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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 38

BILL CLINTON

Questions, Questions, Questions


Clinton appears to be well on his way to winning the nomination,
but many voters still have qualms about his character and beliefs

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and
Margaret Carlson/Washington and Michael Riley/Atlanta


    Is it possible for a candidate to win a presidential
nomination while convincing even many of his own party's
strongest partisans that he does not have the honesty and
integrity to lead the nation? It would seem a wildly implausible
accomplishment (if that is the word). Yet Bill Clinton is coming
closer and closer to pulling it off. His primary victories last
week in New York, Wisconsin and Kansas, while far from
overwhelming, further padded what already looked like an
insurmountable lead in delegates. Moreover, former Senator Paul
Tsongas' refusal to re-enter the race, despite his unexpectedly
strong second-place showing in New York, virtually ensured that
anyone-but-Clinton sentiment will remain unfocused, rather than
coalescing around an appealing rival.

    Rarely if ever have party voters approached their choice
with so many misgivings. Only 50% of New York Democrats
questioned as they left primary voting booths said Clinton had
the honesty to be President; 46% thought he did not. That was
only a bit higher than the proportion expressing qualms in exit
polls in earlier primaries.

    If Clinton stirs so much doubt even among the most
committed Democrats, how will he be regarded by the broader
electorate he must appeal to in order to defeat George Bush? A
TIME/CNN poll of 937 registered voters questioned by Yankelovich
Clancy Shulman last Thursday -- two days after Clinton's primary
victories -- gives some startling answers. A month earlier,
Clinton finished in a dead heat with Bush, 43% to 43%; now he
loses by 11 points, 44% to 33% (a jump in the undecided column
made most of the difference). In a three-way race, Clinton
barely edges Texas billionaire Ross Perot, 25% to 21%, with Bush
pulling 40%. It is rare enough for a candidate not to get a
bounce in the polls after winning some major primaries; to lose
ground is almost unheard of. Some reasons for the deterioration:
asked if Clinton is "someone you can trust," respondents voted
59% no to 28% yes. Questioned more specifically as to whether
Clinton is "honest and trustworthy enough to be President, 53%
said no and 39% yes -- vs. a 59% yes to 37% no vote for Bush on
the same question.

    A further indication of serious trouble brewing for
Clinton: "the character issue," as it is generally though
imprecisely called, has begun drawing the sardonic and sometimes
fatal attention of those interpreters of the zeitgeist, TV's
late-night talk-show hosts. Sample gibe from Johnny Carson:
"Clinton experimented with marijuana, but he said he didn't
inhale and didn't enjoy it. That's the trouble with the
Democrats. Even when they do something wrong, they don't do it
right."

    Even amid the glow of his primary victories last week,
Clinton rather plaintively acknowledged that he had to do a
better job of convincing voters he is an honest man. Some
well-wishers go further. "Clinton is going to have to find some
forum in which he confronts these character questions directly,"
says former Democratic National Chairman John White. He has in
mind something like John F. Kennedy's televised confrontation
with Protestant ministers in Houston that defused concerns
about his Roman Catholicism -- and its supposed influence on his
policies -- early in the 1960 campaign. Natalie Davis, a
political-science professor at Birmingham-Southern College,
draws a different analogy. Says she: "At some strategic moment
in the fall, he's going to have to give a sort of Checkers
speech ((referring to the 1952 TV talk by Richard Nixon,
rebutting slush-fund charges, that saved his vice-presidential
candidacy)), and it will have to be dynamite. The great thing
is that Bill Clinton is totally capable of delivering it."

    Maybe so. Clinton already has won the surprised admiration
of many pols for surviving allegations that would long since
have scuttled many another campaign. Yet for the candidate and
his supporters, the massive mistrust he has aroused is
maddeningly difficult to counter because it stems from so many
sources. It can no longer be dispelled by refuting specific
charges -- not all of which are terribly important anyway. There
are some indications that more voters are troubled by
allegations of adultery and draft evasion than will admit it to
pollsters. But youthful experimentation with pot is a proven
non-issue in the case of candidates who admit it
straightforwardly; it had no effect on the 1988 campaigns of
Bruce Babbitt or Albert Gore Jr. or the confirmation of Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And probably not 1 voter in 50
could even say just what are the questions that have been raised
about Clinton's financial dealings.

    Far outweighing any specific issue is the cumulative
impression made by the sheer number of them. Says Mervin Field,
conductor of the respected California Poll: "If it was just
marital infidelity, ((voters)) might have excused that, but the
cumulative weight of that and everything else is too much. The
degree of uncomfortableness is increasing day by day." Even
while endorsing Clinton last month, former President Jimmy
Carter lamented that the "volume and repetition of charges
against him have created an image that he's not trustworthy" --
most unfairly, in Carter's view.

    Among political insiders too, the volume and repetition of
charges have created a kind of shell-shocked wariness as to what
revelation or pseudo-revelation might be coming next. There are
indications that this fear is keeping Clinton from sewing up the
nomination as early as he might have. It is not at all certain
that the Arkansas Governor can win enough delegates in the
remaining primaries and caucuses to give him the 2,145 votes
necessary. To nail down the prize, he may eventually need a
heavy majority of the so-called superdelegates -- basically
elected officials and party bigwigs. But though the Clinton
campaign claims the support of more than 200 of the 772
superdelegates, there was no rush among the remainder to jump
aboard his bandwagon, even after his victories last week.

    California Representative Don Edwards held a meeting last
week of 17 congressional Democrats who, like him, are
superdelegates. They agreed, he says, that Clinton's nomination
now looks inevitable but that nonetheless they would stay
uncommitted at least for the moment. One reason, says Edwards
-- who stresses that he personally has no doubts about Clinton's
honesty -- is that "you always wonder if another shoe will
drop." The situation has reached the somewhat absurd stage of
rumors about allegations. Talk circulated around Chicago last
week that some really damaging charges -- nature unspecified --
were about to become public, and it may have scared off some
superdelegates from signing up with Clinton just yet.

    Among both ordinary voters and political cognoscenti, a
great deal of the uneasiness about Clinton reflects his
propensity to dance away from straightforward yes or no answers
to any character question. He relies instead on legalistic,
artfully phrased and heavily nuanced replies that may be
technically accurate but also misleading. The resulting belief
that he is incurably evasive has probably damaged Clinton far
more than any specific issue. It ties in with a not very
specific but nonetheless widely felt discomfort about his
calculated ambition (he says he has wanted to be President since
he was a teenager) and some alleged shifts of position on
policy. At least among some people, these factors create a
general impression of insincerity, of a synthetic politician who
will do or say anything to become President. In fact, 67% of
those questioned in last week's TIME/CNN poll said exactly that:
Clinton "would say anything to get elected President." That at
least partly reflected a sour suspicion of all politicians; 60%
voiced the same opinion about Bush.

    Clinton's admirers put much blame for Clinton's woes on
print and TV journalists who, in their view, have been harping
on largely trivial questions of character while ignoring the
policy issues that are Clinton's strength. Result: the voters
who have heard about Gennifer Flowers vastly outnumber those who
have any idea that Clinton has put forth a highly detailed
program on taxes and the economy, let alone those who have any
notion of what his program contains. There is some truth to
this, but given public attitudes, it is largely inevitable.
Political scientist James David Barber of Duke University
observes that many voters say to themselves, "I don't really
know what the deficit means. Ido know what adultery means."

    To some extent, Clinton may be suffering merely from being
a newcomer to the national spotlight -- and one who quickly got
tabbed as the Democratic front runner, thus assuring himself of
exceptionally early and intense scrutiny. Clinton's wife Hillary
recently wondered aloud why George Bush was not also being
relentlessly pummeled about his character. Though she quickly
apologized for raising the particular issue that she did --
whispers, never substantiated, that Bush had had an
extramarital affair -- she had a point. Why has Bush not been
questioned incessantly about his son Neil's involvement with a
savings and loan association that failed because of unsound
banking practices? About his knowledge of possibly illegal and
unconstitutional Iran-contra activities? About his flip-flops
on abortion, taxes, Saddam Hussein and many other issues? About
the widepread impression that he has no strong beliefs about
anything except his own ability to fill the Oval Office? The
answer, probably, is that Bush has been around long enough for
people to feel they know as much about him, good or bad, as they
need to; unanswered questions left over from past campaigns are
regarded as old news. And voters do not have to guess what kind
of President Bush is likely to be, as they must with Clinton;
they can form their judgments on the basis of Bush's record
through more than three years in office.

    Clinton may also be suffering more than his rivals, and
more than past candidates, from the backlash of anger against
all politics and politicians, which has been far stronger in
this campaign than ever before. In another election cycle, the
Governor might have profited from his reputation as a master
politician who has shown a rare ability in Arkansas to convince
often clashing interests that he is on their side. Clinton's
defenders like to point out that the now sainted Franklin D.
Roosevelt was often regarded in his day as a crafty politician
promising something for everybody. But 1992 is the worst
possible year to be called "Slick Willie" -- the nickname
invented by opponents of Clinton in Arkansas that he detests but
has never been able to shake.

    The specific accusations against Clinton are a mixed bag,
involving two kinds of "character" questions. One set focuses
on private character -- allegations of adultery and marijuana
smoking, for example -- that have no correlation to presidential
performance, except for whatever a candidate's comments about
them reveal as to his general honesty or lack of it.
Regrettably, this group of problems has received the most
attention because it is -- well, sexier than questions about
what might be called public character. These are matters such
as conflict-of-interest situations and how a candidate might
carry out the duties of office. The common denominator is that
Clinton's answers to all these questions have generally been
ineffective. In fact, worse than ineffective: They have
sometimes got him into deeper trouble than he was in before.
Some details:



    INFIDELITY

    Clinton's general strategy has been four-part: 1) in
effect, admit to adultery without actually using the words by
repeatedly conceding that his marriage to Hillary has gone
through periods of severe strain; 2) insist that they have
patched things up and their marriage is now solid; 3) deny the
specific allegations by Gennifer Flowers of a 12-year affair
with him; and 4) refuse to answer any questions about other
women on the grounds, essentially, that if Hillary is satisfied,
it is no one else's business.

    There are some indications that this line is succeeding in
convincing voters, whether or not they believe his denials of
involvement with Flowers, that the matter is a closed book, with
nothing more to be said, and not terribly important anyway. When
Phil Donahue persisted in grilling him about adultery, Clinton
won vociferous applause from the studio audience by informing
the TV host that they would all "sit for a long time in
silence" if Donahue did not get onto something else. But there
are also hints that the issue is helping open a gender gap
against Clinton. Illinois pollster J. Michael McKeon reports
that dissatisfaction with Clinton is highest among women ages
18 to 44, and Sue Purrington, executive director of the Chicago
chapter of the National Organization for Women, says "about 80%"
of the women who talk politics with her have expressed serious
reservations about the Arkansas Governor. Though she attributes
these to the character issue generally rather than allegations
of adultery specifically, she goes on to talk about "a gut-level
feeling of distaste for his life-style, which is perceived as
morally not upstanding. Women tend to feel that one's moral
character is a whole element, that if somebody is doing
something morally unacceptable, it affects that person's
judgment on other issues."



    MARIJUANA

    A truly trivial issue, revealing only because it
illustrates Clinton's penchant for legalistic evasiveness.
Questioned about pot smoking, Clinton first said he had never
broken U.S. or state laws -- an answer clearly designed to
convey the impression that he had never tried the weed, without
his actually saying so. When someone finally asked the obvious
question -- what about while he was abroad? -- Clinton confessed
that he had smoked marijuana as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford in
the late '60s but felt compelled to add that not only had he not
liked it, he had not even inhaled -- an assertion that many
others who had smoked marijuana, then and later, found
hilariously unbelievable. Clinton could have avoided the whole
brouhaha, and what is threatening to become grist for a million
late-night-TV jokes, by just saying "Yes, and so what?" the
first time he was asked.



    THE DRAFT

    A far more serious affair. Just when Clinton might have
thought he had put it to rest, a letter surfaced last week dated
May 8, 1969, and written by Cliff Jackson, then a fellow Rhodes
scholar and now a bitter political opponent of Clinton's in
Arkansas. In it, Jackson informed a friend back in the U.S. that
Clinton "received his induction notice last week." Clinton, who
earlier said he was never actually drafted, now asserted that
yes, he received an induction letter in England. It came by
surface mail, he said, and specified a date that had already
passed; he got in touch with his local draft board and was told
he could finish his term at Oxford. He did not mention it
before, he said in essence, because he had just forgotten about
it.

    But who could forget a draft notice? At any rate, the
basic story does not change: torn between opposition to what he
regarded as an immoral war in Vietnam and his sense of duty to
country, Clinton kept himself out of the draft for a few crucial
months by enrolling in an ROTC unit at the University of
Arkansas that he never actually joined; he eventually gave up
that deferment but drew such a high lottery number that he was
never inducted.

    Whatever they may think of the war, many Americans would
readily sympathize with the young Clinton's moral turmoil about
it; he was certainly not the only member of his generation to
do everything he legally could to stay out. But even some of
his supporters have trouble swallowing Clinton's contention
that his eventual decision to submit to the draft was a moral
act, when he wrote at the time that he wanted -- even at the
age of 23 -- to maintain his future "political viability." The
latest dustup about what kind of letter he received in England
can only reinforce an impression that he is saying whatever he
judges to be expedient.



    SEGREGATED GOLF

    Clinton has made no attempt to justify playing a round of
golf during the present campaign at the Country Club of Little
Rock, which has no black members; he has said it was a mistake
that he will not repeat. But his explanation of why he did it
sounds distressingly lame: he and his hosts were in a hurry, and
it was the only place they could reach in time. Nobody thinks
Clinton is a racist; his pledges to try to heal white-vs.-black
enmity are among the most attractive aspects of his campaign --
especially in contrast to past Republican appeals to whites'
racial fears. But the episode does suggest even to some friendly
observers that Clinton may consider himself above the restraints
that apply to other people. He knows he is not a racist, and
sneaking in a quick round of golf at a convenient country club
will not change that, so why not?



    CONFLICT OF INTEREST

    Essentially, there are two issues. One is that in 1978,
when Clinton was Arkansas attorney general, he and Hillary
invested in Whitewater Development Co., a corporation that
planned to sell lots for vacation homes. They maintained their
investment even after 1982, when Jim McDougal, head of
Whitewater, became majority owner of the now defunct Madison
Guaranty Savings and Loan, which was regulated by the state
Clinton shortly was elected to govern. (After winning his first
two-year gubernatorial term in 1978, Clinton lost his 1980 bid.)
The other is that Hillary was a partner in the Rose Law Firm,
which represented clients before the state government that her
husband headed. Clinton has replied that he and Hillary never
made any money out of their investment in Whitewater -- in fact,
his lawyer has said they lost almost $69,000 -- and Hillary
relinquished any share in her law firm's income from clients
doing business with the state.

    That defense seems to miss two points about at least the
appearance of impropriety: a Governor should not be a business
partner of a man subject to regulation by the state
administration; and clients with state business to transact
might choose a law firm they thought had influence with the
administration -- and who would have more influence than the
Governor's wife?



    POLICY SHIFTS

    Clinton has raised more than a few eyebrows by campaigning
first as a centrist -- when he expected his principal opposition
for the Democratic nomination to come from the liberal Mario
Cuomo -- and then as a more traditional liberal, when he lost
New Hampshire to Tsongas' attack from the right. Actually,
these switches amounted to little more than the tactical shifts
between what to emphasize and what to downplay that all
politicians make and that are fairly legitimate, so long as they
do not involve switches in actual positions -- which Clinton
generally has not made. Even so, he has opened himself to
Tsongas' bitter charge of pandering. In Southern TV ads, he
assailed Tsongas for proposing a slower increase in the pensions
of well-off Social Security recipients -- even though Clinton
knows that some such action will be necessary if the federal
deficit is ever to be brought under control (in fact, Tsongas'
stand was not very different from one Clinton had taken in the
past).

    Individually, none of these matters might seem of
overwhelming importance. Taken together, they build up a picture
of evasiveness that is starting to dominate the political
debate. And the pity is that Clinton has detailed programs on
taxes, investment, job creation, race relations, and educational
and welfare reform that deserve far more debate than they are
getting.