OT
Speaking of rats!
Wed Feb 28 2001 10:36:27 ET
NEW YORK PAPER CALLS ON HILLARY TO RESIGN
X X X X X
Clinton Corruption Plays Us for Fools We Won't Forget
NEW YORK OBSERVER
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. |
