More Clinton Sleaze?
Investor's Business Daily
Posted 1/3/2006
The Presidency: Are Americans ready for another Clinton scandal? Ready or not, if Senate Democrats get their way, the nation can keep its blinders. If GOP Sen. Charles Grassley prevails, the truth will glare through.
Only half a decade out of power, the last administration may have entered that gray zone in which, historians say, the country may be mildly interested in new revelations or ready — as the old Clinton defenders would say — to move on.
For his part, William Jefferson Clinton, sporting a snowy coif seemingly designed to yell "elder statesman here," has undertaken tsunami relief, launched his own "global initiative" to heighten his role as an actor astride the world, and repeatedly broken the unwritten protocol against criticizing his successors.
If he didn't know any better, he could blame the example of Jimmy Carter, who turned bitterness into best-seller status. But then, both ex-presidents have long exhibited a sense of protocol that, charitably, could be described as Dogpatchian.
We sympathize with those who'd like to turn the page on the impeachment, Monica Lewinsky, Ken Starr, etc. We thought Clinton, though disbarred, was insufficiently penalized: Lying under oath is impeachable, and should occasion removal from office. But Americans in their collective wisdom pretty much decided that Republicans had disproportionately politicized a sin of the flesh.
Fine, but such moral infractions can build into tyrannous executive behavior. Ask David Barrett, a special prosecutor assigned to investigate the forgotten case of Henry Cisneros, Clinton's first HUD secretary, who was found to be misappropriating funds to pay off a mistress.
When Barrett pulled on that thread, he reportedly unraveled a cloak hiding abuses of the Justice Department and the IRS. If recent teases about what's in his 400-page report are true, the previous administration was siccing agents on its political opponents.
At the time, various Clinton critics, from the Heritage Foundation to The American Spectator magazine, found themselves under suspicious IRS audits. Was there a deliberate pattern? It's possible the Barrett report can tell us.
Alas, Barrett's work could be the first special prosecutor's report never to see daylight. Clinton operatives have taken advantage of a legal provision letting them blot out anything they feel damages their privacy. And Senate Democrats, with the unwitting cooperation of Senate Republicans, slipped into an appropriations bill a provision that would deep-six the report.
Grassley, the methodical Iowa Republican, wants to revisit all that. Majority Leader Bill Frist should get on board, as well as House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Barrett's work, in the words of columnist Tony Snow, could be "a bombshell, capable possibly of wiping out Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential prospects."
Obvious politics aside, we think our fellow citizens will be grateful to have the blinders ripped away. The truth sometimes waits for history to make an opening. No better time than right now.
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