Cruelest `Sport' // How D.C. Punishes Honesty

Blood Sport The President and His Adversaries. By James B. Stewart. Simon &Schuster. $24.95.James B. Stewart says that two years ago he was approached by SusanThomases, the New York lawyer who enjoys an especially closerelationship to Bill and Hillary Clinton, about writing an insideaccount of the Whitewater affair that would have the Clintons' fulland unconditional cooperation. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves,the devastating best seller about inside trading on Wall Street, wastempted, but as matters began to sort themselves out the Clintons gotcold feet and the project never got under way.

Still, Stewart's curiosity was piqued. He went off on his own,with research assistance, and Blood Sport is the result. It willgive little comfort to many in official Washington, which Stewartaccurately calls a "culture so inured to partisan distortion and spinthat truth is the most frightening prospect of all." But those whoare interested in solving rather than perpetuating the Whitewatermystery will find much here to satisfy their curiosity, and much toinfuriate them.The details of Whitewater as recounted by Stewart are no lesstedious or trivial than they have been in other journalists' hands;this is not a reflection upon Stewart but the inevitable result ofpenny-ante material. Whitewater, as Stewart recounts it, is largelythe doing of Jim McDougal, the eccentric Arkansas real estateoperator and dabbler in politics who took young Bill Clinton underhis wing back in the 1970s. The 230-acre tract along the White Riverthat has caused so much trouble was just another of hisget-rich-quick schemes; it stands out from the others mainly becausehe persuaded the governor of Arkansas and his wife to go in aspartners.The story as it evolves after that is largely a comedy of errorsinvolving a cast of bumblers and buffoons, some of whom now occupyhigh national office; its one ghastly note is the suicide of VincentFoster, the Little Rock lawyer who came to Washington with theClintons and soon was broken, as he wrote shortly before his death,by "the spotlight of public life in Washington," where "ruiningpeople is considered sport."Apart from that, it is a seemingly endless tale of small-timevenality, carelessness, hypocrisy, conflicts of interest andimpropriety, little of it of interest to the law but all of it hugelyinflated by the refusal of both Clintons to try telling the truth.As best I can tell, the truth is what Stewart has gotten hishands on. The Clintons' real estate and commodities dealings inArkansas seem little more than the misadventures of financial naifswho thought they could make a quick killing and were insensitive tothe impropriety of doing so while in office. Legally there'sprobably enough to justify a few smart slaps on their wrists, butStewart's indictment of the Clintons - unlike their politicalenemies, he delivers it more in sorrow than in glee - is on broaderand deeper grounds.It is that not merely have the Clintons shied away from thetruth, they have tried to suppress it. In the process, they havemade the incident seem far larger than it ever was. Stewart quotes"a White House official" involved in the spin: "The first instinctfrom everybody from Arkansas is to lie."That's a sweeping statement. But if one restricts it to theArkansas political crowd with which the Clintons have hung out, manymembers of which they brought with them to Washington, its essentialtruth becomes harder to escape. It also points out that the cultureof lying is as healthy in Washington as it is in any provincialcapital where politics is ruled by the buddy system.Nothing in official Washington persuaded the Clintons toabandon the wary defensiveness they had developed over the years, andmuch in Washington encouraged them to let it calcify: not merely thekneejerk antipathy of Republicans and cave dwellers but the no lesskneejerk antipathy of the press, which has now been in assault modefor a quarter of a century.The evidence that the Clintons committed any serious legaloffenses, Stewart writes at the end, is slender, and charges thatVincent Foster was murdered are preposterous.But "the Clintons seized what seemed to be opportunities tomake easy money, even when that meant accepting favors or specialtreatment from people in business regulated by the state"; their"reckless" handling of their Whitewater investment apparently cameabout "because they expected others to take care of them by virtue oftheir power and prestige as the governor and his wife," and "thepattern of evasions, half-truths and misstatements that havecharacterized the Clintons' handling of the story" is inexplicable.It seems likely to remain so.In all of this only one person seems to have told Bill Clintonthat "the important thing was to do the right thing, without regardto immediate reactions," that he should look to the judgment ofhistory rather than that of his enemies and the press. The personwho offered that advice was Bernard Nussbaum, Clinton's White Housecounsel. Not merely did Clinton fail to listen, he eased Nussbaumout of office as Whitewater heated up and the circle closed ever moretightly. Nussbaum, it may be recalled, was laughed out of town.Jonathan Yardley is the Pulitzer Prize-winning literary criticof the Washington Post, where this review first appeared.