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.
This column ran on page 4 in the 2/19/2001 edition of The New York Observer.
(Taken from the 2/28/2001 edition)
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