Private lives 2000

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, March 14, 1999

WASHINGTON -- The private life of a presidential candidate may seem like the last thing to become an issue in Campaign 2000, given the public's attitude toward the impeachment trial and tribulations of President Clinton. But the opposite may prove true: The public may want more assurance than ever that candidates don't have a problem in their past that will lead to Lewinsky redux.

The nation is surely suffering from Monica fatigue. The last thing voters want is to have their next president installed in the Oval Office only to discover some past indiscretion that sets partisans talking impeachment again.

Better, some say, to vet the field now, before any electoral commitments have been made.

What does that mean for campaign 2000? A few clues are beginning to surface.

The asking of the adultery question -- the "Big A" as it is known -- remains one of the controversial issues in politics. But its possible relevance was underscored last week by George Stephanopoulos, who in 1992 was Governor Bill Clinton's chief defender against allegations that the he had had an affair with Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos, in promoting his new book, "All Too Human," suggested that he wouldn't have gone to work for Clinton if he knew then what he knows now.

In other words, the aide who urged the press not to delve into Clinton's personal life now wishes he had known more about it. "Maybe I just did not want to know," Stephanopoulos told Newsweek magazine. "If I knew everything then that I know now, of course I wouldn't" go to work for him. And, perhaps, a more fully informed electorate might not have voted Clinton into the White House.

Indeed, from now on, most candidates for office are likely to meet greater skepticism than ever. In addition to questions about adultery, they may be asked questions about drug use or business activities.

This is not an academic issue for the current crop of presidential hopefuls. Last month, when CNN's Bernard Shaw questioned Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, about his aspirations, the veteran anchorman bluntly stated: "You had an affair [during] your first marriage," and then asked whether private acts should be publicly discussed in the campaign.

McCain was surprised at the question, but also carefully prepared for it. "Let me say that I am responsible for the breakup of my first marriage. I will not discuss or talk about that any more than that." He said it will be up to the American people to judge his morality.

It may be easier for McCain, a decorated Vietnam veteran who was a prisoner of war, to handle such questions than it was for Clinton, who was under attack in 1992 for dodging the draft at the same time he was addressing questions of marital fidelity. If past campaigns are a guide, the better McCain does, the more that questions will be asked about his private life.

Texas Governor George W. Bush also has tried to dodge questions about his private life, uttering what has become the best-known quote of the nascent campaign. "When I was young and irresponsible," he says, "I was young and irresponsible." When Bush was asked if he had used marijuana or cocaine, he declined to answer.

But can such dodges stand up in the age of Internet gossips and paid exposes in publications such as Hustler magazine? After all, it was George the younger who felt compelled in 1987 to take the lead in denying rumors that his father, Vice President George Bush, had committed adultery. "The answer to the 'Big A' question is 'N-O,' " George W. told Newsweek as his father was preparing to run for president.

Indeed, the theme of Campaign 2000 could be "Won't Get Fooled Again." Clinton, who famously said he smoked marijuana but didn't inhale, went on to argue over the meaning of sexual relations, and the definition of the word "is." So if candidates offer vague responses to questions or seems prone to obfuscation, it will be understandable if reporters and the public insist on more refined answers.

Moreover, some GOP nomination candidates such as Patrick Buchanan have made morality a campaign platform Meanwhile, various political operatives with plenty of vested interests are already at work urging news organizations to launch investigations of certain presidential prospects.

Campaigns are certain to hire "opposition research" teams to investigate opponents, and, in some cases, may investigate their own candidate as a precaution.

George Bush's vice president, Dan Quayle, who is still trying to recover from a 1988 investigation of his personal background, pledged earlier this month that he would not raise personal questions about an opponent's past. "What happened 15, 20 years ago is really irrelevant," Quayle said.

It was 12 years ago that former Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor inaugurated this reportorial tack when he famously asked Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart, a former US senator from Colorado, if he committed adultery. "I don't have to answer that question," Hart said, setting in motion a chain of events that doomed his campaign. Reporters followed him around and discovered that Hart, who was married, had a female companion.

Today Taylor is executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a Washington organization that is pushing for changes that lead to better dissemination of campaign information on TV. He believes he was right to have questioned Hart because of the unique circumstances of the time, but he said it should not be an automatic query.

Taylor suggests his own caveat-filled guideline:

"I don't think that is a threshold question that ought to be asked," he said, referring to adultery. "If, on the other hand, there is a pattern of reckless philandering, then maybe it does. I would tend to suggest that probing of matters of health, wealth, and illegal activity is in bounds, matters of sex are out of bounds. But these are not hard and fast rules, and you have to take every situation as it comes."

In other words, it depends.

It may depend, for example, on what happens within the Republican Party. In December, after Hustler was preparing to expose an affair by the presumptive speaker of the US House of Representatives, Robert Livingston, Republicans pressured the Louisiana congressman out of the job. That led some observers to suggest that a presidential candidate must be adultery-free.

Probably the pattern of the 1992 campaign will be followed, only in more condensed form. In that race, when few people had heard of the Internet and cable news was still perceived by many as an interloper, much of the mainstream media refrained from reporting the Flowers-Clinton story. It was only after the tabloid Star paid for the story that it became big news. This time around, skepticism is higher, anyone with Internet access is a publisher, and cable news has turned into a highly competitive phenomenon.

But the greatest pressure on the candidates may come from those who aspire to the Stephanopoulos role in the 2000 campaign. The candidates' top aides may be the ones who ask the adultery question, seeking reassurance that the campaign -- or the presidency -- they're trying to fuel will not self-destruct down the road.