AS I WAS SAYING
If Ike was allowed his golf, why not Bill his sex?
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
Amost everybody lies about sex. As Suetonius could well have said, 'the prick has no conscience'. One of the first lessons taught to young men-about-town in my day was that properly brought up young women never kissed and told, closely followed by the other old saw: `All's fair in love and war.' Whoever thinks of impeaching film stars when they solemnly lie about being 'just good friends'? Such deceits in affairs of the heart are an honoured convention. The offence is not so much to give an untruthful answer as to ask an indiscreet question.
Needless to say, I don't have the slightest idea whether or not President Clinton went to bed with Miss Lewinsky or whether, hav- ing gone to bed, he reminded her of the old rule never to kiss and tell. But if this is what did happen, then it seems to me harmless enough — the kind of secret pact lovers, or even one-night-standers, enter into all the time. If the President threatened to put the FBI on her tail, that would indeed be most improper, a grave abuse of presidential power. But so far there is no evidence that he did anything like that. In fact, if blame lies anywhere, on the evidence available so far I would suppose it lay rather with the special counsel, Kenneth Starr, for pressur- ing Miss L. to break the lovers' pact, rather than with the President for pressurising her to keep it. In other words, it may not be so much a case of presidential abuse of power as of judicial abuse of power.
Somewhere in Saint-Simon's classic account of life at Versailles under Louis XIV, the great memoirist describes how even the nuns used to conspire to protect the secret of the King's bedchamber — even when pressed to tell all by their con- fessors. Good for the nuns, and I would rather hope that Miss L. stands up to the impertinent probing of the special counsel as bravely as the nuns stood up to the impertinent probing of their confessors.
By and large, of course, the Church has always made special allowances for the very powerful, recognising that for them chastity and monogamy are just too tall an order. With so many attractive girls (and boys) only too happy to embrace them, tempta- tions are obviously such as to be virtually irresistible. Even for saints it has always been difficult enough, as the Confessions of St Augustine make all too clear. So it should stand to reason that allowances have to be made for emperors, presidents, and suchlike, particularly bearing in mind what an aphrodisiacal stimulus supreme power can be. Poor devils, how can they be expected, unless abnormally undersexed, to obey the rules which even so many ordinary people, with incomparably fewer tempta- tions, find unbearably onerous? Let us put ourselves in their position. What would we do if suddenly elevated into a position where all the stars and starlets in the world were throwing themselves at our feet? Men dream about such possibilities, and few, I suspect, in their dreams manage to remain chaste or monogamous. But presidents do not have to be content with dreaming, and the surprising thing is not that so many become serial adulterers but so few.
John Betjeman was frank about all this. Asked on television what he 'most regret- ted in his life' he instantly replied, 'Not sleeping with more women.' This was not some evil satyr speaking, but a High Angli- can who spent much of his time saving churches. Many of us would say the same at the end of our lives, were we equally frank. So instead of condemning Clinton's philan- dering, we should be making excuses, as the Catholic Church has always leant over backwards to do. What holds must of us back from sexual philandering is not so much virtue as circumstance; not so much scruple as fear of rebuff; not so much morality as shyness. But those in positions of great power do not suffer from such restraints, which is why the Church, in its wisdom, has always chosen to judge their sexual excesses with a tolerant eye. After all, if they were not letting their libidos rip in the bedroom they would, be doing so in far more dangerous ways, on the battle- field, in the council chamber, or even in the dungeon.
No wonder Napoleon said, 'Pas ce soir, Josephine.' Don Juan, too, might have said something similar if he had just won the battle of Austerlitz. No wonder Hitler sel- dom laid a hand on Eva Braun. He was get- ting his kicks in other ways, as was Stalin. Churchill, too, is said to have been more excited by the arts of war than the arts of love; as for Eisenhower, who only reached the White House at a certain age, his over- indulgence was golf, and Pitt the Younger's was vintage port. One could go on. Suffice it to say that whatever primrose path the very powerful choose to go down, it is always smoothed by the red carpet.
Yet in the area of sex, society seems to get less and less tolerant. Not everyone, of course. Bottom dogs are now allowed unparalleled licence — illegitimate chil- dren, homosexuality, everything except paedophilia. It is only top dogs to whom the new permissiveness is not extended. Whereas in the age of faith it was those subjected to most temptation who received most tolerance, today in the permissive age, it is those who are subject to the least. What a topsy-turvy world!
But the Clinton crisis, it will be objected, is not about sex but about lying, about lying on oath. That, to my view, is to miss the point. For the point is that if the President was simply having a sexual relationship with Miss L., that is a delicate area, wholly inappropriate for the law to poke its clumsy head into. If the Mafia were involved, or sexual harassment were suspected, or if Miss L. were a Cuban spy, then indeed it would be another matter. But so far there is no such excuse for judicial questioning of either the President or the girl. Their rela- tionship was strictly sexual and, that being the case, the fault lies with the law, as I say, for asking an improper question rather than with the President or Miss L. for answering untruthfully, supposing that they have. If Jonathan Aitken had perjured him- self to cover up some affair of the heart, or to save some girl's honour, he would have been a hero rather than a villain. Unfortu- nately for him, however, he seems to have had no such winning card to play.
As for the President being distracted from great affairs of state by his sexual imbroglios, that, too, seems to me utter rubbish. To him sex is a game, a recreation, at worst a hobby. What is distracting him from the business of government is not sex in the White House but the moralistic fuss being made about sex in the White House. And it is the moralistic fuss about White House sex, not the sex itself, that is bring- ing his office and his country into disre- pute. Impeachment or resignation for cov- ering up about a girl, that would indeed turn the presidency and America itself into a laughing-stock.
The press should never have rushed away from Cuba. There, rather than in Washing- ton, was where the serious action lay.
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