of the White House travel office, contributed to a
growing suspicion that the Clintons had a tendency
to abuse their power over government employees.
Partisan Politics, 1994-1998 Most Democrats and
other supporters of the Clintons believed that these
investigations and controversies and the eventual
impeachment of Bill Clinton were motivated and
even fabricated by Republicans in Congress and con-
servative media commentators, think tanks, and in-
terest groups ruthlessly determined to discredit and
destroy the Clinton presidency. Hillary Clinton col-
lectively referred to these forces as a “vast right-wing
conspiracy.” For the Clintons and their supporters, it
was not coincidental that Starr’s investigation was
expanded after the Republicans won control of Con-
gress in 1994 and further intensified after Clinton
was reelected in 1996. Furthermore, the House Judi-
ciary Committee began its impeachment hearings a
few months before the 1998 midterm elections. For
Bill Clinton, the fact that polls showed that most
Americans opposed his impeachment and approved
of his job performance and that Newt Gingrich re-
signed as Speaker of the House shortly after the
Democrats gained House seats in the 1998 midterm
elections substantiated his belief that the Starr Re-
port and the House impeachment hearings were po-
litically motivated. Although Clinton admitted to
the American public that he had lied to them in his
earlier public denial of a sexual affair with Monica
Lewinsky, he believed that most Americans would
distinguish between his personal life and presiden-
tial performance and, thus, oppose impeachment.
Clinton’s victorious, well-financed reelection
campaign in 1996 led to investigations and contro-
versies regarding Clinton’s fund-raising practices.
Some critics accused Clinton of unethically “rent-
ing” White House bedrooms to wealthy guests in ex-
change for campaign contributions. A more contro-
versial fund-raising scandal involved Indonesian
businessmen with ties to the Chinese government.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was
later required to return nearly $3 million in illegal
contributions, many of them from Indonesian and
Chinese sources. Clinton’s critics suspected that
Clinton may have jeopardized national security by
allowing Chinese access to advanced, militarily sensi-
tive technology in exchange for these funds.
Final Scandals, 1999-2001 After the Senate acquit-
ted Clinton of his impeachment charges in Febru-
ary, 1999, a federal judge in Arkansas ruled in April,
1999, that Clinton had committed civil contempt be-
cause of his misleading testimony in the Jones case
and must pay Jones $91,000 in legal expenses. Dur-
ing the remainder of his presidency, Clinton often
received high public approval ratings for his job per-
formance, especially on the economy, and low pub-
lic approval ratings for his ethical character and
credibility because of these scandals. In running for
president in 2000, Vice President Al Gore wanted to
politically benefit from Clinton’s economic record
while avoiding any association with Clinton’s scan-
dals, especially Gore’s role in the fund-raising scan-
dal. Gore’s ambivalence about Clinton motivated
him to limit Clinton’s campaign appearances on his
behalf. Nonetheless, George W. Bush won the 2000
presidential election. Some voters told pollsters that
they voted for Bush in order to restore moral values
to the presidency.
The last scandal of the Clinton presidency be-
came known as Pardongate. Before leaving the
presidency in 2001, President Clinton issued sev-
eral controversial and ethically questionable par-
dons. He pardoned clients represented by Hillary
Clinton’s brothers; Puerto Rican terrorists; a drug
dealer whose father made large Democratic cam-
paign contributions; and Marc Rich, a commodities
trader who was convicted of tax and oil embargo vio-
lations and was living in Switzerland as a fugitive.
Denise Rich, his ex-wife, had given large contribu-
tions to Clinton’s library foundation and legal de-
fense fund, the Democratic Party, and Hillary
Clinton’s Senate campaign.
Impact With Republicans controlling Congress
during the last six of Clinton’s eight years as presi-
dent, his scandals sensationalized and intensified
partisan conflicts between Clinton and Congress.
Media coverage and discussion of Clinton’s scandals
contributed to the rise of Internet-based investiga-
tive journalists, such as Matt Drudge, and conserva-
tive talk radio show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh.
Furthermore, Clinton’s scandals affected the Ameri-
can public’s complex, ambivalent perception of the
forty-second president of the United States. Many
Americans who valued Clinton’s economic record
and political skills did not trust or respect him.
Subsequent Events After public and media atten-
tion to the Pardongate scandal subsided, Bill Clin-
ton raised funds for humanitarian causes, such as re-198 Clinton’s scandals The Nineties in America