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February 15,
2001
Clinton
Comes to Harlem
Bill
Clinton now proposes to establish an office in Harlem, on 125th
street, scarce more than a few stone throws away from where Gore
delivers homilies to journalism students in Columbia University.
Each has found his appropriate setting: the defeated veep pouring
earnest banalities about journalism and politics into the eager
ears of ambitious high fliers already sending their resumes and
worthy clips to the New York Times; Clinton the moral reprobate
fleeing a blizzard of criticism for auctioning a pardon to a
billionaire crook by setting up shop among the poorer folk.
Sneering at Bill, the press
corps has nothing much to be proud of. How come not a single
one of those high-flying, White House-connected newshounds managed
to get hold of the sensational fact, finally disclosed a couple
of weeks ago, that Bill Clinton and Al Gore hadn't had a significant
conversational encounter in a full year? They finally had a melt-down
gripe session not long before the recent election. As always,
it turns out we know nothing about what really goes on in the
White House. George W. could be tossing back dry martinis, partying
till dawn and four years down the road we'll still be reading
up him and Laura saying their prayers and tucked up by 10:30
PM.
We can look forward to months,
if not years of civil war between the Clinton and Gore factions.
Late last week a very senior pollster in Clinton's inner circle
spotted a journalistic acquaintance in a Georgetown supermarket
and pinned him against his shopping cart with a vibrant diatribe
against Gore.
How, the pollster hissed, can
we explain that Gore was unable to run on the Clinton economy,
unable to mention millions of jobs created through the Clinton
90s? She answered her own question. Because to do so would have
meant mentioning Clinton's name and Gore couldn't bring himself
to do that.
Why not? The answer, the pollster
said, went far back before the Lewinsky affair that so troubled
Al and Tipper. It seems that Al has always felt that it was he
who actually won the 1992 election, bailing Bill out of all his
problems over draft dodging and Gennifer Flowers. Through Clinton's
two terms Al's conviction that he rather than Bill should by
rights by sitting in the Oval Office throbbed painfully in his
psyche. Result: he never spoke to the boss and couldn't bear
to ask him to help in those last desperate campaign days.
Even as Bill and Al joust across
the great moral divide we find the Democrats rediscovering a
social conscience. As the prospect of a Bush tax cut looks more
and more as though it will come to pass, the air is filled with
righteous passion about how the Republicans are about to steal
dollars from the little people. Democratic pundit Mark Shields
howls that under Bush the super rich are stealing from the rich,
and the class war is over; the super rich won.
It's true. The rich are winning.
But don't forget. They won all through Clintontime too. Last
spring Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, published an "Anatomy of Clintonomics", concluding
his survey thus: "The core of Clinton's economic program
has been global economic integration, with minimum interventions
to promote equity in labor markets or stability in financial
markets. Gestures to the least well-off have been slight and
back-handed, while wages for the majority have either stagnated
or declined. Wealth at the top, meanwhile, has exploded."
Clinton did very little to
advance the interests of working people or organized labor. Take
the two-step rise in the minimum wage. The overall rise from
$4.25 to the current $5.15, set in September 1997, hardly offset
the plunge in the real value of the minimum wage. That $5.15
is 30 percent below its real value in 1968, even though the economy
has become 50 percent more productive across that thirty years.
The combination of a low minimum
wage and a widening of the earned income tax credit, Pollin went
on, "have allowed business to offer rock-bottom wages, while
shifting onto tax payers the cost of alleviating the poverty
of even those holding full-time jobs."
And now the economy is contracting
rapidly, and soon we'll be finding out what the rending of the
social safety nets in Clinton time will mean in harder times
ahead. Now that he proposes to work north of Central Park Bill
Clinton won't have to stroll very far to find out.
Impeach
Bill Again?
Can
these guys ever let go? Now Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania
is broaching about the possibility of retroactive impeachment
for Bill Clinton, on account of the pardons. Is the idea to offer
distractions while "president" GWB gives away the store?
Actually we're beginning to swing round in favor of Marc Rich,
mostly on account of his Ex, Denise described as a socialite
and song writer.
Her website (www.richsong.com) discloses some success in the
latter capacity. A disco song performed by Sister Sledge called
Frankie seems to represent the summit of her choric art. At one
White House party, according to a committee witness, she apparently
managed to prise Bill away from Barbra Streisand, a feat for
which Bill should have given her the Medal of Honor he had reserved
for Teddy Roosevelt.
The investigation into the
Rich pardon conducted by Rep Dan Burton's subcommittee has elicited
many delightful details, including the frantic hunt for a rabbi
to lobby for the fugitive commodities trader. According to Alison
Leigh Cowan's very amusing story in the New York Times for February
10, "In another flurry, Robert Fink, Mr. Rich's longtime
lawyer in New York, reported on Jan. 2 that he heard that the
pardon request was being taken seriously inside the White House
but lacked someone inside eager to push it. "We need a rabbi
among the people in the counsel's office," the e-mail message
reads.
Rich's man in Israel, Avner
Azulay, having spent the previous six weeks compiling a book
of letters from Israeli and American Jewish leaders, took the
request literally and responded: "I don't understand the
comment about the rabbi. Our book is full of rabbis. Could you
get more specific?"
Quinn and his merry troupe,
so the Times February 10 story asserted, needed a person of high
moral caliber and so they whistled up Elie Wiesel who allegedly
put in a word for Rich. As we read this, we thought that Wiesel
had doubtless reiterated the endorsements of Shebtai Shavit,
a former Mossad chief who, according to Niles Lathem's story
in the New York Post for February 5, had told the White House
Marc had spied for Israel and so was an all-around good guy.
We thought that maybe that's why Jonathan Pollard didn't get
his pardon. Bill reckoned one spy for Israel was enough.
We also reflected on the fact
that normally Wiesel charges $25,000 for a gig to discuss moral
darkness, but since in this case he was talking about moral excellence
(Rich's) he presumably didn't invoice for this particular chore.
The February 10 Times story
was specific in its citation of Wiesel's role: "On Dec.
25, between notations that Mr. Wiesel and Shimon Peres had both
weighed in with the White House in mid-December, Mr. Quinn [Rich's
lead lawyer] told his co-counsels that 'the greatest danger lies
with the lawyers. I have worked them hard and I am hopeful that
E. Holder will be helpful to us," a reference to Eric H.
Holder Jr., the deputy attorney general in the Justice Department.
But then on Monday Alison Leigh
Cowan had an update in the New York Times: "contrary to
the documents' assertions that he had weighed in with the White
House, Mr. Wiesel said, "I didn't do anything." Wiesel
told Cowan he thought a pardon for Rich was a long shot, and
thus presumably a bad investment of his moral credentials. "Besides,
Mr. Wiesel said, he was concerned about diverting attention from
the person he really wanted pardoned, Jonathan J.Pollard."
So our instincts were right. But why did Quinn make that notation
about Wiesel have delivered for his guy. Our guess is Wiesel
might have given Quinn or one of Quinn's people that impression,
while doing nothing. CP
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