President and Hillary Clinton's lawyer says of the guilty plea of Webster Hubbell, "this matter simply does not concern the president, the first lady or the Whitewater Development Corp. in any way." Even if that is true legally, Hubbell's admission that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from law partners and clients (including federal agencies) and cheated on his income tax returns is politically damaging to the Clintons.
Hubbell is Mrs. Clinton's former law partner and Mr. Clinton's golfing buddy. He and she were extremely close professionally, working together to change the old management and culture of their law firm. And he was close enough to him to have been given command of the Justice Department -- at least until Janet Reno was named attorney general, and, some say, much longer.
So there will always be suspicions, fairly or unfairly, that the Clintons in some way shared or were at least tolerant of Hubbell's abysmal lack of ethical standards. Even some voters who supported candidate Clinton in 1992 may not in 1996 because of the revelations. Some Democrats in Congress are already distancing themselves from the Clintons, as if they are expecting worse.
There may be worse. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says Hubbell has agreed to assist him in his investigation. Hubbell is facing a prison sentence of at least 21 months, unless Mr. Starr tells a judge that Hubbell's assistance is needed to win important indictments he could not get otherwise. That's quite an incentive to tell all.
If that should be the case, and if those indictments also reflect on the Clintons in some way, the political damage will be even worse. That is true even if only Whitewater Development and related activities occurring before the Clintons came to Washington are involved. According to the Arkansas press, Mr. Starr intends to question Hubbell about whether he, the president, Mrs. Clinton or anyone else in an official capacity tried to interfere with federal inquiries into Whitewater-related matters. If that happened and can be demonstrated, there is no predicting how severe the political (and personal) damage and fallout would be.
Meanwhile, Republican inquisitors in Congress, armed with subpoena power they did not have when hearings on Whitewater were held earlier this year, are bound to try to take advantage of the situation. Especially Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato, who regards Whitewater as a crusade. Congress does have a responsibility to learn more about what happened and how it happened. But it also has a responsibility not to trivialize it in a partisan fashion and not to interfere with the independent counsel's work.