Saturday, May 31, 1997

What went on at the Excelsior Hotel?

By SANDY GRADY

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - "Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park and no telling what you'll find," President Clinton's blustery defender James Carville once said.

He was talking about Paula Corbin Jones. You know, Paula the trailer-park trash with big hair and gold digger's greed.

That's been the Clinton cadre's line on Paula Jones: a sleazy, low-life flirt trying to gouge money and fame by fabricating a tale of Clinton's boorish sexual lunging.

Pundits, mainline press and most of the public bought it. Jones was dismissed like some tramp on a Jerry Springer show. There was squeamishness about treating seriously a story of a president-to-be flashing genitals in a hotel room.

After all, Jones appeared in a G-string in Penthouse and made ads for blue jeans, and family members were quoted that she trolled for guys in bars. She was cataloged as a tabloid freak out for a quick 700 grand.

Not anymore. Suddenly Paula Jones is a menace to Bill Clinton's reputation, popularity, even his slot in history.

She's more of a nemesis to Clinton than independent counsel Ken Starr and campaign-funds investigators Sen. Fred Thompson and Rep. Dan Burton. They have armies of lawyers, staffers and FBI agents on Clinton's trail. Paula Jones has something more powerful:

A story anybody can understand, a drama with ageless ingredients of power and sex.

Whitewater's always been a boring, financial snakepit. The campaign money mess - both sides do it. Who cares about Web Hubbell, the McDougals or John Huang? But the mystery of the Excelsior Hotel room in Little Rock, May 8, 1991, is simple:

Either Jones or Clinton is lying.

When the Supreme Court surprisingly decided Jones deserves her shot in court - rightly ruling that a president is liable for "private acts" - it made Paula Jones the most dangerous player in Bill Clinton's life.

In one sense, I have to cheer. Only in a great country could Jones, daughter of a Lonoke, Ark., textile worker, an ex-$12,000-a-year clerk with a Kmart wardrobe and a down-home accent, haul into the dock the president of the United States. I can hear the Founding Fathers whooping approval.

But I also groan with apprehension.

Imagine the bedlam if Jones vs. Clinton goes to trial - Court TV, CNN, "Geraldo," the National Enquirer, Star and Globe besieging the courthouse like a Mongol horde. Even without courtroom TV, this circus could make the O.J. carnival look discreet.

Even strict Judge Susan Wright, a Republican nominee who was Clinton's law student, couldn't tame the media madhouse.

Imagine the salacious pandemonium if the president has to submit to a physical exam to prove or disprove Jones' allegation the leader of the free world has "distinguishing genital characteristics." I don't want to be around for Leno-Letterman puns.

That's why the Supreme Court's green light to Jones is a political danger beyond mere embarrassment to Clinton.

Her lawyers are free to depose Arkansas state troopers, especially Danny Ferguson, who allegedly lured Jones to Clinton's hotel suite with the message, "The governor says you make his knees knock."

Only two people know what happened next. But within 24 hours, Jones supposedly told two witnesses Clinton dropped his pants, urged oral sex ("his face was beet-red"), and she fled, saying, "I'm not that kind of girl."

Worse, Jones' lawyers plan to interview other women to prove Clinton had a "pattern of conduct," reigniting rumors that cloud Clinton's presidential aura.

Sure, Clinton rides tenuously high in polls, thanks to a fat-cat economy. Voters in two elections showed Clinton's rumored infidelities were "irrelevant." But women elected Clinton in 1996. They believed Clinton, not Jones (40-26 percent in a CNN poll). That confidence could fade.

Given the threat that the Excelsior Hotel rhubarb will his presidency, my hunch is that a Clinton vs. Jones trial will never happen.

You know the president's well-paid lawyer Bob Bennett, already $900,000 richer because of a legal insurance policy, will pile on delaying motions. The Supremes gave Bennett wiggle room. He'll insist the prez is busy with NATO, China, the economy. When Jones' lawyers predict a trial "inside a year," they're wildly optimistic.

I'd bet on an out-of-court settlement by Clinton. Sure, hardliner Bennett scoffs there's "no likelihood." But if the Jones scandal darkens Clinton's polls and a trial looms, there'll be enormous pressure - especially from Hillary and Al Gore, who have desperate reasons for the Excelsior Hotel caper to disappear.

Remember, Jones was close to ending this impasse in 1994. But Clinton's craftily ambiguous statement - he had "no recollection of meeting her in a room" - was doomed overnight. White House spin enraged Paula.

No, there'll never be a Jones vs. Clinton courthouse Armageddon. It's enough that little Paula Jones from Lonoke, Ark., won her turn at bat in the Supreme Court. Jefferson, Madison and Washington must be applauding.

Or holding their noses.

Sandy Grady is Washington columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Readers may write to him at the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau, 700 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045.