Dems Stab Clinton in the Back; Rich and Dowd Jump into the Bushes
Another day, another New York Times editorial or news story dumping on the Clinton administration. The millionaire's Socialist Newspaper of Record has been relentless in its ostracism: whether it's Hillary's fishy cash-up-front book deal; the installation of sleazebag Terry McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Al Gore's closed-door lecture at a journalism school; or presidential counsel Jack Quinn's interesting choice of legal clients. Bill Clinton is Public Enemy Number One, with most of the ink slamming him for the pardon of Marc Rich.
Last Sunday, on its op-ed pages, the Times tricked the ex-president by giving him ample space to make a ludicrous defense of the controversial decision. It was a stiff piece, written by attorney David Kendall and touched up by John Podesta, and, as the Times' editors certainly anticipated, it simply exacerbated Clinton's credibility problems. On Monday, a Times editorial resumed fire on its guest author, concluding: "Sometimes, Mr. Clinton argues, a pardon may be granted based on undefined 'unique circumstances.' The story of this pardon begins and ends with money and the access afforded by money. That is the unique circumstance that will linger in the minds of Americans whenever they contemplate this gross misuse of a solemn presidential responsibility."
So is the sky falling? On the surface, it does seem odd, when the Times and Wall Street Journal editorials?on this one issue?dovetail in their vehement condemnation of the 42nd president. I was skeptical at the rat-a-tat-tat blasts every day, but couldn't quite figure out the motive.
On Feb. 17, however, Chris Gacek, a New York Press reader from Alexandria, VA, offered an explanation that is sublimely obvious, but hasn't been published elsewhere. He e-mailed: "What is really behind the establishment press turning on Bill Clinton? I don't believe The New York Times is even remotely outraged by the Rich pardon. The Times never cared about Juanita Broaddrick, the transfer of rocket and satellite technology to China or the unprecedented attacks against Kenneth Starr."
Gacek's contention is that Clinton, in the last month, has sullied himself so thoroughly?with McAuliffe's coronation, the $800,000 57th St. offices disaster, his scuzzy White House departure and the unexplainable Rich pardon?that he's no longer of any use in the ongoing quest to defeat the GOP-controlled Congress in 2002 and then President Bush in 2004. So it's goodbye cruel world to the toad Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Tina Brown used to affectionately call Elvis, and hang him from a tree in Central Park. Such lovely views there, you see. To dip into Times columnist Maureen Dowd's scant repertoire, Clemenza would never betray Don Sulzberger; Clinton was always the smart one.
(A quick digression: Isn't it criminal how geeky pundits have besmirched Elvis Presley, one of the country's prized cultural icons, by associating him with Clinton?)
Richard Berke, the Times' "star" political correspondent whose articles in the 2000 campaign seemed vetted by the Gore campaign, had an astonishing front-page story on Feb. 16, headlined "Democrats See a Party Adrift as Presidential Loss Sinks In." It's part of the plan: If the Times weren't intent on forcing Clinton (and Gore) off the national stage, and exiling him to a life of golf at restricted country clubs, Berke would never have included the following comments from prominent liberals.
Bill Daley, Gore's campaign chairman: "It's terrible, devastating, and it's rather appalling. Bush ran on bringing dignity back and I think the actions by Clinton of the last couple of weeks are giving him a pretty good platform."
Dick Gephardt: "In retrospect, if we had a little wind at the top of the ticket, it would have helped in some of those close [House] races. I'm not blaming it on the Gore campaign, but that is a fact of life."
Carter Eskew, a Gore-Lieberman lieutenant: "People in the fund-raising community who are ideologically driven are very disappointed. They think the Democrats have essentially rolled over and are letting Bush have his way. They don't believe Democrats have a real strategy for taking the guy on."
Even McAuliffe wouldn't comment on the record about his buddy Clinton, telling Berke, "I'm talking about the future."
But what's your future, Terry? Maybe one-to-three in a minimum-security prison camp?
Jill Abramson, another Times numbers-runner for Sulzberger and Howell Raines, contradicted Clinton's formal "explanation" for the Rich pardon on the very same day it appeared in the paper. The disgraced Arkansan wrote, after a brief history lesson about the Constitution: "The case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff."
Abramson collected the following comments from the "distinguished" Republicans Clinton cited.
Garment: "It is absolutely false that I knew about and endorsed the idea of a pardon."
Ari Fleischer, Bush's press secretary, spoke on behalf of Libby: "While Mr. Libby was involved in the original case concerning Mr. Rich, he was in no way, shape, manner or form involved in the pardon."
Reynolds: "I never reviewed nor advocated the pardon. I first learned of it when everyone else did and I was as astonished as everybody else was."
William Safire's Times column was a one-man party on Monday, as he reveled in tweaking his media elite colleagues for having been snookered by Clinton the past eight years. Safire, whose idiosyncratic conservatism has no place for the Bush family, adopted the mock-role of the "contrarian," offering advice to the Comeback Kid. He wrote: "Say this: I stonewalled and intimidated witnesses and gave false testimony under oath and copped a plea, didn't I? So why are you kicking about my denials now? I got huge contributions from my Asian connection, then reversed my China policy and got away with it, didn't I? So why are you whining about bribery now?
"That last defense is Clinton's clincher. Having applauded his shamelessness through eight years, only hypocrites among his steadfast supporters can complain about his shaming the presidency on the way out."
Adding to the bizarre series of Clinton miscues was that the Times treatise wasn't his first avenue of explanation for his latest political jam. Last Thursday, the ex-president chose Geraldo Rivera, a CNBC clown who, as Al Gore once did, considers Clinton one of the country's foremost heroes. "There's not a single, solitary shred of evidence that I did anything wrong, or that [Rich's] money changed hands. And there's certainly no evidence that I took any of it. I was blindsided by this. I just wanted to go out there and do what past presidents have done, but the Republicans had other ideas for me. It's terrible! I mean [Rich] had three big-time Republican lawyers, including Dick Cheney's chief of staff."
Clinton also complained that he was at a disadvantage because he no longer has an "infrastructure" at his disposal, people who can spin a once-fawning Fourth Estate into submission after their boss has screwed up. So, Clinton, supposedly the "brainy" and "shrewd" pol?especially compared to the "moron" from Texas who succeeded him?picks a hack's talk show as his place to let off steam. (The Wall Street Journal's John Fund, appearing on Rivera Live Thursday night, was typically astute in refuting Clinton's complaint of no "infrastructure." Fund said: "Well, that's not true. He has your program.")
I particularly relished Clinton's hastily chosen words that there's no "evidence" of wrongdoing on his part, and that "Republicans had other ideas for me." This really stretches the imagination. Of course there's no "evidence." If the Rich pardon was bought, if the fugitive who renounced his U.S. citizenship really did funnel money to his ex-wife, Clinton wouldn't leave a paper trail. That's one of his tricks of the trade. Or, as Fund told Geraldo: "After 26 days, we've gotten a four-paragraph explanation from the president. I'm happy for that. [The Pinocchio shtick wasn't really necessary there, John.] But deconstructing this statement is absolutely hilarious. It's complete Clintonism. 'There's not a single, solitary shred of evidence'?yes, I'm sure all of the evidence has been shredded."
As for the Republicans piling on, while it's true that the oft-derided Dan Burton is conducting congressional hearings, not a single prominent Democrat has offered any support for Clinton's lunatic actions. Geraldo bought his buddy's temper tantrum without question, but when it comes to Clinton he's just a notch above bonebrains like Joe Conason, Gene Lyons and Paul Begala in credibility.
Stay Out the Bushes
While the Times is noisily demolishing Clinton's reputation and legacy (such as they are), its permanent anti-Bush campaign is plain to see. This past weekend there was a barrage of demeaning articles about the new President, providing a clear blueprint for the paper's editorial mission for the next four years. A front-page story by Richard Berke and Frank Bruni on Sunday profiled Karl Rove, Bush's longtime political strategist, not-so-obliquely suggesting that he's the mastermind of the current administration. The lead paragraph said it all: "Inside the White House Cabinet Room on Thursday evening, President Bush waited to receive Republican senators. But his guests were in no hurry. Just outside the door, there was something of a logjam because they wanted, first, to pay respects to the aide who is widely viewed as the principal architect of the Bush presidency: Karl Rove."
According to Berke and Bruni, Rove has micromanaged nearly every move in Bush's monthlong tenure. They claim Rove, while the Florida recount dragged on, planned the first weeks of the administration; orchestrated the outreach to Senate and House Democrats; insisted that Bush not add or subtract from his $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal; and assured conservatives that Bush would not abandon John Ashcroft as he was smeared by special-interest groups whose claws were embedded in the backs of Democratic senators.
The Rove article was just an opening volley for the Times; during the next year, expect far more critical examinations of the Texan who's often portrayed in the left-wing fringe media as the second coming of Lee Atwater. I don't suspect Bush himself is bothered by the attention given to his subordinates. He's been so demeaned since the start of his presidential campaign?Nicholas Kristof's endless series of derogatory articles on Bush last year was just the most glaring?and everyone associated with GWB, it seems, gets a turn at being the shadow president. Dick Cheney is the prime example; but Rove, Andy Card, former President Bush, Jeb Bush and Colin Powell have all been seen as the "brain" behind the President. Soon there'll be a Berke article about just how much influence the White House chef has on Mideast policy.
And Times veteran R.W. Apple, who writes like he's 100 years old, piled on this past Sunday as well, in an article that was ostensibly about the free ride Clinton, with his rash of shabby behavior, has given Bush. But the key paragraph in Apple's perfunctory Bush-bash stuck out obviously as one of the Times' continued defenses of the estate tax.
Apple wrote: "Confident as he may have proclaimed himself to be, the new president took office with no wind behind him. Having lost the popular vote, having won the electoral vote only with the help of a painfully divided Supreme Court, Mr. Bush was greeted with suspicion both inside the Beltway and beyond. He seemed to have blundered into nominating a hard-line conservative as attorney general when he clearly needed to build a coalition with moderates."
This is the sort of hogwash that has helped define the Times as a national embarrassment.
Bush was "greeted with suspicion" by liberal Democrats; the GOP was ecstatic about his election. In his own mind, the new President had plenty of "wind behind him," which was swiftly demonstrated by his diverse Cabinet selections and refusal, best exemplified by not giving an inch on his tax cut plan, to govern as a "coalition president." Bush won, and to his credit he's governing as if the vote were by the same margin by which Ariel Sharon crushed Ehud Barak. He didn't "blunder" into choosing Ashcroft; his first choice, Gov. Marc Racicot, turned him down. So he tapped Ashcroft, an exceptionally qualified candidate who's an appropriate antidote to the corrupt tenure of his predecessor, Janet Reno.
Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, two Times "Arts & Leisure" writers whose essays are continually misplaced on the paper's op-ed pages, are both with the program.
Dowd, the more talented of the pair, is nonetheless spent, producing about one original column every six months. Throughout the presidential campaign she was on a Godfather kick, even if she couldn't decide from week to week whether Bush was Sonny, Fredo, Connie or even Paulie. On Feb. 18, this lame motif continued: "Nothing personal, Saddam. Just bidness. Bush family bidness. Grab the cannoli, drop the bombs. While Bill Clinton is chaotically smashing his legacy, W. is methodically renovating his dad's legacy."
Slinking?if momentarily?into Rich's mind-set, one that consists entirely of pop culture, I'm reminded by reading his biweekly columns of the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day. The former theater critic is so fabulously deluded he actually believes that Americans, en masse, live in the same tv/film/Broadway fantasy world that enslaves him. If the Times management were as civic-minded as it claims, surely they'd attach a photo of Rich to their seasonal ads that advise New Yorkers to "Remember the Neediest."
Rich's Feb. 17 column was a prime example of why the poor fellow should be convalescing in some asylum instead of committing journalistic hate crimes. He writes: "Rational and irrational people may differ over the merits of Bill Clinton's presidency, but few can dispute that he was without peer as our entertainer in chief. He turned the whole citizenry, regardless of ideology or demographic, into drama fiends... Now it turns out we're all junkies for the fast-paced, round-the-clock theatrics that defined the Clinton years, and we're desperate for a fix, any fix, to fill the cultural vacuum he left behind."
Before launching into a laundry list of what occupies his time, Rich throws in a gratuitous slur on Bush just to assure readers that he's actually writing about politics. He writes: "Nor does Mr. Bush seem likely to provide any thrills of his own for our amusement. He avoids press conferences [like Clinton and Gore?]. He does not go off-script. His first 'foreign' trip to Mexico seems to have been chosen so he can instantly retreat to his Texas ranch and not have to risk sleeping on a strange pillow away from home." If that last sentence appeared in the New York Post, editors at The Nation would undoubtedly be organizing a boycott of the paper, in solidarity with the disenfranchised people of Mexico.
But let's return to Frank's recreational pleasures, all referenced in the column: "Perils of Pauline," Gladiator, Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs, XFL football, Eminem ("the Hannibal Lecter of pop"), Survivor, Temptation Island, The West Wing, 60 Minutes, Hardball and MAD magazine.
Because Bush's administration isn't likely to produce a scandal every three months, Rich is convinced the new President will be a failure. He concludes: "Only a performer [Clinton] of genius could deflect an angry mob's criticism of his post-White House office rent by recasting himself as the best thing to happen to Harlem since Langston Hughes. But it is Mr. Bush who is president now, and if he can be as easily upstaged by Mr. Clinton as Al Gore was?and by Republican Clinton antagonists like Arlen Specter [who voted, to his shame, not to convict Clinton on impeachment charges] besides?he's not going to be able to sell his current agenda, let alone any tough policies that may require Americans to make a larger sacrifice than receiving a tax cut. The nightly news is already abandoning him. So could a country that now tolerates just about anything from its politicians and entertainers alike except being bored."
Rich, like so many other solipsistic liberals, is in deep denial, failing to realize that Clinton's ongoing tribulations are helping Bush politically. And when the former president is kicked off the national stage, which is inevitable, Americans will go about their daily lives, not thinking much about Washington, and the Bush administration will horrify the likes of Frank Rich with just how much it accomplishes.
It's okay to wear fur again, Frank. Drilling starts soon in Alaska! Get used to it.
February 19