The Cynic Express(ed) 2.04a: Leak It To Me Gently

     Ah, what a pundit they thought I was, my friends, when we discussed the State of Disunion that was the Clinton Administration during the last four or five days of the Lewinsky Scandal, especially those leading up to Clinton's testimony to the grand jury. Ah, sure, I said, he's going to admit it, I would say. They did not believe me. How could he? He had denied it vehemently, with finger stabs and all the righteous indignation that a philander can project.

     Since the Thursday prior to the incident, the papers and news shows and airwaves were laden with heavy ponderings about strategies the President might take. Come Friday and Saturday, advisors were telling that Clinton might (he would) confess to something. Fitting that a product of the big hair, big sideburns, and big bellbottoms Me-Decade, the big guy would follow advice from a song of that generation: Juice Newton's "Break It To Me Gently."

     And when that other platform shoe dropped on Monday, when President Bill Clinton presented his mea sorta culpa on national television, no thunderclap of national moral indignation followed. After all, as Clinton and his off-the-record compatriots gave us a little time to ease the pain of the thought that our elected leader is a liar, an adulterer, and a fornicator. They took all illusions away gradually. I'm pretty sure it's called conditioning in psychological circles.

     Of course, once I get an idea in my head, it rings and echoes like a medley of seventies songs or like a medley of legal applecarts upset by a fleeing perpetrator when Hutch pursued him.

     What can we expect from the man who used a seventies song as his campaign song in 1992: Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop." A song which contains the lines "I know you don't believe it's true/I never meant any harm to you." That sounds like it might be the only campaign promise that Clinton kept, because although I doubt Clinton meant any harm to the country, I think the incidental damage has tumbled a few pillars of government.

     And finally, Carly Simon may have been singing about Warren Beatty, but she could have been singing about Beatty's philander-alike in the White House. "You walked into the party/like you were walking onto a yacht." Sort of like that. The Democrats may have been a leaky ship, and Clinton certainly provided them with some much-needed ballast. And, to paraphrase Ms. Simon, you're where you should be all the time/and when you're not you're with/some Asian fundraiser or the daughter of a close friend.

     All good medleys come to an end, and all bad ones, too. Whether Clinton's montage of misleading ends this year or 2001, it will end. Unfortunately for the man with one eye in the mirror, with all his preoccupation with his legacy and his place in history, The Scandal of the Century will be nothing but the twenty-first's Teapot Dome.