There was an ineffable sadness to this, a pathetic authenticity. One look at Craig Livingstone and you knew exactly who he was: a useful galoot, a paragon of bulk and availability. Campaigns are filled with such people. They bustle about. They set up the sound system, hold the rope line. They will drive the press van if asked, and can hustle a heckler if necessary. They live for the fleeting moment of proximity when they can whisper, ““The press will be to the left, sir.’’ And then brag to friends later, ““I advanced that event.''
They are the sort of people who can be trusted, but not with anything big. Certainly not the compilation of an Enemies List, or the operation of a clandestine oppo research den. In fact, it was almost immediately clear that ““Filegate’’ was probably just what the Clintons claimed it to be: an act of bureaucratic idiocy. It was inertial, not venal. Livingstone had asked Anthony Marceca, a lug on loan from the Pentagon, to complete – belatedly, but everything was belated in 1993 – a security update begun in the Bush administration, using a Secret Service list that may have dated from the Bush administration. It’s not impossible that some peripheral venality was involved (if anyone asked Livingstone for, say, travel factotum Billy Dale’s FBI file, I’m sure he’d prove useful). But a massive conspiracy to gather dirt on the opposition? Oh, please.
And so, Craig Livingstone sat blinking at the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee – a bouncer battered, a human contusion. He could not answer a simple question: who hired you? ““I realize there’s some element of mystery here,’’ he said. Ahh, mystery! The Republicans salivated and played twenty questions, hoping to link the galoot to the First Lady’s paranoia patrol. But he didn’t really mean mystery. He meant luck. ““As campaigns evolve,’’ he said, ““some people get jobs, others don’t.’’ He’d gotten lucky. Was it Harry Thomason, the Hollywood ninny and Travelgate instigator, who’d gotten him the gig? Livingstone had worked with Thomason on the Inaugural. He’d discussed a job with Thomason. And, I suppose, it’s not impossible that Livingstone landed where he did as part of a master plan to put useful people in sensitive positions. But it’s more likely that, in the confusion and incompetence of the early presidency, he’d just been deposited there: the staffing of the White House was a laughably inept, last-minute affair (even such luminaries as George Stephanopoulos and Dee Dee Myers didn’t know what jobs they’d have until days before the Inauguration), and this guy had the word ““security’’ somewhere on his rsum. One imagines there weren’t many such in the stack of world-savers and social-policy tyros that came over the transom; it was a moment when galootery had leverage.
Gradually, even the most rabid partisans on the committee seemed to understand they were confronted with a case of serious numbskullery rather than clever skullduggery. What to do? Nothing very honorable, as it happened: lacking much evidence of scandal, the Republicans sought to create an embarrassment. They commenced, without even a hint of irony, the sort of invasion of privacy they’d been hoping to pin on Livingstone. According to his FBI file, the galoot had used drugs. ““You had a drug problem?’’ he was asked. No, not a problem. And William Kennedy, his nominal superior, was asked, ““You hired Livingstone despite his drug use?''
As the interrogation proceeded, I noticed that Congressman Sonny Bono – a Republican who had made a fortune by appearing, for years, to be stoned on network television – was observing the proceedings. Afterward, I asked him if he’d been comfortable with what he’d seen. ““Yeah. Well. I guess. Why not?’’ he said, and scurried away.
Why not? Because this sort of witch hunt may limit his own career prospects. Because, with this “"-gate’’ opened, Sonny Bono could never be appointed ambassador to Italy without worrying that Democrats might call some publicity-seeking greaseball who’d claim to have smoked a banana peel with him in Katmandu. And far more important: because the viciousness and triviality of public life in Washington has created a deep national skepticism – a discounting of all these silly “"-gates,’’ an assumption that they’re all just crooks, that it’s all just politics.
For now, Bill Clinton stands an ironic beneficiary of the sludge tide. None of the ““scandals’’ has dented his lead. Indeed, he may have been inoculated: with so many puny claims cluttering the horizon, it’s going to be difficult for the Republicans to launch their far more serious, and subtle, character attack – on the president’s lack of discipline, his faithlessness (to ideas and people), his affinity for slogans over substance. But if Clinton does survive this pounding, it may mean the revulsion against the “"-gate’’ phenomenon – 20 years of ever-diminishing scandals – is now more intense than the disgust caused by any individual charge. If so, it would be the president’s most memorable public service.
