The question that won't go away

So much for the "he said." What of the "she"? If the allegation is false, then Broaddrick is not just getting her facts wrong. She is deliberately fabricating one of the most damning charges that any one person can make against another. She must be a wicked or deluded or vicious person. There seems no escaping this corollary conclusion. There also seems no reason at all for reaching it. Where is the famous Clintonian rapid-response team? Has it no pride? Can it not find or produce any shadow of a doubt to cast on Broaddrick's character? I think that if it could, we would know by now.

A provisional but not unpardonable induction, then, is that she is speaking the truth. Questioned fairly closely by Lisa Myers, she and her contemporary corroborative witnesses were easily able to answer the questions about silence and delay. The victim felt guilty for letting an unchaperoned man into her room, even if he was the attorney general. In a banana republic like Arkansas, allegations against powerful men were believed to have potentially unpleasant consequences. The victim was also having an extramarital affair with a man she hoped to marry. She did not want to be exposed, and she did not expect to be believed.

Finally -- and very importantly -- she didn't "go public." She was made public. The feminist movement has taught us to recognize this pattern of response as a familiar and intelligible one. (How sad it was, by the way, to see Patricia Ireland changing her mind at this late stage. Doesn't she know that she has lost something that she can't ever hope to retrieve, and has lost it to Clinton?) Even the first lady seems to be hesitant these days: The question before us being not "Will she run?" but "Will she walk?" Surely the two can't be connected? Can they?

Perhaps I won't be taken as an authority on the moral credibility of the feminist leadership. But something ought to be said about the honor of the male sex in this business. It has been disgusting, all through the last year, to hear Clinton defended as homme moyen sensuel. "Everybody does it ... all men lie about sex ... a gentleman is expected to lie." One reason a gentleman may be obliged to lie is to protect the reputation of the woman. Clinton has lied in order to trash them. I don't have any male friends who hump the help and then (with the assistance of paid slanderers) call them liars, gold diggers, sluts and blackmailers. I don't have any male friends who have been plausibly accused of rape, either, though I do know several women who have been sexually assaulted and decided not to go public. I also know of three other women who I suspect could, if they chose, lay a charge of assault against Clinton.

This puts him, in male terms, way outside the limit of what can be tolerated. I see him on the television all the time, biting that fat lip of his, and now I have an additional reason for the powerful nausea I have always felt. I imagine his teeth in Juanita Broaddrick's lips, after he's told her to lie still or he'll bite her again. But hey, it's time to move on. So forget it. Forget it if you can.

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