The roots of the Clinton smear

The origins of the president's current troubles stretch back 8 years, to the stinking swamp water of Arkansas politics.

By Gene Lyons

Feb 5, 1998 | Hillary Rodham Clinton says there's a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to destroy her husband and reverse the results of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. Given no concrete evidence, most pundits have dismissed her accusations as a combination of White House spin and a steely eyed determination by the first lady to stand by her man, particularly if it means keeping him in the White House.

But those pundits don't know what Hillary Clinton has known. Had they been in Arkansas before the Clintons went to the White House, they might have been less inclined to laugh off her accusations as Oliver Stone-like ravings.

In fact, they might have conceded that while Clinton went a little far, she does have a point: that there were interconnections, originating in his home state, between the president's bitterest and most unscrupulous political enemies. That a loose cabal indeed has existed since at least the Arkansas gubernatorial race of 1990 to smear Bill Clinton with sexual innuendo and destroy his political career.

And if the members of the fourth estate were to truly look into their souls -- rather than the sham breast-beating we are currently witnessing -- they might have to acknowledge their own role in creating an image of a man that is almost wholly unsupported by the facts, but may contribute to his downfall.

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