WASHINGTON -- As NBC News readied the explosive report of Juanita Broaddrick's accusations against President Clinton last week, Newsweek magazine distilled the media buzz.
The Conventional Wisdom column said Jane Doe No. 5 "should have leveled (unproven) assault charge in '78 or '92. But sounds like our guy."Sounds like our guy. Perfect.
Nothing anyone can throw at Clinton surprises anyone anymore. Nor do his tepid denials.
In a news conference a few hours before the Arkansas woman accused the president on national television of being a vicious rapist, Clinton was asked about her allegations.
"My counsel has made a statement . . . I have nothing to add," he replied tightly.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall's statement was that, "Any allegation that the president assaulted Mrs. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false."
That might be an unequivocal denial to most people, but in the era of lawyerly language it was seen as leaving the wiggle-room possibility that something could have happened that could have been consensual.
The day after NBC's story aired, Clinton headed west to talk domestic and foreign policy and to raise $10 million to help Democrats retake Congress. Again, that's Our Guy.
It's standard operating procedure at the scandal-weary White House for Clinton to ignore the disasters in his wake.
The White House hopes people will push aside this victim's story as they have the others. But in San Francisco, where a fund-raiser dinner was held, demonstrators chanted "Shame," and "Neighborhood Alert" fliers calling Clinton a "Sexual Predator" were handed out.
It's worth remembering that the last Clinton scandal story -- about his fathering a "love child" -- turned out not to be true.
But no one will ever know for sure what happened between Clinton and Broaddrick. The 56-year-old businesswoman from Van Buren, Ark., left no doubt that she believes Clinton raped her.
Broaddrick, a former nurse who owns nursing homes, tearfully told Lisa Myers that while she was attending a nursing home conference in Little Rock in 1978, Clinton invited himself to her hotel room for coffee and then sexually assaulted her. He was the state's attorney general and a gubernatorial candidate at the time.
She never reported the incident to authorities because "I didn't think anyone would believe me in the world," she said.
She kept her story secret despite appeals from Clinton's political enemies in Arkansas during the '92 campaign.
Then, when lawyers in the Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit sought her as a potential witness, she signed an affidavit denying the rumors.
She subsequently admitted to independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigators that she had lied in that affidavit, and she became known in government documents as Jane Doe No. 5.
Broaddrick insisted that no one from the White House had asked her to file the false affidavit, and Starr could find no evidence that Clinton attempted to obstruct justice.
Partly because Broaddrick now says she lied in the earlier affidavit, many people tend to believe her. She seems to have nothing to gain by talking now.
Previously, as bad as Clinton's behavior was alleged to be, his backers could contend that he takes no for an answer. That's what makes Broaddrick's charges so serious.
Clinton's supporters are facing defense-fatigue. Some Democratic spokesmen dismissed the Broaddrick story as just gossip, noting that she couldn't even remember the date of the alleged incident.
Feminist groups weren't so quick to brush it off.
Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, called Broaddrick's account "particularly compelling because, like Kathleen Willey, she has been a reluctant witness with no apparent political or financial motivation."
Willey is the Virginia woman who claimed Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance outside the Oval Office.
And, significantly, Ireland urged the White House not to smear Broaddrick.
"The National Organization for Women urges everyone to treat Juanita Braoddrick fairly and respectfully and to take her charges seriously," Ireland said. "She must not be besieged by attacks on her mental state or character."
NOW called on Clinton himself to denounce the "nuts or sluts" defense -- "the argument that she either made it up or asked for it."
Scripps Howard News Service.