The air in Washington was gray and heavy with the weight of an approaching storm Wednesday afternoon when the Internet magazine Salon released its story that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) had conducted an extended affair 30 years ago with a woman whose marriage unraveled shortly afterward.
Storm clouds were appropriate. It may have been at precisely that moment that Washington was forced to contemplate exactly how hard a rain is going to fall if--as now seems inevitable--Congress spends the next half-year or more clawing over whether President Clinton should be removed from office for trying to conceal a sexual affair.
Anyone familiar with gang violence or ethnic warfare will recognize the cycle that's developing. Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr infuriates Democratic partisans by releasing far more explicit detail about Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky than he needed for his legal case. Salon fires back with the story about Hyde. House Republicans fume at the humiliation of their colleague, and then vote to compound Clinton's humiliation by releasing the videotape of his grand jury testimony.
Hyde didn't even provide any of the usual pretexts reporters use when justifying the release of such a personal story. Hyde hadn't run advertisements attacking Clinton's character (like Idaho Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth, who was then forced to admit a past affair with a married man); he hadn't been excessively moralistic in discussing Clinton's problems (like Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, who was then forced to admit he fathered a child out of wedlock); and he had never claimed to be unblemished.
Yet Salon, reflecting the views of many Democratic partisans, concluded that no more justification was needed than the underlying fact that Hyde was now presiding over a potential impeachment inquiry inextricably rooted in judgments about Clinton's sexual behavior. "Ugly times call for ugly tactics," wrote Salon's editors in a grimly utilitarian explanation.
Seen from that angle, the release of the Hyde story was both depressing and inevitable. And, despite pledges from both Republican and Democratic leaders late last week to discourage more personal attacks, there's no reason to believe that this bloodletting will stop with Hyde. Maybe much of the mainstream media thinks the sexual outing already has gone too far, but it is hardly in a position to ignore new revelations about key congressional decision-makers (sexual or otherwise) after examining Clinton's behavior so exhaustively. Besides, the real lesson of the Hyde story is that today no one--not the major papers, not the networks, not the newsmagazines--can control the flow of unsavory information.
