Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
March 22 —New polls showed Saturday that the
grand jury proceedings have already taken a toll on
public faith in President Clinton’s personal morals.
The same polls indicated the credibility of Clinton
accuser
Kathleen Willey is also in serious doubt. But a new
figure
emerged Saturday to corroborate one heavily disputed
aspect of her story.
Despite the controversies, the president’s job
approval
rating holds strong, ranging between 59 percent and 67
percent in three new public opinion surveys released this
weekend.
Personal Approval Sees Drop
But a survey conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda
Lake
and Republican Ed Goeas for U.S. News and World Report
showed that just 36 percent of Americans approve of him
as
a person and 50 percent disapprove.
His approval as a person is down 6 percentage points
from last December, before detailed allegations were
aired
about alleged sexual relations with Lewinsky and what
Willey
says was an unwanted sexual contact with her just outside
the
Oval Office.
But among Democratic women, Clinton suffered a much
steeper decline of 19 percentage points.
A Newsweek poll released Saturday found that 43
percent of those surveyed said should leave office if
Willey’s
accusations are true and Clinton lied about it under
oath. But
31 percent said he should be able to stay in office if he
apologizes to the American people and 18 percent
volunteered that no apology would be necessary.
A CNN/Time poll, which was conducted three days
after
Willey’s nationally televised charges March 15, indicated
that
half of Americans (52 percent) believe Clinton has
engaged in
a “pattern of sexual misconduct.”
Public Split Over Willey
Respondents were split over whether to believe Willey and
nearly half (48 percent) said she went public with her
story
for monetary gain.
One disputed aspect of Willey’s story—that she
confided
details of the 1993 alleged encounter with Clinton to her
friend, Julie Hiatt Steele, right after it happened—was
corroborated Saturday by Richmond, Va., television
producer Bill Poveromo.
In an affidavit that Clinton’s lawyers have used to
undercut Willey’s credibility, Steele swore that Mrs.
Willey
never mentioned the incident when it happened and later
asked Steele to lie and say that she was told in 1993
about
Clinton’s alleged unwanted pass.
Poveromo, who works for WWBT-TV, told The
Associated Press that Steele, his friend of several
years,
confided in him over dinner at her home last April that
“the
president had groped Kathy (Willey) and that Julie did
know
about it right after it happened.”
Steele later changed her story in the affidavit and
in press
reports “because she freaked and panicked,” Poveromo
said.
Nancy Luque, Steele’s Washington attorney, said:
“She
absolutely stands by her affidavit. She did not tell
Poveromo
that the Clinton-Willey encounter occurred because she
didn’t ever believe that it had.”
Newsweek’s March 19-20 telephone survey of 750
adults had a 4-percentage point margin of error. The
CNN/Time poll, conducted March 18-19 among 1,032
adult Americans claims a 3-point sampling error.
Pollsters for
U.S. News questioned 1,005 registered voters March 17-19
and also claimed a margin of error of 3 percentage
points.
--
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