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4.2.12
WC: 191694

I concluded my article with the following words:

President Clinton’s visit was entirely in keeping with President George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in which he wrote that mere “toleration” is not good enough in America. Here, Jews as well as others, must be treated as equals. The attendance of our president and first lady at a Jewish service made many Jews feel like first-class citizens, rather than tolerated guests.

I sent the President a copy of my article. He sent back a handwritten note expressing his appreciation for being invited to the services and for the article, and included a signed photograph of the dinner.

During the subsequent summers, the Clintons vacationed in Martha’s Vineyard and lived right near us. We frequently dined, partied and even square danced with them and became their friends. We were invited to the White House on several occasions and the President sought my advice from time to time.

Sometimes, I offered unsolicited advice, such as when I repeatedly urged him to commute the life sentence of Jonathan Pollard to time served. I pestered him so much about Pollard that he finally told me he didn’t want to hear anything more about it. I replied, “You can choose not to listen, but I’m not going to stay quiet.” In the end, he wanted to commute the sentence, but he got pushback not only from the intelligence community but also from several Jewish senators. He told me that if I can’t even get the Jewish senators to support commutation, how could he justify it to the intelligence community, which was adamantly opposed to it.

Another issue on which I initially offered my unsolicited advice involved the Monica Lewinsky matter. As I watched the Lewinsky drama unfold, I saw a familiar pattern that had had gotten many other celebrities into trouble: opting for short term gratification without considering the longer term consequences.

At every decision point, the President and his advisors opted for a political tactic that helped them get good headlines and poll results in the short term, rather than focusing on the longer term strategy that might have prevented an entirely lawful sexual indiscretion from turning into a possible crime.

The first – and most important – point was the President’s foolhardy decision to engage in a surreptitious sexual relationship with a White House intern at a time when he knew he was under intense investigation by Kenneth Starr, a somewhat puritanical prosecutor and was subject to a lawsuit for sexual harassment by a vindictive woman who was represented by politically motivated lawyers.

If there was indeed a “right wing conspiracy” out there waiting to “get” the President, as Hillary Clinton had alleged in a television interview, it is difficult to imagine any action more reckless than oval office sex with a young blabbermouth whose goal was probably as much to brag about

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