Another miss, Haig was fired too. Of course he ran for President and no one noticed.
As for Schultz, he admires and remembers Reagan as the greatest President of his lifetime.
Re: Cannon. He's as credible as Mayer. Cannon spent a career writing negative articles and books about Reagan. Without any impact, I might add.
March 10, 1999
Review & Outlook
The 'Commentraitors'
With impeachment concluded, a curious thing is happening among President Clinton's friends and allies. They are beginning to admit how little they believe or respect the man they helped elect to the world's most powerful job. Now that their man will be able to serve out his term, at least some of his defenders are publicly owning up to a kind of acquittal remorse.
The most notable guilty conscience belongs to George Stephanopoulos, in his new memoir out this week. The war room regular whose smashmouth campaign habits helped Mr. Clinton lie his way past Gennifer Flowers and the rest in 1992 now reveals that he had doubts about his boss's character and honesty all along.
In the Flowers furor, he reports, "Reading the story, Clinton seized on any detail he knew was wrong. I was happy to make a list of the details that were false, but I didn't press Clinton to say which ones were true." When tapes appeared of Mr. Clinton and Ms. Flowers talking "in intimate tones about their personal relationship and the presidential race," Mr. Stephanopoulos writes, "I was hit by a wave of nausea, doubt, embarrassment and anger. Mostly anger. He lied. Even if he didn't, what's he doing talking to her in the middle of the campaign?"(His emphasis.)
This story is pertinent even today, in the wake of Juanita Broaddrick's highly credible rape charge. Mr. Clinton and his spokesmen answer any query by referring to the one statement by the President's personal lawyer, David Kendall. It reads. "Any allegation that the president assaulted Ms. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that we are not going to comment."
We have learned that this President chooses his words carefully, and we note that 20 years ago no Ms. Broaddrick existed. Her name was Juanita Hickey. Per Mr. Stephanopoulos, it would fit the Clinton pattern to issue what normal people would interpret as a blanket denial, but was in Clintonspeak denying only a tiny fact, such as her name at the time. At the least, a member of the White House press corps ought to ask Mr. Clinton if the denial applies to Juanita Hickey. And was he ever in a hotel room with her 20 years ago?
All the more so after Kevin Hickey, Juanita's son, gave his own persuasive account to CNN's Larry King Monday night of how his mother told him about her rape. Mr. Hickey's credibility was such that two other former Clinton aides, Dee Dee Myers and David Gergen, followed up to say they found both son and mother believable. This startled CNN's Jeff Greenfield, who noted that this meant that two former aides were essentially saying they think Bill Clinton might be a rapist.
"As Jeff pointed out," said Mr. King to Ms. Myers, "you should be saying, well, no chance."'
Ms. Myers: "I did that for a while, Larry. I don't do that anymore."
Neither apparently does Betsy Wright, the former Arkansas intimate whose 1992 task was to put down what she once famously called "bimbo eruptions." In late January, she told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that regarding Bill, "I feel personally betrayed. I feel personally lied to. I feel that he was so stupid, to be such a smart man. And I think he's got a sickness. I'm serious about that."
The temptation among those of us who were there first is to say, Now they tell us! But we're willing to credit their sincerity because even now they pay a price for candor. Ms. Myers quipped on CNN that at the White House she's known as one of "the commentraitors." And Mr. Stephanopoulos reports in his memoir that after admitting his doubts about Mr. Clinton's Monica Lewinsky denials, "as far as the president was concerned, I was a nonperson--my name was not to be mentioned in his presence."
But far from a lesson in disloyalty, the news here is that even those who know him best now doubt Bill Clinton's fitness for office. Asked this question in December, former press secretary Mike McCurry said, "I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior." Asked the same question by Newsweek, Mr. Stephanopoulos replied, "He's too fit to be removed, but knowing what we know now, I don't think he'd be fit enough to be elected." George and Henry Hyde aren't all that far apart.
Though it has 23 months to run, the Clinton Presidency increasingly resembles the life of another famous man who escaped official conviction. He is free to play golf and give speeches. He can plead that we all "put it behind us." But nobody believes him anymore. And he must avoid the press lest he be asked something he will have to lie about again. Bill Clinton has become our President O.J.
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