News-Sentinel.com

Tuesday, 12/26/2000

SON OF A SON OF A POLITICIAN

CHAPTER 5

Sex, lies and Bill Clinton



Photo by Courtesy of Paul Helmke
Classroom courtroomYale Law School's Barrister's Union -- a group of students, including Paul Helmke, Bill Clinton and his future wife, Hillary Rodham, who took part in mock trials as part of their extracurricular studies -- pose for a photo in a classroom courtroom in 1973. According to a 25th anniversary listing in 1998, they are, from left: David Golub, a Stamford, Conn., lawyer; Anthony Paul, a lawyer in Wayne, Pa.; Michael Conway, a Chicago lawyer; Rufus Cormier, a Houston, Texas, lawyer; Jeffrey Rogers, a city attorney in Portland, Ore., and the son of William Rogers, secretary of state under President Nixon; Paul Helmke; Robert Alsdorf, a Superior Court judge in Seattle; Hillary Rodham; Daniel Johnson, a Palo Alto, Calif., attorney; Bill Clinton; and Jack Fuller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.

On the national scene, boy did I take my hits!

Early on, I supported the so-called stimulus package offered by the Clinton administration. It was the right thing for the community. I don't believe people realize some of the challenges faced by the city. We used to get a lot of federal funding for cities. It isn't like that today. The funding programs dried up during the Reagan years.

It meant a lot less ability to access federal funds, especially compared with the administration of previous mayors Win Moses Jr., Bob Armstrong and Ivan Lebamoff.

I was willing to live with it, but those federal cuts came with federal mandates. In the past, the federal government said you have to fix your sewers and gave you some money to do it. Now, Washington gives the same mandates without necessarily any federal dollars. So when Clinton pushed the stimulus package to get money back to the cities, I jumped at the chance because we had legitimate needs. I endorsed it. And while it was a small part of the big budget bill, that's where battle lines were drawn.

Stimulus package

The stimulus package, however, never came to a vote. It was held up in the Senate and the Clinton administration withdrew it. I remember meeting with Sen. Robert Dole and mayors from other cities, asking why such a small part of the budget was being targeted for opposition. It was a political and tactical decision to take it on because there wasn't much of a budget constituency for cities. That's where Clinton opponents honed in the attack.

I don't apologize for the support. In retrospect, the economy got so strong, maybe it wasn't as necessary. But at the time, it surely looked like it would have helped.

I got caught up in the crosscurrents of national politics, and it led to recriminations here and statewide. The Indiana Policy Review played up a letter from Rex Early, who had been state GOP chairman, attacking me on this position. I was called Remocrat of the Year.

When I ran for U.S. Senate in 1998, folks wanted me to explain my position in support of the Clinton administration from that time. An explanation? It was the same motivation as with the federal crime bill in 1994. This had the Brady Bill aspect, with more money for police. It was a legitimate role for government to fund local law enforcement efforts. It helped us hire 30 police officers quickly, and beef up the Police Department.

Clinton and hot buttons

Since it was connected with Clinton and pushed hot button issues like guns, it got a lot of criticism. I was on the south lawn of the White House when the bill was signed because I had decided I was going to support this. And if I'm going to take the political heat to get it passed, I'll do my part. At the signing ceremony, another Republican who was active with the bill didn't want to be seen sitting in the front row to minimize political fallout.

Not me. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Also that day at the podium was Bud Meeks. At the time, he was president of the national sheriffs association, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1983 and was a longtime darling of the local GOP. I came back to Fort Wayne and caught all this flak. And I think, "How can it be so bad if Bud Meeks is one of the people up there at the podium?"

The whole Brady Bill, crime bill effort led some Republicans to question my credentials, and it's been a factor in my political positions. It's interesting. I knew Clinton. I went to law school with him -- I was on the Barrister's Union with him and Hillary and 12 others at Yale. I followed his career. But I was just on his mailing list, with maybe one or two friendly letters shortly after law school, not much more. The last time I had contact with him was around 1980 until he ran for president.

I believed having the president be somebody I knew would help our city. I would use it to Fort Wayne's advantage. Instead, it got everybody suspicious. A lot of people thought I was his roommate in college. No, I wasn't. I was married and lived with my wife; he lived elsewhere.

Other than at mayoral settings, I really didn't speak with him. Yet those early ties, along with the support for the crime bill and other Clinton initiatives, coupled with the Republican hatred for Clinton, really put me in the cross hairs. I've always been a Republican. I have never publicly endorsed a Democrat even when there where Republicans I didn't like and would even vote for a Democrat occasionally. Yet, I'm catching all this flak over it.

Flak, flak and more flak

Some of the flak would be from GOP types like Rex Early, Craig Ladwig -- all these conservative Indiana Policy Review types. In publications, I became one of their favorite whipping boys. Yet I had supported several good Republican themes, like strong law enforcement, empowering neighborhoods, fiscal responsibility, and I had fought for local control. These are good GOP themes, but I never got the credit.

Part of the problem, as mayor, you're looked at suspiciously by true believers, whether to the right or left. When you're mayor, it's not just about theory. You're not voting a theoretical position. You actually have to do something. When you're in the legislative branches, you can say you're for or against something. As mayor, you can be for or against something but you still have to do it. If it doesn't work, you have to try something else. Mayors are forced to be pragmatists. The garbage has to be picked up, the fires have to be responded to and the streets need to be cleaned. You can duck it and rely on your philosophy for a short time, but your philosophy also has to deal with a real world.

All mayors of every party are attacked by their party for not being ideologically pure, for not following the straight party line. But you have to deliver. And you can't hide behind somebody else. As a legislator, you can hide behind an argument that you're in the minority, or it was a committee vote, or it was the caucus decision. When you're mayor, you can't hide behind a decision. It's just you. That's why it's hard to find mayors who move up in politics. Sen. Dick Lugar, former Indianapolis mayor, is a rare exception. You don't see many mayors who do well later on.

But the ideologically pure sometimes didn't like former Republican Indianapolis mayors Bill Hudnut, Lugar and Steve Goldsmith. So I figured I was running in good company.

Cozying up to Clinton

It interested me that people believed I was cozying up to Clinton because I was bucking for a Washington job. I wasn't looking for something. That wasn't my agenda. Folks had a hard time otherwise understanding why I would be taking these unpopular political positions if not for my own political gain. There was something in it for me, people believed. There was political cost, so there must be personal payoff. But it's not how I do business.

A good politician can sell his belief he's doing what's right for the community. Yet people believed Helmke was endorsing these things because he could get something from Clinton. I never tried to get something; it wasn't my agenda. I wanted to be a good mayor.

Didn't turn out so well

The relationship with Washington didn't turn out so well. Clinton's impeachment and the issue with Monica Lewinsky came up when I was on the campaign trail for U.S. Senate. I was in Terre Haute speaking to a GOP group, when somebody told me about the Monica story as it first broke out. I was curious about the details, the salacious gossip.

I was at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors where the subject came up, and I heard all the political news shows saying Clinton would resign soon because of it.

It was an interesting time to be in Washington. I went to the State of the Union address, and there was no mention about resigning. Rumors were flying. We had a meeting in the White House, and as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, I was supposed to introduce Clinton. Some of his staff weren't sure. They were concerned that as a Republican, I might take a cheap shot at Clinton. But I'm not the sort to take cheap shots, and it's not the right way to do things.

Clinton and Monica and me

So we have a reception, and some of the mayors are in a room with Cabinet members. And Clinton comes in. Remember, this is a week full of rumors, with speculation swirling. And it's an amazing scene. He walks in, says hello to the five mayors and Cabinet members. He goes up to Bruce Babbitt, the secretary of the interior, who's been in the news as well over some controversy about improper handling of Indian casino contracts. And Babbitt looks really glum. Clinton comes over to him and said, "I did all this just to keep you off the front pages this week."

It really threw Babbitt and me. Here's Clinton joking about something that's obviously coming really close to bringing down his presidency. And he had that kind of way of handling people. It is one of his strengths and weaknesses.

The Cabinet goes out and we sit down. It's just Frederico Pena, energy secretary and former mayor of Denver, Clinton and I. The three of us are supposed to be introduced at the same time. Pena's supposed to introduce me, and I'm supposed to introduce Clinton. So we're standing there, just the three of us, and I'm thinking I'm no Sam Donaldson, he's not going to tell me anything anyway, so I'm not going to ask anything about the latest situation. Then Clinton leans over to me and Pena, and not prompted, said there's nothing to this Monica stuff, nothing at all; there's no more to this than us blowing up TWA Flight 800.

He made the comment, and Pena and I said OK. Then we go out and I gave Clinton a good introduction and a fair one. Said how I had known him. Said he had always been fair to mayors. Each year, Clinton had made himself and his Cabinet personally available to mayors, not like it was before. It's a privilege to come to the White House but it also shows the respect he had for mayors throughout the country. And it said a lot about him.

Also, on issues of concern to cities, the response usually was positive, whether about fighting crime or reducing federal mandates. The final point, I had known him since law school and I said I believed his heart was in the right place. What I tried to say was that Clinton was trying to do well. I might not agree with how he did it. I wasn't talking about his sexual mores or anything like it. This was somebody, based on my sense of him, that I believed wanted to do good things.

A somewhat generous introduction

Coming at the time it did, maybe it was more generous an introduction than necessary. But, I believed it. You don't stick a knife into somebody or abandon them when times are bad. Now, I got quoted in The Washington Post, got quoted in the national media, and it played back home. Obviously, just standing up there with him, getting my picture next to him when all this was breaking loose and with the controversy, brought attention to me. It made life certainly interesting.

I caught a lot of flak for it. One of the questions at the Press Club in Indianapolis with John Price, Peter Rusthoven and myself during the GOP Senate primary was about how would we introduce the president if given the opportunity. Price said he'd refuse. Rusthoven would say this is the president and sit down. And I said I already had this situation, and the first two approaches were an insult. My job as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors was to give the presentation fairly and honestly. This shows how national politics intersect with state and local politics.

Lied to me

It got tricky after the primary election for Senate. When the Clinton story unfolded and he gave his deposition that summer, followed by his disastrous evening statement about how he had an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky -- although I suspected it all along -- what really bothered me was Clinton had lied to me directly.

It's not about me. He had lied to his family, his Cabinet and the American people. But it bothered me, in that one situation; it was a gratuitous lie. I hadn't asked him about it. Pena hadn't asked him about it. He could have easily said nothing or spoken about something else.

Obviously, he was going through a stage where he was telling a lot of people lies, whether it was trying to convince others or himself he hadn't done anything wrong. I was one of the people who heard him directly saying a lie. And it hurt me. That bothered me. I know people do things they shouldn't be doing and tell lies. But you don't like being told a gratuitous lie directly.

But people aren't perfect, either.

Cast of characters:

Rex Early -- Former state GOP chairman; unsuccessful candidate for Indiana governor

Charles "Bud" Meeks -- Now a state senator, he's a former Allen County sheriff who ran unsuccessfully against Win Moses in 1983

Dick Lugar, Bill Hudnut and Steve Goldsmith -- Former Republican mayors of Indianapolis

Bruce Babbitt -- Interior Secretary under Clinton

Frederico Pena -- Secretary of Energy under Clinton