Scandal Time 

What counts as a scandal these days? I think we can all agree that if it transpires that John Kerry has slept with Michael Jackson, his presidential campaign will lose momentum, at least for the weekend.

Sex and drugs don’t seem as scandalous as they used to, even when televangelists are caught indulging, and especially when Democrats are partying. Remember Gary Hart and Monkey Business? How long ago it seems!

At the present rate, Hart could be the Democrats’ nominee this year, and he might even beat George Bush. And let’s not rule out Jimmy Carter, whose shocking admission that he’d looked lustfully at women has blown over by now. Who else is left?

Is Mike Dukakis still available? He could pit that immortal tape of him driving a tank, à la Snoopy, against Bush’s military record to even the odds. After seeing Bush in a flight suit, the public might not find it so amusing anymore. At least Dukakis never struck heroic poses after others had done the fighting.

The new rumor that Kerry played around with an intern seems to have emanated from a rival Democrat, not Republicans. Republicans, it’s true, enjoy any distraction from the subject of the National Guard — especially when the Democrats themselves produce it in the fratricidal spirit of this primary season.

The cutthroat competition among all these mediocrities puts dirt at a premium. Only a few weeks back I observed that Kerry was the dream Democratic candidate: one who’d never been in the National Enquirer. That was an outdated comment even before the new rumor burst out. He’s on the cover this week.

Apparently the story has been kicking around for a while, but Kerry had assured his fellow Democrats that he could handle it. Then, it seems, Gen. Wesley Clark, dropping out of the race, mentioned it to a dozen reporters “off the record.” The poor naive man, still new to public life, apparently didn’t realize that confiding a sexual bombshell to a mob of journalists isn’t exactly the surest way to keep it secret.

Oh, well. We all make mistakes. Besides, this campaign could use a good dose of low farce. Since the Clintons left the White House, the Democrats have failed to provide the political comedy we’d come to expect of them, what with all these boringly monogamous Gores and Liebermans. Another bimbo explosion was long overdue.

Can Kerry survive? Scandal management is a delicate art, especially in a time of flux like our own. Arnold Schwarzenegger handled the charge of groping women by admitting it and apologizing. That already seems like ancient history too. Besides, it happened in California, where the phrase sexual scandal is a contradiction in terms. Kerry still needs the votes of people in parts of the country where they’ve never heard of Jacko.

Kerry could cut his losses and consolidate his base within his party by conceding that the rumor is partly true, while insisting that the “bimbo” was actually a male. Since he belongs to Massachusetts’s congressional delegation, this might fly. Of course he’d still have to worry about independent voters, but by November this story might be upstaged by other scandals.

Faced with a sexual scandal, every Democrat must ask himself a simple question: What would WJC do? In a roughly comparable situation, William Jefferson Clinton denied everything, then partially confessed and got spiritual guidance from Jesse Jackson.

This precedent, however, may have limited usefulness for Kerry. For one thing, Jackson turned out to have had a pregnant girlfriend, whom he actually brought along to the White House when he counseled Clinton. As a spiritual force, he is more or less hors de combat.

But Kerry can always turn to another man of the cloth: Al Sharpton. This might require some fence-mending after a fierce campaign, but he could offer his sometime rival a place on the ticket, or at least a cabinet position. This would also have the advantage of winning Kerry support from black voters who so far haven’t warmed to him.

Finally, we must confront the grim possibility that the rumor isn’t true. In that case, there is no use in Kerry’s denying it. Far too late for that. It’s already been on talk radio for several hours.

Joseph Sobran