When President Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, he hoped to legislate a reform agenda. Having received only 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and facing difficult policy choices regarding such matters as the deficit, he also carried with him a history that was not easily put to rest. Rumors abounded during the 1992 campaign about his past philandering and his apparent draft dodging, but he over-came those liabilities and won his party's presidential nomination and the election that followed.

But one story that surfaced in 1992 had staying power even after Clinton became president. The story concerned a land deal and a failed savings and loan bank in Arkansas and involved Clinton and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton. A complicated story known as Whitewater, it seemed to imply shady doings by the two when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and Hillary Clinton was the bank's lawyer. Although no evidence was ever adduced to convict them of illegal behavior, the Whitewater affair placed their probity and character under serious scrutiny by both Congress and an independent counsel, whose appointment by the Justice Department later had serious consequences for the Clinton presidency.

Spreading the cloud of scandal more deeply over Clinton, Paula Corbin Jones in 1994 filed a civil lawsuit charging Clinton with sexual impropriety when he was still governor of Arkansas. But before her case went trial in late 1997, a money scandal directly related to the high costs of funding Clinton's reelection campaign of 1996 enveloped the administration. The concerns revolved around the flow of illegal money into the campaign coffers of the National Democratic Committee from Indonesian and Chinese sources. In addition questions arose over the constant flow of people into the White House for kaffeeklatsches and sleepovers who paid substantially for their close proximity to the president. Among the participants in this money-driven environment at the White House was an individual with shady political connections.

Not rising to the level of scandal but viewed by some as scandalous was Clinton's decision to take from the State Department and give to the Commerce Department the authority to decide whether shipments of sensitive satellite technology to China should be given a green light. Unlike the Defense Department and the State Department, which questioned such sales, the Commerce Department was prepared to give the shipments the green light. The president of the Loral Corporation, who was the most generous financial contributor to the Democratic Party in 1996 and whose company manufactured sensitive satellite equipment and sold it to China, benefited from Clinton's move.

The historic scandal of Clinton's presidency was his affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which threatened to capsize his presidency. By denying a sexual relationship with Lewinsky in the Jones civil trial, Clinton not only gave perjured testimony but possibly obstructed justice as well. As a result the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC), headed by Kenneth Starr, submitted a report to the House of Representatives stating that Clinton may have committed impeachable acts as a result of his testimony and action in the context of the Jones civil trial.

Clinton's behavior as outlined in the Starr report angered and shamed many Americans, but a majority did not favor his impeachment, believing he was doing a good job as president. In the majority opinion, his affair with Lewinsky was purely a private matter and did not impinge on his duties. Thus it did not merit consideration either as a high crime or as a misdemeanor. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, were eager to see Clinton removed from office. They were convinced that as a result of his behavior he had sullied the office and had embarrassed the country at home and around the world. Such were the views of both sides as the House of Representatives, driven by partisan political considerations and passionately held convictions, voted to impeach President Clinton on several counts. He thus became the first elected president in American history to be so indicted.

Responding to public opinion, which overwhelmingly opposed the action taken by the House, the Senate refused to convict Clinton of the charges. Clearly in this case he also was helped by the strong economy, which protected him during the Senate trial, but he was seriously tarnished by the affair. A majority of Americans no longer respected him as a person, even though they still admired his political skills and generally approved of his public policy initiatives. Clinton's behavior became an issue in the context of the 2000 presidential election, which surely hurt Vice President Al Gore's bid for the White House.

Although Clinton avoided a conviction in the Senate, he had reason to fear that after he left office the OIC would prosecute him for lying to the court in the Jones case. So Clinton made a deal with the OIC and issued a statement admitting his culpability, at which point the prospect of further legal action against him was dropped.

That arrangement notwithstanding, Clinton was unable to shake the stench of scandal even as he departed from office on 20 January 2001. On that day he pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire fugitive and commodities dealer who owed the American government $48 million in back taxes. Clinton also commuted the sentence of Carlos Vignali, the notorious head of a Los Angeles cocaine ring, who was serving a fifteen-year prison sentence. Clinton's actions produced a storm of protest from Democrats and Republicans alike, who were outraged at what many believed was a clear abuse of the president's pardoning power. Thus if scandal or rumor of scandal accompanied Clinton's move into the White House, those controversial last-minute pardons of Rich and Vignali provided a scandalous backdrop to his departure from the presidency.

Bibliography

Berman, William C. From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Posner, Richard A. An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

—William C. Berman