Facts are what happened; law is the set of rules you apply to that evidence. On the facts, Jones’s suit seems strongest on her claim that on May 8, 1991, Clinton had her interrupted on the job and delivered to him for some kind of sexual overture. It is less convincing, but hardly frivolous, on Jones’s allegations that she spurned Clinton and he persisted by exposing himself and requesting oral sex. It seems most vulnerable on her assertion that she was treated badly at work for having rebuffed her boss’s boss.
On the law - which is far from clear on what it takes to prove illegal sexual harassment - the bottom line is that many judges would probably find Jones’s case barely strong enough to go to trial: she didn’t, after all, lose her job after rebuffing the alleged come-on.
The president still has plenty to worry about. Jones’s story that Clinton had his bodyguard, state trooper Danny Lee Ferguson, approach her in a hotel lobby, where she was working at a state conference, to meet alone with Clinton upstairs has been confirmed both by Ferguson and by a co-worker of Jones’s (Pamela Blackard) who witnessed Ferguson’s approach and Jones’s return from Clinton’s suite. Nor has this been specifically contradicted either by Clinton himself or by his lawyer, Bob Bennett. While saying Clinton ““has no recollection of ever meeting this woman,’’ Bennett has conspicuously not denied that a meeting took place; he does, however, deny Jones’s shocking account of what happened in the room.
Yet Jones’s whole story is supported by her co-worker, who says a badly upset Jones told her about Clinton’s groping, grabbing and dropping his pants in X-rated detail minutes after returning from Clinton’s suite to the lobby. Another Jones friend (Debra Ballentine) and Jones’s two sisters (Lydia Cathey and Charlotte Brown) say they heard similar accounts from Jones soon thereafter. So Paula Jones has much better witnesses than Anita Hill did. An alleged victim in a he said/she said suit is more believable if she quickly tells others about what purportedly happened. On that point, Jones is ahead of Hill, and of most sexual-harass- ment claims.
Even if Jones is telling the truth, though, the law may not necessarily be on her side. The Supreme Court has ruled that sexual harassment liability can be imposed either for demanding sex as a quid pro quo (““you’d better date me if you want that promotion’’) or for making unwelcome sexual advances so ““severe or pervasive’’ that they subject the victim to a ““hostile environment’’ at work. The classic hostile-environment case involves a continuing course of offensive conduct (by, say, a boss) so ““pervasive’’ that it interferes with a victim’s ability to do her job. But Jones wasn’t fired, she had only one chance subsequent encounter with Clinton, and she got raises after the alleged incident. Some courts, however, have held that someone may be found liable for harassment for a single unusually ““severe’’ episode - in one case, a supervisor’s slap on a woman’s buttocks.
Would Jones - a relatively unsophisticated woman - generate more sympathy from a Little Rock judge and jury than she has in the salons of Washington? How would she do in a swearing contest against the leader of the free world, in his home ballpark? How credibly can she explain the messy way her allegations emerged in early 1994, when she was sponsored by right-wing Clinton-haters? And whatever the outcome of the court case, can anything good for the nation come of this sordid spectacle?
In a way, something already has. Consider the symbolic reaffirmation of the rule of law that comes when the Supreme Court respectfully but firmly reminds the chief executive once again - as it reminded Richard Nixon during Watergate and Harry Truman when he seized the steel mills - that for all his pomp and power, he is just ““an individual who happens to be president.’’ Those were the words chosen by Justice John Paul Stevens while announcing the Jones decision.
The case may also give us a bit of a national learning experience. Like water on stone, the steady drip, drip, drip of fact and evidence wears away at the ideological biases and knee-jerk first reactions that we all bring to the culture and gender wars. Liberals and feminists who rushed to judgment against Thomas when Hill came forward may now have a greater appreciation of the presumption of innocence. Meanwhile, conservatives who rushed to judgment in the opposite direction may have learned something about the problem of vulnerable women being victimized by powerful men. Felix Frankfurter, when asked whether a Supreme Court justice ever changes his mind, liked to say, ““If he is any good, he does.’’ The rest of us, too.
