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The public's response to the Clinton administration's many scandals and the president's impeachment is both puzzling and contradictory. They supported the president, but not his behavior; they wanted him severely reprimanded, but not punished; and they wanted him to remain in office, but were happy to see him leave. In this, the second article of a two-part series (the first of which was published in the March 2002 issue of this journal), the author addresses the explanations of why Mr. Clinton survived that are more directly causal than contextual and closes by noting some continuing consequences of the Clinton scandals and the public's reaction to them.
This is the second of two articles addressing the public's response to the Clinton scandals. The question underlying both articles is this: How was it possible for a president who consistently lied to the public and to his own administration; who was found guilty of perjury for lying under oath while testifying in a civil suit and before a federal grand jury, and who in both cases was guilty of obstructing justice; who personally orchestrated the most massive stonewalling effort since Watergate to keep the truth of his inappropriate behavior from the public; who was believed by the public to have committed the offenses for which he was impeached; and whose behavior would not be tolerated in any CEO, professor, military commander, or anyone in a position of power and responsibility, to manage, nonetheless, to maintain high levels of public approval throughout his and our ordeal? In this article, I address the explanations of why Mr. Clinton survived that are more directly causal than contextual, and I close by noting some continuing consequences of the Clinton scandals and the public's reaction to them.
Primary Explanations
Unlike framing explanations, primary explanations attempt to focus on factors believed to have a direct causal bearing on the subject at hand. In the sections that follow, I present nine such elements and assess their value.
A Public Backlash against the Attack Culture?
Several commentators have suggested that the anger against Mr. Clinton was tempered by the public's weariness with the attack culture. Samuelson (1998, A19; see also Tannen 1998, 32) defines that culture as
the corruption of normal public investigations-by congressional committee,...