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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Who, me? who wrote (18875)	9/4/1998 1:09:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 20981

A National Lampoon By Jamie Dettmer The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal has been a delight to network comedians but is no laughing matter to many on Capitol Hill who are hiding skeletons of their own. even-year-old Jack McKean pondered briefly before delivering to the Sunday dinner table his one-liner about the presidential sex scandal roiling America. "It's like pulling back the curtain when someone's taking a shower," he opined to startled parents and a family friend. From the mouths of children.... The Connecticut youngster is not alone in feeling embarrassment -- he has plenty of company. . . . . From Capitol Hill to the nation's newsrooms, from Main Street to Wall Street, the flood of information detailing what went on in the White House between Bill Clinton and former presidential paramour Monica Lewinsky is becoming a cause of distress. Even late-night comedian Jay Leno, hardly a shrinking violet, acknowledges the difficulties he faced in "trying to figure out how we can talk about this stuff on a noncable show." That was before Leno suggested the president's pet name for Monica was "My Little Humidor." . . . . Psychologists say jokes sometimes are used to cope with the unpleasant or the unpalatable -- and certainly the double entendres were flying after the Walter Winchell-wanna-be Matt Drudge shared with the world via his Internet page one alleged unusual presidential use for a cigar. But the jokes have worn thin, and there is a yearning to restore the curtain. . . . . No such luck. Innocence, when lost, can't be recovered. At least with Watergate, President Nixon's expletives were deleted. Nowadays, with an abundance of shock jocks around, the Internet and a hugely aggressive media, any restraint seems plain quaint. But then, even Nixon wasn't such a master manipulator of language as Clinton. With a president given to splitting hairs to the nth degree, the devil is in the details. . . . . In short, a nervous Washington is bracing itself for a lot more embarrassing leaks of still more intimate details from Lewinsky's testimony before independent counsel Ken Starr's grand jury. Once Starr delivers his expected report to the House Judiciary Committee and the panel, in turn, makes an executive summary available to the public, as its chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois plans, faces likely will get a lot redder. . . . . And congressmen from both sides of the aisle have much to fear from the fallout. Their anxiety doesn't only revolve around Clinton and illicit sex. Capitol Hill isn't just full of talk about the intricacies or appropriateness of impeachment, the damage it might do to the nation or earnest discussions of the possible electoral consequences of the Lewinsky affair. Many lawmakers and their staffs are afraid, to quote one senior Republican, that a "sexual doomsday machine" is ticking away -- a neutron bomb which, if detonated, will leave the buildings of government standing but wreck many a legislative reputation and political career. . . . . The worry is not fanciful. Behind the scenes the two parties are beginning willy-nilly to be drawn into what only can be described as a threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. Private gumshoes have never had it so good. Private investigator Terry Lenzner, the favorite cloak-and-dagger merchant of the president's private lawyers, continues to recruit more staff for his firm Investigative Group International (see "A Presidential Blockbuster," April 20). Everyone is investigating everyone else -- if for no other reason than to build up the means for vengeance; to let it be known what they have up their sleeves and so deter attack. . . . . But as Washington and Moscow learned with the Cold War, MAD is a risky, nightmarish game in which a fumbling finger, an accidental firing ... and then ... oops. "It could get nasty and messy -- we are real anxious here," says an aide to a Northeastern Republican senator. Another GOP staffer adds: "It is sad, but we have to be ready for it." . . . . The missile-gap fears were triggered back in the winter when White House aides test-fired a rocket in the shape of briefings warning that the administration might go for a "defensive" scorched-earth policy. Former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, now an ABC-TV news analyst, disclosed on a Sunday-morning talk show: "The president said he would never resign, and I think some around him are willing to take everybody down with him." The message? Dig into the Lewinsky affair and see what you get. Nervous collar-pulling in Congress followed. . . . . Earlier this summer, off-the-record White House warnings again were issued -- and this time they were more specific. Based on briefings from Clinton aides, the online liberal magazine Salon listed half a dozen House Republicans as targets, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia; Clinton foe Dan Burton of Indiana, chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee; Hyde; and House Majority Leader Richard Armey of Texas. According to an article in a Dallas newspaper, Armey was alleged to have pressured female students for dates when he was a college professor. A longtime Democratic adviser told the Washington Times: "We're going to play political hardball with the Republicans if the House decides to hold impeachment hearings." . . . . In recent weeks some commentators have suggested the hinted scorched-earth tactic was only a threat. Dirt wouldn't have to be dug because just the warning would suffice. The White House itself encouraged that line by reprimanding Democratic National Committee member Bob Mulholland for his highly public efforts to secure scandal about divorced GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee. "I do not believe efforts of this kind advance the goals of our party," DNC chairman Steve Grossman said at the time. A presidential spokesman remarked: "We don't see looking into people's lives as appropriate." . . . . But congressional dirt is being dug, say Capitol Hill sources -- both Democratic and Republican. Indeed, Insight has learned from a variety of sources -- lawmakers and Hill staffers, journalists and dirt-diggers themselves -- of several active gumshoe probes into GOP figures, including a governor suspected of a series of office romances and a House member. An entrapment bid was launched recently on a prominent Republican senator, claim private investigators. It failed. . . . . The Democrats don't have the field to themselves when it comes to the latest phase in trash-trawling. Attorney General Janet Reno's private life is the focus of at least one GOP lawmaker, say private investigators, who spoke to Insight on the condition of anonymity. . . . . Will any of the dirt hit the fan? In one case, yes. Vanity Fair magazine, an employer of former White House aide Dee Dee Myers, is planning to run an attack on Burton before the congressional elections, with details of an alleged "indiscretion" many years ago. The congressman is on vacation and could not be reached by Insight. His office declined to comment. "We all have a problem," says a Democratic lawmaker. "For our own sakes and to avoid total cynicism with politics, we need to stop this before it gets out of hand. The trouble is that, having started the investigations and issuing threats, there's a strong chance of miscalculation. One missile goes off and that could trigger an ugly exchange we'd all regret." . . . . The push of the button wouldn't even have to be planned by one side or the other to set off the doomsday machine. The media have to be taken into account, too. A variety of publications and TV shows are in the hunt for political dirt. An expos‚ that had not been leaked could be interpreted as having an official political origin when it didn't have, triggering nonetheless the brutal exchange lawmakers fear. . . . . As Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia says: "It is very worrying and terribly unfortunate that this behavior [dirt-digging] is taking place -- and should be of even more concern if it is influencing congressional decision-making." . . . . It may be. Congressional sources say the leaders of the parties in the House have discussed the specter of MAD and have assured each other they are not involved in any dirt collection. "They're engaged in a confidence-building exercise," says a GOP leadership aide. "They want to head off any Clinton hearings collapsing into all-out political warfare." To pull off that juggling act could be a tall order -- many players, temperaments and agendas are involved. The law, Starr's report, public opinion, the elections, what's right to do -- and now the anxiety about the private lives of lawmakers -- all are part of an increasingly complicated formula. . . . . Several senior aides say concern about the MAD scenario is at least partly behind the careful nature of statements GOP and Democratic congressional leaders have allowed themselves in the wake of the president's prime-time Aug. 17 "confession" to the nation. From Gingrich to Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, the public rhetoric has been cautious. Gephardt has been noticeably evenhanded, refusing in comments on Aug. 25 to rule out the possibility of impeachment -- a nod to Republicans -- but indicating that such a move shouldn't be contemplated lightly -- a caressing of diehard Clinton loyalists in the House Democratic caucus. . . . . The balancing act is being shadowed on the GOP side. Of the Republican leadership, only Majority Whip Tom DeLay quickly called for the president to resign, music to the ears of GOP rank-and-filers who would like to hang, draw and quarter the president at dawn. Other GOP leaders, including Gingrich, have been more reserved and called for judgment to be suspended until the Starr report and more of the facts are in. . . . . Hyde will be crucial in navigating the Lewinsky scandal with the minimum amount of political damage. The Illinois Republican has the advantage of being widely respected on the Hill and is seen as a senior congressional statesman. He has made clear his wish for a steady, bipartisan approach, hence his appointment earlier in the summer of Democrat David Schippers, a former Chicago prosecutor, as his majority counsel. Although any impeachment hearings are guaranteed to be fraught with razor-edged partisanship, there's a widespread feeling among Democrats and Republicans that if anyone can curtail likely excesses it is the 74-year-old Hyde. . . . . "He's a man for all seasons, particularly this season, because he has transcended partisan politics," says Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and a Judiciary Committee member. "I think he'll be a unifier, not a divider." California Democrat Zoe Lofgren concurs. "The chairman has made great efforts to avoid charges of partisanship. I think he's eager to come out of whatever happens with the country saying 'Good job, Henry.'" . . . . In his determination to keep the temperature down, Hyde is keen for Starr's report to be for the eyes only of the committee and the leadership. "He wants to keep leaks to a minimum, and that's why he feels a summary of the testimony should be made available so that everyone is reading publicly from the same page," says a Republican aide. . . . . But "cooler" heads such as Hyde's can't guarantee all and sundry -- in Congress and in the White House --will be willing to resist the temptation of scorched-earth political warfare. Even political consultants could raise the temperature to missile-launching heights and trigger a spiral of tit-for-tat. In the heat of talk-show argument it is done easily, and some consultants, such as "Ragin' Cajun" James Carville and Jennifer Laszlo, both Democrats, need little provocation to shoot from the lip. On CNBC's Rivera Live recently Laszlo showed little restraint, remarking: "Rudy Giuliani, excellent mayor of New York City, has done a terrific job with the economy and crime, just like Bill Clinton has done an excellent job as president.... He has a relationship with a member of his staff.... Do you think he, too, should be impeached or expelled?" . . . . Clinton aides also demonstrated their readiness to play dirty in the last week of August when they "reminded" TV talk-show hosts of the highly dubious "controversy" surrounding Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Paul McHale's military record. The White House prompt -- McHale was said to have misrepresented what medals he'd been awarded -- was apparent punishment for the Pennsylvanian calling on the president to resign. It was so clearly dishonest that even Geraldo Rivera apologized for picking it up from a source close to the White House. . . . . Senior Democrats disapproved of the slurring of McHale, but privately they acknowledge they have little pull on the White House and fear they may face a "runaway president," one who will not listen to party pleas for restraint. Some House Democrats and Republicans argue that it will be up to senators to tell the White House to cool it. But which ones? There are some wistful hopes that Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts may be able to team up and pull something off. But Clinton ignored Hatch's very public cautions (ahead of the president's televised confession) to lay off Starr. . . . . And what if the dirt-digging continues? "We could be witnessing an obstruction of justice," says Barr, a former federal prosecutor. "Just the very fact of accumulating dirt with the intent to cause congressmen to back off could well fall within the federal statues of obstruction of justice." . . . . October Surprise? The worst-case scenario -- a fall earthquake -- and shower curtains blowing in the wind.