For many months, like a lot of other observers of our politics, I've pondered the public battering of Bill Clinton. Why is this particular president so bitterly hated, so relentlessly savaged? I don't hold with those who say that it just goes with the territory of being president. I'm old enough to have paid attention to eight presidents before Clinton, and I've seen nothing like this. Some mention Nixon, but Nixon-hating wasn't like this Clinton-hating. A president whose approach to the world entails making up enemies lists is asking for enemies. But one who hates conflict, who so manifestly wants everyone to love everyone? And there is now no unpopular war tearing the country apart. Nor do I think that Clinton's political blunders or moral shortcomings explain the assault on his leadership. Clinton has failings, but it is far from clear that the balance between his virtues and his faults is objectively worse than, say, Reagan's. And while most of the public chose to disregard Reagan's quite evident weaknesses, Clinton's are constantly magnifed (as with Whitewater's unprecedented ratio of smoke to fire) or even invented (as with the non-murder of Vince Foster). A small part of Clinton's problem may be just that he's a Democrat in an office that some on the right have become accustomed to regarding as their own preserve. The bumpersticker "Bush lost-- get over it" addresses this sore-loser phenomenon. Then there is the particular nature of the opposition. Some people, such as the religious right, are better at hating than others, like liberals. It's a matter of their respective cosmologies. Liberals think we should all get along, that niceness is the greatest public virtue-- and they make lousy haters. Bible-belt conservatives pick righteous over nice any day, because their cosmos is divided between the godly and the un, and hating the ungodly is not a moral lapse but an obligation, part of the job description. The president who offends these folks will find out what hatred, done right, is like. But what about Bill Clinton is so offensive to these people? This is the key missing piece of the picture, and I think I've found it. What makes Clinton so intolerable to Bible-belt conservatives is that he is a member of their tribe but would upset their cosmic order. His voice and manner are more those of the Baptist preacher than of a mainstream politician. In his town meetings, reaching out to people as a pastor ministering unto his flock, he promised --or threatened-- to tap into a powerful source of cultural energy not usually harnessed by an American president. This source lies close to the heart of America, for although the religious right is but a minority, they are the guardians of a core part of the underlying structure of the American moral order. That Protestant tradition defines where authority resides and how it is to be used, how we are to deal with matters of right and wrong, and how freedom and responsibility are to be reconciled. A political leader who can combine the powers of office with these deeper springs of cultural energy might wield great influence. Any challenge to this moral configuration would be opposed, but an American president who might be able to put an agenda of cultural transformation to the music of traditional hymns would be particularly threatening. And Bill Clinton suggested early on a very different emotional configuration from that of the traditionalists. Where a Jerry Falwell assumes the posture of the authoritative father, Bill Clinton's role on taking office was that of the caring brother. "I'll tell you what to do" was supplanted by "Let me help you." Questioning Bill Clinton's "patriotism" (recall that patri=father) was also a way of saying that he was not qualified to be a real leader because he refused to act like a father. Whereas the traditional Protestant cosmology is an order of exclusion --one divided between the saved and the damned-- Bill Clinton's approach to his flock was resolutely inclusive. Whatever else it was, Clinton's gesture to accept gays in the military was a signal that the division between the favored and the rejected was not central to his concept of his ministry or to his view of the American social order. The moral order of the religious right is strictly patriarchal, from God the Father to the organization of the family. Bill and Hillary's more egalitarian partnership was seen as a threat to that order. The response to that threat was to impugn Bill's masculinity, to depict the increase in Hillary's power above the traditional "lovely wife" role as entailing Bill's emasculation. "Impeach Hillary" said the bumpersticker-- a way of accusing him of not being man enough to wear the pants in his family. For the defenders of the traditional moral structure, it was urgently necessary that the moral authority of the incoming president be destroyed, and they have pursued this goal ceaselessly. Although Clinton's moral shortcomings opened vulnerabilities, it was really his potential moral strengths that evoked such hostility. Had the right not succeeded in cutting Clinton down, had the moral credibility of his voice not been undermined, Bill Clinton might have affected a spiritual shift in American society more fundamental than politics. It was this shift, I believe, that the traditionalists of the religious right were determined to prevent. They appear to have succeeded.

Andrew Bard Schmookler is an author, and also does talk radio in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. ??