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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Las Vegas Lou who wrote (819)	8/8/1998 9:04:00 AM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

Worst is yet to come for Clinton and Democrats The Boston Globe 8/8/98 John Ellis Worst is yet to come for Clinton and Democrats By John Ellis, 08/08/98 The House Democratic Caucus welcomed President Clinton into its midst Wednesday with a five-minute standing ovation. The lawmakers would have been better advised to throw him out of the room and demand his resignation. Clinton is to the Democratic Party what the Titanic was to its passengers. He's taking everybody down with him. Consider these facts. When Clinton was elected president, Ron Brown, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, handed him a party apparatus that was $5 million in the black and running like a top. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and solid majorities of the governorships and state legislatures. All of these political advantages have been squandered in less than six years. Today the Democratic National Committee is $7 million in debt. If and when Attorney General Janet Reno finally decides that the 1996 campaign fund-raising scandals merit the appointment of an independent counsel, the DNC will have to spend - at least - an additional $20 million in legal fees to defend those employees (present and former) who will be targets of the investigation. So far Reno has stood firm in her resolve not to trigger the statute. But with FBI Director Louis Freeh and career prosecutor Charles LaBella both urging her - in no uncertain terms - to appoint a special prosecutor (and with Reno facing a possible charge of contempt of Congress), it may be only a matter of time before she has to do just that. Such a decision, by itself, would render the DNC incapacitated at best and bankrupt at worst. It would cripple the Democratic Party's ability to raise money and would ensure that indictments and convictions would be front-page news well into the year 2000. Al Gore take note. The congressional front is equally grim. Republicans now control both houses of Congress and are poised to increase their majorities in November's midterm elections. Most independent analysts predict that the GOP will pick up at least two Senate seats and at least five House seats. Should the one-two punch of Monica Lewinsky's testimony and Ken Starr's report do yet more damage to President Clinton's political standing, Democratic losses will increase. Polling suggests that recent Democratic fantasies of recapturing control of the House are a pipe dream. Midterm elections generally hinge on whose base turns out on election day. Polling in numerous states shows Republicans energized and Democrats depressed. It is all but impossible to imagine how this situation might reverse itself in the next three months. As it is, congressional Democrats find themselves reduced to making pathetically embarrassing arguments in Clinton's defense. These arguments include: (1) sexual relations between the president of the United States and a 21-year-old intern can be ''compartmentalized''; (2) lying about it in a civil proceeding doesn't matter but lying about it in front of a Federal Grand Jury does; (3) lying about it on national television is OK, because the lie can later be amended to fit new circumstances. Any Democratic congressman who thinks he or she can go before his or her constituents in the fall with arguments this lame is delusional. But the real threat to the Democratic Party is at the state level. Republicans control 32 governor's offices and are within reach of controlling a solid majority of the key state legislatures across the country. Republicans will likely control every single state that matters in national politics after the 1998 elections and will oversee the state governance of more than 83 percent of the nation's population. Should the GOP continue to make substantial gains in the state legislatures (Republicans have picked up nearly 600 legislative seats since 1994), the party will have control over the congressional redistricting process that commences in the year 2001. By that process alone, the GOP can increase its congressional majority by as many as 20 seats, thus locking in Republican control of the House for years to come. Democrats who think that President Clinton can talk his way out of his present circumstances are kidding themselves. Thursday, Monica Lewinsky testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that she did indeed have sexual relations with President Clinton over an 18-month period and that she conferred with him on numerous occasions on how they might conceal their relationship. Clinton is set to appear before the same grand jury on Aug. 17, at which time he will either (a) contradict Lewinsky and a mountain of circumstantial and perhaps physical evidence or (b) confirm Lewinsky's account. If he does the latter, he will reveal himself to be a perjurer, which, among other things, guarantees that he will be disbarred in Arkansas from the practice of law. If he does the former, he opens himself up to articles of impeachment. The best available information is that he will continue to insist that he did not have sexual relations with ''that woman.'' Democrats dream of a happy ending. Clinton confesses, the country forgives, the story goes away. But there are no happy endings in Bill Clinton's wake. And the worst is yet to come. John Ellis is a consultant at Rasky/Baerlein Group. freerepublic.com