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Listening to Susan McDougal speak to Tim Russert from a Los Angeles jail on "Meet the Press" last week, I had a glimpse into her deluded state of mind. In her head, Susan McDougal is Joan of Arkansas -- the innocent village girl glowing with a saintly aura of moral heroism. Her heavenly mandate is to remain silent.
In reality, she was convicted in Arkansas on four counts of fraud by a jury of her peers and has been indicted in California on 10 charges, including forgery and grand theft. On top of that, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles is investigating her for tax fraud. The woman convicted of receiving an illegal $300,000 loan -- fleecing the taxpayers and the poor -- is the same woman who, undaunted, turned up in California a few years later forging the name of her employer at the time, Nancy Mehta, on a credit card and defrauding her of $150,000.
"Within five days of walking into my office," Mehta told writer James Stewart, "she had a fraudulent BankAmerica card. Where did she learn that? She said, 'I am just a poor girl off the truck, and I need a job.' We were all taken in."
Reviewing this record, how might the man or woman on the street describe McDougal? "Career criminal"? A bit strong, perhaps. "Accomplished deceiver"? Seems reasonable to me.
Yet here was this convicted felon and accused embezzler telling Russert that she had met "with the office of the independent counsel several times, and asked them to let me tell the truth." A few minutes later, she insisted that "it has never been a problem with telling the truth." Even McDougal could not quite bring herself to use the personal "I" pronoun. Instead, she repeated these two magical little words -- "the truth" -- nine times during her three-minute exchange with Russert. As they say on "The X-Files," "The truth is out there." But it is clearly not in there.
"I am more determined today than I have ever been before," McDougal went on -- proud to wear the mantle of stubbornness. Joan of Arc herself might have said something similar on her way to the stake.
There is something attractive about unshakable commitment -- especially when the one so dedicated is willing to spend two years in jail because of it. But the gulf between McDougal's view of herself as the blameless victim of a political witch hunt and her lifelong pattern of fraud and evasion is too large to be bridged by our admiration for her tenacity.
Whatever McDougal's motives -- loyalty to her old friend the president or the promise of future reward, if not in heaven then perhaps in a lucrative new career as a consultant for the Lippo Group -- she now seems committed to the martyr role she has chosen for herself.
Perhaps the most revealing thing that McDougal has said from prison is that her pre-jail life "had become equivalent with hell." Standing up to Kenneth Starr may not be Joan of Arc standing up to the archbishop of Reims, and answering the independent counsel's questions is certainly not eternal damnation in a lake of fire. Still, for someone whose life has been as ignominious as Susan McDougal's, taking a stand for something, anything, must seem like a kind of nobility.
The exacting standards by which -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- she still defines herself were set by her parents. Her Belgian mother fought for the anti-Nazi resistance in 1940, and her father insisted on military discipline at home -- curfews and no smoking, drinking or dancing allowed. McDougal refers to herself even today as a "small-town girl, a Southern Baptist."
"I wouldn't do it," she protested emphatically, when asked if the rumors of her affair with Bill Clinton were true. But why not? After all, while still married, she had an affair and then moved in with Pat Harris, a young campaign aide. If a small-town, Southern Baptist married girl can go to bed with a campaign aide, why not with the governor of Arkansas?
Susan McDougal seems to have concluded that martyrdom becomes her. There are two men who can put an end to her melodrama. Either Sen. Fred Thompson or Rep. Dan Burton could take her at her word and invite her to testify before Congress. She said she would do so "happily, tomorrow, tonight," as long as Ken Starr is not involved.
Let's hope she does testify, and soon. The last thing this country needs is a bicoastal bilker posing as a latter-day saint.
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