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Jewish World Review / Oct. 16, 1998 /26 Tishrei, 5759
Mugger
Gore for President: The Bread Lines Are Starting to Form
BY LAST WEEKEND I'd had enough spinning to last the entire holiday
season. There was James Carville on Larry King Live Wednesday night
blaming Newt Gingrich for Bill Clinton's crimes and the entire
impeachment inquiry. The rhetoric was as ancient as a rerun of Hee-Haw.
"The whole thing's been orchestrated by Gingrich since day one. He's
been in charge of it. I mean, he's got the whole Republican caucus in
his hip pocket... I'm going to talk about how Newt Gingrich has
railroaded this whole thing-didn't even give the President a chance to
respond-how they made his grand jury testimony. I mean, I'm going to be
very aggressive out there... Like I say I am 'Corporal Cue Ball'
Carville. I am going to be out on the front line fighting for my friends
in Congress too."
Carville insists that Gingrich and the other GOP blue meanies are trying
to force a government shutdown, but as Robert Novak reported on Sunday,
Clinton hasn't even spoken to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott since
Aug. 20; likewise, he hasn't negotiated with Gingrich at all over HMOs,
Social Security reform or education. And, as GOP National Committee
Chairman Jim Nicholson has charted, during this year Clinton has 56 days
at fund-raising events, 45 days abroad, 32 days on vacation and 22 days
at photo-ops. It's not like he's been busy working on a domestic agenda.
The Journal, which has chastised the Republican leadership for its
spinelessness, makes this suggestion: "Republicans would serve both
themselves and the country better if they boosted the emergency farm aid
by, say $10, and sent it back to Mr. Clinton.
If the President were to veto it again, he, and not the Republican Congress, would be responsible
for depriving farmers of aid... On its merits alone the farm bill is bad
business, but what makes this especially rotten fruit is that it has
nothing to do with saving farmers and everything to do with saving Bill
Clinton."
Carville's through; aside from his admittedly brilliant strategy in the
'92 campaign, he's now on the way to the scrap heap of political cutups
who'll wind up as two paragraphs in a remaindered book about the Clinton
presidency several years from now.
Meanwhile, while the President said his fate was in God's hands, the
White House all week purposely projected an abnormally high number of
Democrats who would defect to the Republicans' version of the
impeachment proposal; Clinton himself (and Hillary) was busy calling
House members to sway their vote while telling the public that he wanted
the elected officials to "vote their conscience."
The New York Times, which has been vigilant in tracking the lunacies of
our felonious chief executive, ran a banner headline on Friday that read
"House, in a Partisan 258-176 Vote, Approves a Broad, Open-Ended
Impeachment Inquiry," playing right into Sidney Blumenthal's hands. And
then, on Sunday, a Times headline was the non-committal "Angry Voters
Aren't Sure Where to Place the Blame." I do, but while I'll acknowledge
that the slim number of Americans who'll actually vote in November are
bound to be angry, a swift turnaround from just three months ago, I'm
not sure that my friend Larkin is wrong when he says that the Democrats
are going to benefit from all this mayhem after all. Not likely, but
this election, considering that an economic crash could be an October
surprise, is more volatile than even that of '94.
Gerry Ford had to stick his beak into the fray. Ford, who for some
reason has achieved a role as a revered elder statesman (even Chris
Matthews is buffaloed by the 85-year-old, who had a very undistinguished
term as president in the mid-70s), wrote an article for the Times two
Sundays ago in which he suggested a stern censure was the proper
punishment for the disabled president. And people talk about Ronald
Reagan's Alzheimer's! Doesn't Ford, and the Times editorial board,
realize that such a measure, in which Clinton would be required to stand
in Congress and receive tongue-lashings would have zero effect on this
incredibly dishonest man? Clinton would take his licking, just as he did
as a boy in Arkansas, and then would go back to 1600 Pennsylvania, order
a couple of Big Macs and celebrate, with Hillary, Carville, Harry
Thomason and whoever's left from his skeletal staff, the fact that he
got away with it again.
Thomas Friedman wrote a very persuasive column in last Saturday's Times,
arguing that the distraction of the impeachment hearings only causes
lawmakers and the country at large to ignore the enormous global
economic crisis that is not only looming, but taking place right now. He
wrote: "We are not just heading for lower growth, and possibly a
recession. We are seeing at minimum a slowdown and at a maximum a
breakdown in the whole progression toward free-market capitalism... [I]t
has changed into a global crisis that requires enormous political
leadership in general and U.S. leadership in particular."
Friedman then, desperately, I think, urges that Congress reconsider
Ford's censure option so that Clinton can concentrate on the fractured
economy. While the columnist is on the mark, crisis-wise, he's wrong to
cave in to Ford's half-baked scheme. First of all, as Charles
Krauthammer points out in this week's Weekly Standard, this censure
quick-fix is most likely unconstitutional. More importantly, why entrust
our economy to a man who's shown no agility whatsoever in the past year
to foresee the obvious collapse of the Asian economy and utter breakdown
of Russia. Again, a one-day rebuke of Clinton will only serve as a
spanking for the disgraced president and then it will be business as
usual. And that means bad business.
It's imperative that Democrats and Republicans alike realize the
country's facing not only a recession, but possibly a depression.
Instead of a censure, Democratic party leaders, say Thomas Daschle and
Dick Gephardt, should make the walk to the Oval Office and demand
Clinton's resignation. They might be accompanied by Bill Bradley, Sam
Nunn, Robert Byrd, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lee Hamilton, Jimmy Carter,
Joseph Lieberman, David Bonior, Charles Rangel, Dianne Feinstein, James
Moran, and what the heck, even Teddy, Joe and Patrick Kennedy, just for
a symbolic effect. They should insist that Clinton step down and allow
Al Gore to take over.
For the Democrats this will have enormous immediate political benefits:
it will minimize the party's losses on Election Day and make the
impeachment process moot. I say this not because I'm in favor of a
reinvigorated Democratic party, but because the prospect of a disabled
president who has no ability to lead, with legal distractions and little
moral standing among foreign leaders, is not acceptable. Gore, before he
got infected by Clinton hypocrisy-his exploitation of his sister's death
and son's accident, not to mention the '96 campaign violations, were
inexcusable-is at least a decent man who I think can be counted upon to
act upon the nation's grave economic predicament.
Yes, I'd like to see Clinton roast and squirm some more, because he
deserves it, but it's too dangerous to keep him in office. Clinton
should immediately be forgotten; let him go to Hollywood, work on his
rehabilitation campaign, fetch drinks for David Geffen and Leo DiCaprio,
whatever. The country needs a statesman with gravitas and Clinton is not
up to it. If this scenario damages the GOP's political calculus, so be
it.
However, that's not likely. One thing you can say for pundit Joe Klein
is that he's consistent. Seven years ago, in New York, he was among the
first to anoint Bill Clinton as the Democratic front-runner. His early
Clinton-sycophancy and subsequent disillusionment eventually earned him
millions for the book and movie Primary Colors, as he bounced to
Newsweek and then The New Yorker. And in this week's issue of The New
Yorker, there's Klein shilling for Bush brothers George and Jeb, who are
cruising to victory in their gubernatorial contests in Texas and
Florida. He practically cedes the GOP's presidential nomination to
George W. Bush. Not that I'm complaining.
Listen to Joe's glistening prose: "[T]here is a freshness to both Bush
campaigns. The brothers seem to have stumbled across an electoral
formula and a new political vocabulary-independent of each other, they
insist-that may constitute the most creative and humane Republican
response to Clinton's successful effort to recast the Democrats as the
party of the middle class: they are reaching out, with some success, to
the poor, especially to Hispanics and to African-Americans... They
remain conservatives, they insist; they also promise low taxes and
limited government. Still, there is none of the harsh moralism and
country-club exclusivity that have marked Sun Belt Republicanism in the
past, and there is a determined emphasis on solving the social problems
that Republicans often ignore."
In addition, Robert Novak seems to have gotten over his allergy to the
Bush family. Writing in his syndicated column on Monday, Novak disputed
the idea that George W. Bush is wary of making a presidential bid
because of the ugly atmosphere in Washington. He spent the weekend with
Bush in Austin and reports that the Governor is concerned about the
effect a campaign might have on his twin daughters, but as for himself,
"I'm being scrutinized right now... And what people are finding is that
I'm a dedicated father, a loyal husband and someone who has brought
honor to the office I hold." Novak writes: "To broaden the Republican
base nationally, he told me, 'it's going to require somebody to carry a
message that's not going to alienate anybody.' He is clearly talking
about himself, and that doesn't sound like somebody afraid of scrutiny."
Meanwhile, the Rudy Giuliani-for-national-office boomlet was in full
swing, with two articles in The New York Observer wondering which New
York Republican would be a better presidential or vice-presidential
candidate in two years: Rudy or Gov. George Pataki. The notion of
Giuliani being tapped by Gov. Bush is not out of the question: in a
parallel world. It's my bet that the superficial advantages of the
Mayor-a northeast moderate Republican who'd help carry New York; a
crime-fighter and tax-cutter; a Catholic; would be outweighed by a mean
streak that's larger than Clinton's libido, a fascist's demeanor on
anything that gets his goat, and that embarrassing habit of dressing in
drag. Not to mention, while Ralph Reed will concede that the GOP needs
to expand its tent and not preclude a pro-choice veep, someone as vocal
as Giuliani on that issue just won't do.
George Will, who's been known to lose his mind in the past, devoted two
successive columns to New York's frightening mayor, absurdly comparing
him to Margaret Thatcher, and calling him "America's most successful
conservative currently in office." He ended his Oct. 4 piece on a
particularly flowery note, after describing the sprucing up of Bryant
Park (now used by "nonfelons"), by saying that the coming outdoor movie
at the park would be Breakfast at Tiffany's, "that romantic hymn to New
York life in the 1950s, the decade that is, in a sense, Giuliani's
destination."
I've lost my take-out dinner, what about
But now that the election is three weeks away, the White House is
spoiling for a fight with the "do-nothing" Republican Congress. And the
GOP, which got burned by a similar gambit in '95, is wary of letting
Clinton get the upper hand. For example, the President vetoed a farm
bill last week, claiming there wasn't enough money for emergency aid. As
The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Monday, the extra money for
farmers wasn't even the administration's idea; it was a sop to
Democratic senators Clinton needs for impeachment protection.
Rudy's run is ridiculous; even Pecker
people cry out for Bush
JWR contributor "Mugger" is the editor-in-chief and publisher of New York Press. Send your comments to him by clicking here.