WASHINGTON -- While it lasted, the relationship was white-hot. Passion, late-night phone calls, angry scenes. When it cooled, time to tell the world: President Clinton was a shameless, lying dog. After all, ratting on a president can net big bucks, TV interviews, maybe a bestseller.
No, not Monica Lewinsky alone. Sure, 74 million people, even after they swore they wouldn't, watched her giggle-and-tears romp with Barbara Walters. Her syrupy "Monica's Story" is a publishing comet.
Why shouldn't George Stephanopoulos cash in on this trash-the-Clintons casino?
Think Mr. Clinton's closest ex-aide might wait until a president's out of office to blather all? Discretion's passe. The new game rules: blab on the affair, grab the millions.
A Washington wonk
Sure, unlike Ms. Lewinsky's eight steamy dates, Mr. Stephanopoulos spent five years locked in Mr. Clinton's political embrace. She was a vapid sexpot, he a humorless wonk. But his book, "All Too Human," shows Mr. Stephanopoulos and Ms. Lewinsky had much in common as self-absorbed opportunists.
Ah, that first starry-eyed meeting: "He looked like an overgrown boy." Mr. Stephanopoulos was mesmerized: "He had enormous seductive power. . . . He became the most dominant figure in my life."
Sound familiar?
Like Ms. Lewinsky, Mr. Stephanopoulos looks back with regret on Mr. Clinton's deceptions. "I suspended disbelief," he says of bimbo eruptions. "If I knew everything I know now, I wouldn't have worked for him."
And like Ms. Lewinsky, Mr. Stephanopoulos was driven to therapy and anti-depressant medication. He says he's took Zoloft (the celebrity pill that doesn't seem to help Mike Tyson's rage). Burned out in 1996, Mr. Stephanopoulos left Mr. Clinton to become a network pundit, Columbia University teacher and gush-all author.
Selling out
Mr. Clinton, as his "have-a-good-life" comments hint, holds no grudge against Ms. Lewinsky's $3 million blitz. But I suspect -- so does Boy George -- the Clintons will never forgive Mr. Stephanopoulos' sellout. "You're either for or against them," he shrugs. "I became a nonperson."
Even if his secrets carry no thong-snapping porn, Mr. Stephanopoulos knows far more about the Clintons' intimate lives than Ms. Lewinsky. He ran two campaigns and was a trusted insider. He was the model for the workaholic flunky in the novel, "Primary Colors."
But it's Boy George's unflattering portrait of Hillary Clinton -- assuredly not puff for a New York Senate run -- that will earn the first couple's wrath.
Admitting any marriage is a mystery, Mr. Stephanopoulos paints the Clintons as an on-and-off tender pair. He recalls walking into a late-night hotel suite where Mrs. Clinton, bare legs across the president, fed the candidate lemon-and-honey as he cooed in baby talk, "Hee-ra-hee." There were screaming bouts: "She didn't think he was tough enough on himself or other people."
More painful to Mr. Stephanopoulos' ego: The 1994 scene in which Mrs. Clinton barged into a White House meeting on Whitewater. In bitter tears, Mrs. Clinton savaged Mr. Stephanopoulos: "You never believed in us. You gave up on us in New Hampshire when we were all alone. I'm feeling lonely and nobody's fighting for me. If you don't believe in us, why don't you leave?"
Exposed to Mr. Stephanopoulos' "Days of Their Lives" revelations, I wondered: What is it that compels Mr. Clinton's former associates to peddle gripes and dirty laundry?
Dick Morris, bounced by a sordid caper, was the first to rush into print. He's now a cable-TV babbler, once outrageously indicating Mrs. Clinton was a lesbian. During Monicamania, former staff chief Leon Panetta and ex-press flack Dee Dee Myers coldly dissected Mr. Clinton. Mike McCurry tells interviewers Chelsea Clinton has "more maturity" than her parents.
Loyalty? Forget it.
Once upon a time, aides postponed memoirs until their president was past tense. Ex-Kennedy men -- even if John F. Kennedy's womanizing makes Mr. Clinton look bush league -- anointed him a Camelot saint. Sure, David Stockton painted Ronald Reagan as a simple bumbler. Donald Regan cartooned Nancy Reagan as an astrology-mad fruitcake. Marlin Fitzwater's book on his George Bush tenure only razzed the press. Are Republicans more discreet? Can we blame the trash-Clinton fad on our hyperspeed, high-tech era? Dish the dirt while it sizzles?
Or maybe Mr. Clinton's mixed persona, idealism and lust, stirs ex-loyalists to brag, "Hey, he didn't fool me."
Like Ms. Lewinsky (whom he remembers as "pretty, busty, fluffy") Mr. Stephanopoulos is conflicted: "Clinton accomplished more than I thought humanly possible. Then he threw it all away."
Ms. Lewinsky admits, "I betrayed the president." Not Mr. Stephanopoulos. But Mr. Clinton created Mr. Stephanopoulos -- from junior go-fer for Rep. Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, to White House clout to ABC-TV fame.
What's trashed is gratitude. Yep, Ms. Lewinsky and Mr. Stephanopoulos are soulmates. Both claim they were duped. After the fling, go for the gold. I don't see any difference in their sleazy kiss-and-sell.
Sandy Grady is Washington columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.
Pub Date: 3/11/99