-Caveat Lector- Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=001729996713586&rtmo=glfb7ZGu&atmo=99999bR9&pg=/et/99/11/7/wclin07.html London Sunday Telegraph ISSUE 1626 Sunday 7 November 1999 Sleazy Clinton forgotten but not quite gone By David Wastell in Washington HIS only child is grown up and his wife has embarked on a high-profile career of her own. At just 53, Bill Clinton is both fit and physically vigorous - yet somehow he can't get much done. Meanwhile his deputy has been saying unkind things about him, and is itching to step into his shoes when he is forcibly retired in just over a year's time. It has never been easy for an American President in the last stages of a second term in office. But for Clinton, already destined for notoriety for all the wrong reasons, it is proving especially difficult. With 14 months to go, both power and people are ebbing from the White House. Almost everything he says or does is judged for its impact on the election prospects of others - not least the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, running in New York for the Senate, or Al Gore, the Vice-President, facing an uphill battle to succeed him. It is not just the steady drip-drip of staffers leaving the Clinton administration - though leaving-parties are becoming an almost daily event. One of the best-known public faces, State Department spokesman James Rubin, is also preparing to quit in the next few months. Hours of television airtime which would in the past have been devoted to Mr Clinton's initiatives are now being turned over to the clamour of rivals for the presidency. A tour by the President last week of some of America's poorest neighbourhoods, aimed at generating $15 billion of investment, yielded less coverage than the gaffe by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, wrong-footed in an interview by being unable to name four foreign leaders. Even Mr Clinton's arch-opponents at the Republican National Committee ignore him. "The President is more and more irrelevant," said Mark Pfeiffler, deputy communications director." Early in the summer Mr Clinton was insisting that it was too soon to write him off. He did not intend to "wait out the clock" until next year's elections, he said. But as the Republican-dominated Congress prepares to clear the decks and wind up its current session this week - leaving just one session, certain to be dominated by electoral manoeuvring, in this Presidency - there is little for the White House to crow about. Mr Clinton has found it more difficult than ever to make progress on the key items on his domestic agenda. White House plans to remodel the Medicare system for pensioners, to reform social security and to rewrite the gun laws have fallen foul of the poisonous atmosphere within Congress. Perhaps the most spectacular damage of all to Mr Clinton's credibility came last month when the Senate voted down the nuclear test ban treaty. It was the first time that a treaty bearing the President's signature had been rejected for 80 years. It stands in stark contrast to the same point in Ronald Reagan's presidency, 12 years ago, when he agreed with the Soviet Union the biggest ever reduction in nuclear weapons. "It all has to be seen through the prism of impeachment," said one congressional insider. "People think he got away with something he should not have got away with, and they hate him for it." Mr Clinton's poll ratings remain high, with 59 per cent of all Americans saying they approve of his job performance in the most recent Gallup survey. But asked about his character, voters are far less forgiving. The President's behaviour has also raised eyebrows. Last month, late on a dark and drizzly Sunday evening, he set off from the White House to play golf alone at a floodlit suburban country club. Days earlier he had complained that the two sides in the deadlocked Northern Ireland talks were like drunks brawling in a bar - a comment he quickly had to retract. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote: "The President can't do the stuff he likes or is good at any more. All he's really allowed to do now are fund-raisers and golf. That ebbing-autumnal-twilight-mortality thing is no fun. His nuclear treaty is killed. His agenda has flatlined." With Mrs Clinton distancing herself from any of her husband's policies which happen to disagree with voters in New York state, and with Al Gore opening presidential debates by attacking Mr Clinton's behaviour in the Lewinsky affair, it is no wonder he sometimes seems unsure what to do next. Last week, in a television interview, he hinted at where his attention may be focused. "I've got to make some money for my family and take care of them," he said. "I want to do what I can as quickly as I can." He has already appointed a lawyer-come-agent to take offers on his behalf - from publishers for his memoirs, and from anyone else for his time. He would be spending "a lot" of time at his presidential library in Arkansas, he said. As Ms Dowd put it: "So now, at his 18th hole, Bill Clinton must plot how to spend the future polishing the past." � Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 1999. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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