems Clinton had in the White House, Cerrell said his approval ratings remained high. Americans are forgiving, he said, and for reasons no one seems able to figure out, they are particularly forgiving of Clinton. “I want to try to learn what he’s got going that 90% of my clients don’t have. How can I make them [be] like William Jefferson Clinton?”