American Politics Journal -- Toobin's Vast Shrug-Off



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Guest Editorial
Toobin's Vast Shrug-Off
by Chris Anderson

Jan. 11, 1999 (AmpolNS) -- This past week, America's bookshelves (both real and virtual) were hit by a new salvo in the ongoing struggle to define what was really going on in L'Affaire Lewinsky.

Jeffrey Toobin's "A Vast Conspiracy" purports to be "The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President". In many respects it fulfills that promise, but in the process it lays the foundation for a new paradigm for the recent unpleasantness that, while condemning the usual suspects, provides posterial cover for those who, in many ways, share the biggest blame for this exercise in over-reaction.

Toobin's book is one of the first mainstream treatments of the whole Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky/Impeachment mess that doesn't immediately strike one as being an apologia for the way the various players, other then Clinton, dealt with the scandal. Perhaps this is because Toobin is the first writer on these matters who himself was not involved in the machinations that brought the scandal to America's attention (as, for example, Michael Isikoff and his "I was just a tool of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" book "Uncovering Clinton"). Toobin does not hesitate to condemn Clinton for his absurdly stupid handling of this particularly low point in American history, but he also comes to the conclusion that, compared to the behavior of those who railed against him, Clinton was "the good guy".

To those of us who are self-confessed scandal junkies there is very little new information in Toobin's tome. However, it does a good job of laying out the various roles the "vast" number of players had in this "conspiracy" (the book begins with a five page cast of characters that would leave Shakespeare breathless). Toobin does pull his punches in one crucial area by laying the lion's share of the blame for the "conspiracy" on a misfit collection of kooks and profiteers and, in the process, outright ignores the hints of darker forces at work.

Toobin introduces three categories of players in the "Vast Conspiracy" that tried to destroy President Clinton:

The first were the often sex-obsessed Clinton haters who simply wanted the guy destroyed because they didn't like him (Steven Jones, husband of Paula, Cliff Jackson, erstwhile Clinton friend turned enemy and scandal caterer to the media).

The second were the profiteers who didn't really care one way or the other about what happened to Clinton, just so long as they could make a quick buck off the scandal industry (Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg, etc.) or advance their professional careers (David Brock, Michael Isikoff, etc.).

And finally there were the political operatives who tried to use the scandals to gain political advantage over Clinton and the rest of the Democratic party.

Toobin devotes much of his book to the first two categories (sex-obsessed Clinton-Haters and profiteers), but he only brushes over the details of how other players used the scandals for their own political advantage. Indeed, he even ascribes most of the actions of the OIC to a cadre of, again, sex-obsessed prosecutors who had developed a theory that all of the Clinton scandals came down to attempts by the Clinton's to hide Bad-Boy-Bill's behavior.

By taking a hands-off approach with the question of political malfeasance category, Toobin fails to ask the next logical question: did political operatives move beyond taking advantage of the scandals and take an active role in germinating them as well?

What we have in Toobin's book is the early stage of the new "perceived wisdom" in Washington, DC. The elite of Washington (represented by the Sally Quinn crowd and many members of the mainstream press) laughed at Hillary Clinton's claims of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", but they knew in their hearts that there was good reason for believing in its existence (indeed, Toobin's book makes any claim otherwise laughable). However, due to a certain sickness that had taken hold in Washington since the early days of Clinton's presidency, it had become increasingly difficult for them to admit to the obvious. After all, they didn't want to give the impression that they were excusing Clinton's behavior. Can you imagine how difficult it was for Toobin (himself a resident-non-resident of the "Beltway elite") to admit that, compared to the other people he describes, Clinton was the good guy?

But Toobin has come up with the ideal solution to this problem: admit that there was a conspiracy, but it was a conspiracy of kooks and profiteers only. This thereby allows the Washington crowd to continue to laugh off suggestions of some deeper conspiracy -- while admitting that Jones, Tripp, Goldberg, etc., were people they don't really want to be associated with.

The evidence for this? Well, consider how few questions are being asked about the relationship between George T. Conway III, one of the secret "elves" working for Paula Jones, and James Moody, the former lawyer for Linda Tripp who helped her when she first came to Starr's office. Conway was present at the midnight meeting the night before Clinton's deposition when members of Starr's OIC handed a copy of the last Tripp tape to Moody.

Why was Conway, a lawyer working in secret for Paula Jones, present -- and privy to legal wrangling between Linda Tripp and the OIC?

And why, in God's name, did a lawyer for Jones fax a copy of Lewinsky's affidavit to, of all people, Moody (who then passed it on to the OIC)? Judge Susan Weber Wright had imposed a gag order on the Jones case. Faxing Lewinsky's affidavit to someone not involved in the case was a violation of that order, was it not? Why would that lawyer risk the wrath of Judge Wright to pass on this information to Tripp's lawyer (and thus onto to Kenneth Starr)?

By the way, while Toobin mentions the sending of the fax to Moody, his coverage of this incident is limited to a single off-hand mention in a sentence. Moreover, it is a non-sequitur to the rest of the paragraph in which it resides. Toobin doesn't name the lawyer who faxed the document, nor does he give any indication that he considers this an important question to ask. Here he demonstrates the same blind spot that has afflicted the rest of the mainstream press.

And these are just a few of the many questions that no one in Washington is asking. Those questions could fill a volume all by themselves. Perhaps certain parties are reluctant to do so because the implications behind the answers to these questions are too difficult to deal with: were members of the OIC and the Jones legal team conspiring to convert a civil legal action into a criminal legal action? Were they doing so in order to create a pretext for the impeachment and removal of a President they politically disagreed with? Were they doing so for more reasons then just that they were sex-obsessed or they thought to personally profit from it?

And finally, why were they allowed to do so for so long with barely a peep of protest from the media elite?

No. Much better to just blame it all on kooks and profiteers, shrug their shoulders and say, "why are you still talking about this stuff? It's old news!"