Falling Starr: Scandal tars ‘Uncle Ken’
The Dec. 28, 1998, cover AUSTIN of Time magazine shows the bespectacled image of Kenneth Starr alongside President Bill Clinton with the headline “MEN OF THE YEAR.”
Starr was the independent counsel who brought about the impeachment of a president and was rewarded with high-profile cases at his private practice and several university presidencies.
Last week, Starr resigned as chancellor of Baylor University amid a sexual assault scandal involving athletes that has rocked the private Texas university. He had been previously removed as university president.
Talk about a free fall from grace. I was a young reporter at the
Miami Herald when the ClintonMonica Lewinsky sex scandal broke. I read about Starr’s tenacity as independent counsel as he mounted a case of perjury and obstruction of justice to impeach the president, who publicly denied having “sexual relations with that woman.”
I remember thinking, with a limited perspective on such things, “Really? We’re going to impeach a president for that?”
Depending on where you stood in the political spectrum, Starr’s case against Clinton was either a righteous defense of morality or a political hit job. Either way, it divided the country in ugly ways, muddied our image abroad and led to impeachment. (The Senate later acquitted Clinton on the charges.)
Starr’s role as independent counsel was shrouded in conflict-of-interest allegations and spawned a book, And the Horse
He Rode in On, by political pundit and Clinton ally James Carville, that skewered Starr’s involvement. Starr admitted years later that he regretted leading the Lewinsky investigation. He recently expressed praise for Clinton.
Now, Starr joins the pantheon of moralists entangled in their own sex-related scandals.
Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., speaker-elect of the House during the Clinton scandal, was one of the loudest voices calling for Clinton’s impeachment — until his own extramarital affair pushed him from office. He was succeeded in Congress by David Vitter, who also called for Clinton’s removal on moral grounds. Nearly two decades later, Vitter faced his own mea culpa for his connections to Deborah Jeane Palfrey aka the D.C. Madam.
Starr’s involvement in the Baylor scandal is more tangential but nevertheless significant. An investigation commissioned by the school found that Baylor’s administration, led by Starr, failed to sufficiently investigate multiple allegations of sexual assaults against students, especially by football players.
In the wake of the scandal, which led to the removal of head football coach Art Briles, Starr has answered the reports with a mix of defiance, contrition and self-adulation. In an interview with ESPN’s Outside the Lines, Starr called for transparency and seemed to accept some of the blame. Sort of.
“I personally accepted responsibility,” he said. “I didn’t know about what was happening. But I have to — and I willingly do — accept responsibility. The captain goes down with the ship.”
Starr referred to himself in the third person and denied there was a systemic failure on campus to protect students from sexual assaults. “I believe the students love Uncle Ken,” he told ESPN’s Joe Schad.
Starr has backed Briles, even though some reports show the coach kept the football players’ actions secret from the public, and seems more concerned with protecting his image than engaging in painful soul-searching.
In a TV interview with KWTX-TV in Waco, Texas, Starr was asked about a woman who sent him an email last fall with the subject line “I Was Raped at Baylor.”
Starr said he “may have” seen the email, then the interview was abruptly halted by communication consultant Merrie Spaeth, who pulled Starr aside to coach him on his answers. When he returned, Starr’s response changed to “I honestly have no recollection of that” and “I have no recollection. None.”
He turned to Spaeth and asked, “Is that OK?”
Serious questions remain about how much Starr knew about the allegations and to what degree his leadership contributed to the cover-up-at-all-costs culture that seems to have pervaded the campus. Don’t expect him to go away anytime soon, though: Despite losing the presidency, he’s staying on as a professor at Baylor’s law school.
Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Uncle Ken.