Amos Kiewe
Syracue University

I take a textual approach in analyzing president Clinton's address to the nation on August 17, 1998. By textual analysis I mean a close reading of the text that is guided by a critical question: Given the crisis situation at hand, what did the speaker seek to achieve in constructing this particular address? I seek to explain the rhetorical strategy Clinton opted for, his calculated objectives, and his anticipated result, all aimed at containing the crisis and even deflecting it. I conclude with a brief assessment of the president's speech.

On August 17, 1998, president Clinton spoke to the nation only hours after giving grand jury testimony in a case investigated by a special prosecutor. The president's testimony came after seven months of legal and political wrangling aimed at ending a potentially damaging investigation. The future of the Clinton presidency has been the ultimate penalty for an alleged sexual relationship the president had with a White House intern. The precedent of a president being questioned by a grand jury was a major blow to Bill Clinton. Related challenges to presidential authority, such as curtailing the president's relationship with White House security details and the president's ability to communicate freely with advisers, were added blows to the president as well as to the institution.

The speech is inherently an advocacy piece that seeks to rationalize wrongdoing and balance guilt of self with the wrongdoing of others. Ultimately, the president's speech is about political survival which could be achieved by regaining credibility and public support. Credibility is essential to this crisis rhetoric if the nation is to agree with the president's claim that the investigation by the special counsel is politically motivated and wasteful. Clinton's short speech has two objectives: to acknowledge wrongdoing but to define his misdeeds as private, and to attack the investigation as politically motivated and unwarranted by the sanctity of privacy.
Clinton seeks to establish credibility through immediacy. His address, he tells his audience, is given from the same location his testimony was given just hours earlier, his home. The public house is now also a private home. The scene adds symbolic impact to the very statement that followed: "I answered . . . questions truthfully." To further establish credibility, the president qualifies his truth-telling act with his answering questions about his "private life, questions no American citizen would ever want to answer." Having done the unusual, Clinton implied that the nation ought to accept his truth-telling testimony and now his admission of wrongdoing. The introduction is thus about suggesting that for once and for all, the president is telling the truth.

The admission of wrongdoing, buried between truth-telling and accusing the special prosecutor of underhandedness, is a carefully crafted legal statement. Though the president admits to an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky, his admission is personal, not legal. The nature of the relationship is not divulged but his conduct, states the president, was "wrong," "a critical lapse in judgment," and "a personal failure." This is the extent of Clinton's willingness to admit guilt. Since the president casts his affair as personal and not public, his responsibility, therefore, is to those closest to him, namely his family and God. The strategy is clear. If the public accepts the affair as personal, and as having no effect on the nation's affair, then the president can survive the crisis.

Given the president's definition of privacy, the special counsel public investigation into the president's private affairs is therefore wrong, politically motivated and destructive. Put differently, the special counsel unjustifiably turned a private matter into public concern after failing to find evidence of wrongdoing in earlier public cases.

The private nature of the offense, the crux of Clinton's rhetorical definition, is cast in family and religious metaphors whereby the president's responsibility is only to his family and to God. The "matter" is private and not public, states the president, and "It's nobody's business but ours. Even presidents have private lives." The private-public duality parallels in Clinton's address the family-nation metaphors. Thus, "personal destruction," "prying into private lives," and "spectacle" are contrasted with "national life," distraction from affairs of the state, repairing "the fabric of our national discourse," and the need to focus "our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century."

The private-public strategy is intriguing. Despite the private nature of the offense, atoning is a required modicum of responsibility, and Clinton does exactly that with his "I must put it right," strategically placed in the middle of the address. Though Clinton argues that the "matter" is private and personal, his atonement is public. The atonement is crucial since public opinion required the president to take responsibility and admit wrongdoing. Yet, for legal reasoning that could seriously affect the president's survival and future litigation, he refrained from using the very words many wanted to hear, namely, sexual relationship, lying under oath, and lying to a grand jury.

Even more intriguing is the incongruity between Clinton's rhetorical strategy in this address and his rhetorical inclination for the "private presidency." Clinton has effectively utilized interpersonal communication skills to gain political advantage (Hollywood), cement political ties (Rabin, Blair), build coalitions (women, black caucus), and appear empathic and caring (Israel, Ireland). Now, Clinton argues that the private and the public are mutually exclusive arenas. This address was partially calculated to fit public sentiments about the private nature of the offense and the resentment built against a prosecutor who is perceived as a zealot and as going after the president.

Facing a difficult political and leadership crisis, Clinton abandoned his rhetorical inclination--In place of the "private presidency," he sought to create a distance between the private and the public. The private-public duality may also have been an angry and immediate reaction to hours of questioning into his private life that "no American citizen would ever want to answer." Neither did the president wish to answer questions about his private life. Clinton did not have alternative rhetorical strategies left once he decided on a limited and qualified mea culpa.