Profs: Whitewater Overblown

Harvard professors say the ongoing Whitewater controversy may tarnish the Clinton presidency, but it is nowhere near becoming a scandal the size of Watergate or the Iran-Contra affair.

The controversy, which centers around the President and Mrs. Clinton's involvement in the failed Whitewater Development Company in Arkansas, has widened in recent weeks as federal special prosecutor Robert B. Fiske Jr. subpoenaed several White House aides.

But despite the Watergate-like presence of a prosecutor, a round of subpoenas and even the resignation of White House Counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum, the affair is a tempest in a teapot, professors say.

"I think it's a minor issue that's being blown into something much larger for the reason of partisan politics," Professor of Government Peter A. Hall says.

Assistant Professor of Government Michael G. Hagen agrees that despite media coverage of the matter, the Whitewater scandal is not a big deal.

"It looks like the congressional investigations will proceed," he says. "I don't know how much they'll uncover; it seems to me there is not a whole heck of a lot to be uncovered."

Nevertheless, he said, "There will be a lot more publicity. The witch hunt will proceed."

The Whitewater Development Company, which the Clintons coo-owned with family friend James B. McDougal, was a failed attempt to sell vacation homes in rural Arkansas.

McDougal was also the owner of a failed savings and loan under Governor Clinton's regulation. And Hillary Rodham Clinton was McDougal's lawyer when she worked for the Rose Law Firm.

Nussbaum resigned after it was revealed that Treasury Department officials briefed him on the status of their investigation into the matter.

Such briefings are generally considered unethical, and President Clinton has expressed regret that they occurred.

These details of the Whitewater matter have generated far more press coverage than they deserve, professors say.

"It's not remotely on the scale of Watergate, Whitewater is much different," Hall says. "Partly because the press played such a prominent role in Watergate... they've gone overboard to search for scandals since then."

Whitewater doesn't raise the same issues as Watergate, says Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz. "I don't think it can be a Watergate because it doesn't involve violations of constitutional rights by the government," Dershowitz says.

Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53 says he agrees with Dershowitz's assessment.

"[Whitewater] is fundamentally different from both Watergate and Iran-Contra," Verba says. "Watergate... [and] Iran-Contra had to do with violating the Constitution. The worst this [may] prove to be is slippery business of practices and favoritism."

But while Whitewater isn't as intense or disturbing as Watergate, professors say it raises the same fundamental issues of trust in Government.

"One thing that's disturbing about [Whitewater] is that it will appear to justify the cynicism of the American public," says David C. King, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School. "I think that's too bad... politics is not the dirty game that Americans think it is."