-Caveat Lector-
Clinton Corruption Plays Us for Fools—We Won’t
Forget
Some day soon, public interest in the Clinton administration’s final disgrace
will fade,
and the former President—if not his wife, our junior Senator—will retreat from
the
headlines. Then, after an appropriate interval, we will start
seeing
phony photo ops and pious public pronouncements. Here and
there,
the Clintons will begin their latest rehabilitation: Here is
the junior
Senator, hugging inner-city children; there is the former
President,
lecturing his successor on the finer points of statecraft.
Just as surely as Richard Nixon began planning his comeback on the airplane that
took
him to San Clemente on Aug. 9, 1974, the Clintons even now are preparing their
future
public-relations assault on the nation’s better nature. They assume—regrettably,
not
without reason—that the American public in general, and New York voters in
particular,
will forget about the pardons and the denials and the bald-faced lies that have
sickened
even their most stalwart apologists.
They assume that disgust will run its course, that salvation will be found in
short attention
spans, that the hyperactivity of the media age will continue to blur collective
memory.
And if that doesn’t work, well, they figure they can rely on this heavily
Democratic state
to swallow whole their claims to political victimhood. If public memory cannot
be
manipulated, there’s always the crass pandering that has served them so well in
the past:
The former President will walk the length of 125th Street to remind his putative
neighbors that he was, after all, the first black President; the junior Senator
will hold
news conferences to denounce right-wing conspirators. This combination of
cold-blooded racial politics and partisan hatemongering, the Clintons no doubt
believe,
will keep New York pliant. And New York is the key to it all: Without New York,
there is
no Senate seat, there is no imperial post-Presidency, there is no access to the
courtiers
who can, with words, actions and money, douse the dealings of grifters with the
perfume
of public service.
So the Clintons are playing New Yorkers for fools. Although they surely know by
now
that their actions and their words have offended even their own supporters in
the state
they laughingly call home, they see no reason to panic. Mrs. Clinton is in the
first weeks
of a six-year term of office; in 2006, they believe, who in New York will
remember Marc
Rich or Hugh Rodham? Who will remember the White House furniture that found its
way
to their living room in Chappaqua?
And so it will be up to New York, finally, to foil the calculations of this
coarse and
manipulative couple. New Yorkers now have an obligation, not only to themselves
but to
the nation: They must remember. They must remember exactly how they feel about
the
Clintons at this moment, exactly how they felt when their junior Senator claimed
she
didn’t know that her own brother was bidding for pardons from her husband. They
must
remember how their stomachs turned when their junior Senator professed to be
“heartbroken” about her brother’s rancid involvement in the great pardon
auction. They
must remember their astonishment when Mrs. Clinton claimed to know nothing about
the
Rich pardon, even though his ex-wife Denise donated more than $100,000 to the
former
First Lady’s Senate campaign—not to mention the $1.1 million that Ms. Rich has
given
the national Democratic Party, and the $450,000 she gave to the Clinton
Presidential
Library.
Mrs. Clinton is heartbroken? She’s always either heartbroken or disappointed.
What
about her constituents? Doesn’t she feel our shame? After all, her husband felt
our pain.
Does she not understand our embarrassment? With the nation and indeed the world
watching, we entrusted her with the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert F.
Kennedy and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake,
for Hillary
Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would
resign. If
federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she’d be thrown out of
office by
springtime, the season of renewal.
Only two months ago, serious people believed that Mrs. Clinton would be a
candidate for
President in 2004. Even true believers—gathered in Manhattan’s few remaining
telephone booths—must admit that the plan to get Mrs. Clinton back into the
White
House must now be relegated to history’s dustbin, where it will share space with
the
proceedings of the ClintonCare commission, canceled checks to the Whitewater
Development Corporation and the billing records of the Rose Law Firm. Mrs.
Clinton’s
political viability has come to an end after fewer than eight weeks in office.
Unlike the tawdry dealings that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the pardon
scandal
implicates Mrs. Clinton as much as, and perhaps even more than, her husband.
After all, it
was her brother, not his, who accepted $400,000 to lobby for pardons for a drug
kingpin
and a swindler. (Hugh Rodham says he’ll give the money back—although he hasn’t
done it
just yet. Even if he does, the restitution won’t make everything right. Just ask
a bank
robber.) The Hasidic village in upstate New Square voted en masse for her, not
him, last
fall, after she met with the village’s religious leader. The pardons for four
felons from
the village who bilked the federal government out of $40 million raise questions
about
her campaign, not his. It was her campaign treasurer, not his, who helped and
advised two
of those felons with their pardon applications.
Mrs. Clinton’s press conference on Feb. 22 was a masterpiece of evasion—so much
so
that she deserves a new (if you’ll forgive us) moniker: “Slick Hillie.” She said
she knew
nothing about the pardons. She said she knew nothing of her brother’s
involvement. No,
no—she didn’t concern herself with these little matters, because she was very
busy
preparing to represent the people of New York. If we had any questions about the
pardons, she said, we ought to ask him, the “him” in question being her husband.
A move worthy of the Big He himself.
The Clintons have spent the last eight years treating the American electorate
with
dismissive contempt. The rage unleashed in the last few weeks is that of an
aggrieved
partner who has wised up at last. The President’s supporters in politics and the
press
understood all along that they were in a high-risk relationship, but they had
persuaded
themselves that, in his heart, Mr. Clinton loved what they loved. Their devotion
only
deepened when they were warned to be wary of him; his enemies were their
enemies, too.
Now, with Mr. Clinton stripped of the power and protection of the Presidency,
his
supporters see him exactly as he is. And the image that presents itself is
terrifyingly
close to the caricature his enemies drew of him. They were right, after all. Mr.
Clinton
was, in fact, an untrustworthy low-life who used people for his own purposes and
then
discarded them. How could they have been fooled so badly?
Even now, some continue to delude themselves. They attack Mr. Clinton’s actions,
but
they can’t bring themselves to admit that Senator Hillary also is at fault. Most
of us,
however, now realize that she is an equally detestable partner in a scandal
whose sleazy
dealings finally have been brought to light.
Conservative critics of the Clintons have been amused to see the former
President’s
friends writhing in agony on talk shows and in op-ed columns in recent weeks.
They
wonder why other Democrats and liberal commentators are so angry. It’s not as
though
the Clintons have suddenly become something they’re not; they’ve been selling
their
principles to the highest bidder for years. It’s not as though they’ve betrayed
their core
values; what core values did they ever have?
What the critics—understandably satisfied to see their judgment confirmed yet
again—miss is the amount of self-loathing in the Clinton pile-on. Pro-Clinton
commentators and colleagues now realize just how much they compromised, just how
much they excused, just how ridiculous they looked in their defense of this
corrupt
couple. The end of the Clinton Presidency and the beginning of another Bush era
has
inspired a round of reflection, and Clinton supporters find they can’t look at
themselves
in the mirror.
They are ashamed of themselves, which is a good deal more than anybody can say
of the
Clintons. Indeed, they remain smug and self-righteous, certain that New York
will forget
the early weeks of 2001, certain that New York will embrace its junior Senator
once
again.
They have fooled the public before. They believe they can do so again.
Let’s hope that this time, they are wrong.
back to top
This column ran on page 4 in the 2/19/2001 edition of The New York Observer.
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