Tilting at Windmills

...All of us knew long before the election that Bill Clinton has a tendency to shade the truth and cut corners on issues of his personal conduct— remember the draft and Gennifer Flowers—but most of us decided that it was worth the risk to elect a man as bright as Clinton and as interested as he is in the real problems facing the country...

...They were not only crooks but they were spectacularly inept, so much so that they would have been caught immediately had it not been for the ineptness of their fellow government employees...

...peaking of Herblock, I have always felt special affection for the role he played in preserving my sanity during the dreary fifties when humor was such a rarity in political discourse...

...I would mutter indignantly to myself, "people wouldn't behave so callously in my home town...

...The number of nervous lawyers has to be in the hundreds of thousands...

...Wallace, who led on the first ballot, might have won the nomination had balloting not been postponed by the party bosses, who in those days could usually dominate conventions...

...W ¦ Ann Reynolds, the Chancellor of the City University of New York, is paid a salary of $158,000 a year, provided a free town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and given a car and $140,000 for expenses...

...When you're being throttled by a mugger and screaming for help, you can be sure there won't be a cop within a mile...

...Shouldn't Post reporters be required to commit each issue of the Monthly to memory or at least keep an index in their computers for ready references when they need guidance...

...The dangers may be real, but at most they justify an ongoing presence in only a dozen or so countries...

...good administrators—as, in my own field, some good reporters aren't good editors...

...More specifically, should we have denied recognition of books like Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters, Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land, or Mickey Kaus' The End of Equality simply because the authors once worked here...

...The answer to the shortage of police officers might be to add none but to simply forbid standing around at crime scenes...

...She also, to the dismay of some taxpayers, earns $140,000 by serving on five corporate boards which require her to make at least two trips per month to attend board meetings...

...All the recent traitors have done it for dough, including Ames, Eddy L. Howard, Richard W. Pelton, Jonathan Jay Pollard, John A. Walker, Jr., Jerry Whitworth, Larry Wu-Tai Chin, and Richard W. Miller...

...The key is to be blatant about the conflicts...

...in Italy: Prego...

...Why is this acceptable for them and not for other public officials...

...We have on several occasions given our annual book award to one of our contributing editors or to a member of our Editorial Advisory Board...

...If the Ames case is not enough to convince you, remember the disastrous raid the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted on the Branch Davidians at Waco...

...Back to the CIA for a moment...

...Many urban public schools are notorious for excessive administrative staffs...

...What essential task of government prompted these dedicated public servants to brave the elements and report to duty...

...Would we then want to see the president impeached...

...The same has been true of "The McLaughlin Group" and of conversations at almost every social gathering in Washington so far this spring...

...The message of the film is especially unsettling, suggesting as it does that criminal liability might ensue from the simple act of using the United States Postal Service to deliver an inflated invoice for legal services...

...Other public university officials do the same...

...What happens in so many school systems is that the only way teachers can get a significant salary—or respect, which is often more important—is by becoming administrators...

...But it now appears that at least 7,000 work there, not including the hundreds of consultants who always seem to attach themselves to pedagogical institutions...

...If Bill Clinton and A1 Gore don't face this problem of employee quality, all their efforts to reinvent government will come to naught...

...That was Newsweek' & Evan Thomas talking about Whitewater at the beginning of the March 6 "Inside Washington...

...Just a few words here and there about health care, Bosnia, and the West Bank...

...It is clear that when the Three Stooges stopped making films, they went into the security branch of the Central Intelligence Agency...

...When I lived in New York, I was amazed at how many people would step over the person on the subway floor instead of bending down to ask if they could help...

...One reason for this is, as David Ignatius (a former Monthly editor, by the way, who managed to quote two other former Monthly editors in making his case) recently pointed out in The Washington Post, they have spent too much time attending conferences that place the highest value on one's performance as a discussor...

...I counted nine cops in the picture...

...375 is the standard fee for a two hour party by a typical area catering service...

...But you can count on us to have a theory that covers our apparent sins...

...Two of the three best that have occurred in my lifetime are reasonably well known: Wendell Willkie's sixth ballot, come-from-behind victory at the Republican convention in 1940 and John Kennedy's hair's-breadth loss to Estes Kefauver in the vice-presidential contest at the 1956 Democratic convention...

...The fellows out at Langley know that reminding us of the dangers of nuclear proliferation will also remind us that we still need them...

...Their skills are more evidenced in the processes leading up to the decision, where they are very good at presenting and examining options...

...New York isn't alone...

...What the rest do all day has become a matter of more than passing interest to New York officials who are trying to close a $2 billion budget gap...

...But, in my opinion, the partners need fret no more...

...The other seven were just standing there...

...In a small town, you're more likely to behave considerately because your reputation will suffer if you don't...

...Instead of waiting to cash in after her public service as is the custom among Washingtonians who capitalize on their public service, Reynolds is cashing in while in office...

...I think we want a president who will concentrate on the nation's problems and not on his own...

...The two things that struck him most about the CIA contingent were its modest quality and its immodest size...

...Another thought that occurred to me is that many of these men spent long apprenticeships in special assistant roles which also put the highest premium on briefing skill—the ability to lay out the issues for the official who will make the decision...

...Of course, that still leaves about 20,000 non-teaching employees to be accounted for...

...By the way, I have a new contest: What do Rich People Worry About...

...When it comes to log rolling, chumminess, and conflicts of interest, this magazine may seem to be the Rose Law Firm of journalism...

...What trouble will they cook up...

...Another oasis in the journalistic desert of that time was Murray Kempton, to whom David Halberstam pays tribute in this issue...

...Well, I can't...

...The New York Times recently ran a photo of a crime scene...

...He and his wife have been so defensive about Whitewater that the rest of us are probably justified in assuming the worst...

...There is good reason to believe that the agency was behind many of the recent alarms about North Korea...

...This year's award, for example, went to Richard Reeves, who, cynics might allege, is repaying us with his article in this issue, which also has the article by David Halberstam, another member of the editorial board, who is saluting still another member, Murray Kempton...

...Mot long ago, I had a chance to discuss the CIA at length with a friend who has recently seen it in action at a major foreign capital...

...Is it asking too much that when you stand up for principle you risk losing your job five years from now...

...All of which helps explain this recent headline in the Times: "When New Yorkers' Hearts Stop, Very Few Live...

...Some 2,800 other employees work in the offices of the city's 32 community school districts, where they spend much of their time dealing with demands for information from the administrators at 110 Livingston...

...And why can't we be told the size of its budget...

...Citing the fact that almost 60 percent of all university faculty is tenured, the article explained that this meant schools that used to be able to get rid of their tenured dead-wood with mandatory retirement have now lost even that weapon...

...Jn a January day when Washington had been shut down by an ice storm, 25 workers showed up at the Capitol...

...The Monthly's solution to both the tenure and the mandatory retirement problem is the 1-3-5 year contract...

...Why, you may ask, is this activity treated as such an emergency...

...As things stand now, universities have no way of getting rid of the teachers who have lost their skill or never had it...

...They were reporting to the House Folding Room to help get out the newsletters members send to their districts...

...peaking of crime, prisoners convicted of first-degree murder serve an average of 6.5 years in prison...

...Faculty members should be hired first for one year, then for three, and then for five...

...Charles Peters...

...Veteran readers of this column will remember Reynolds for her ingenious evasion of state purchasing restrictions while she was Chancellor of the State University of California in the eighties...

...Not having done so, she left herself subject to suspicion...

...But would the end of tenure threaten academic freedom...

...Two-thirds of the people in Seattle know how to administer C.P.R...

...There is a lesson in all this...

...Another was also taking a step and seemed to be looking for something on the sidewalk...

...Webster Hubbell on the front pages...

...The purest expression of this art form may come when I, as I must confess I have done now and then, approvingly quote myself...

...And sometimes good teachers do not turn out to be...

...Many of these fellows were just like Ames...

...Shouldn't the latter groups be doing a lot less time and the former a lot more...

...The problem is that they have difficulty when it comes to actually making the decisions...

...End of Forced Retirement Worries Colleges" and "Universities Fear Some Professors Will Wear Out Their Welcome," were two of the headlines The Washington Post recently ran over an article about the cost of the abolition of mandatory retirement for college professors...

...I know you're saying, "Let's see the sonuvabitch connect this to politics and government...

...In many smaller cities and towns the percentage is even higher...

...Murray was funny when most columnists thought they had to be solemn, stylistically original when everyone tried to write like Walter Lippmann, and really reported in an era when most pundits thought a phone conversation or a lunch with a prominent source represented the outer limit of investigative zeal...

...If not, do we want to see a large part of Clinton's presidency taken up hot with being president but with defending himself and his wife against allegations in the press or that might be made by the special prosecutor and congressional investigators...

...And we also have, in a book review by contributing editor Timothy Noah, a respectful quotation of another contributing editor, Michael Kinsley...

...When they arrive, most of the cops are sure to do nothing much but stand around...

...For our Safe Answer contest, here's a nominee for the surest S.A...

...So let's do just that—assume they're guilty of everything, then realize that even so, we don't want—nor are we likely to have grounds for—an impeachment...

...Yet the pill (potassium iodide) is not required to be stockpiled at nuclear plant sites...

...All this talk about overbilling...

...Less well-known is the story of Henry Wallace's loss of the vice-presidential nomination to Harry Truman in 1944...

...The Post article did not mention the Monthly's solution to this problem...

...In the anonymity of the big city, there is no sense of shame—or not enough to prompt action— because no one is going to tell your mother or your friends that you failed to behave decently...

...Why am I talking about this in a magazine that's supposed to be about politics and government...

...But it is part of the dismaying social trend in which parents spend more money on their children because of guilt over spending so little time with them...

...The Washington Post's Cindy Skrzycki looked into why such an inexpensive precaution has not been taken and found that the Nuclear Management and Resource Council, a nuclear power industry group, opposes stockpiling because "predistrib-ution and the associated public education would result in a potentially significant negative public perception...

...H ave you heard about the expensive birthday parties parents are throwing for little Jason and Jennifer...

...As, you guessed it, one of our contributing editors once put it in these pages: "Is it a conflict of interest for a mother to have a second child...

...Most Clinton foreign policy decisions, Susan Threadgill reports in this month's "Who's Who," are being made by Strobe Talbott, Tony Lake, Samuel Berger, Peter Tarnoff, and Frank Wisner...

...And in case you didn't know, the newsletters are taxpayer-funded propaganda on behalf of the incumbent congressmen who are desperate to try to brainwash their constituents as close as the law permits to the date those dear souls will cast their ballots...

...My guess is this will turn out, when Fiske is done, when the special prosecutor is done, it's not going to be terrible crimes...

...Government officials, with the exception of a handful of dedicated saints, will do their best only if it's noticed...

...Of course, I was stepping over the body, too...

...Because the newsletters can't be sent out fewer than 60 days before an election...

...If we do this, we'll spare the president and the country an enormous distraction from the great issues he and we should be focusing on...

...In the event of a serious nuclear power plant accident, thyroid cancer is one of the greatest dangers to the people nearby who are exposed to radiation...

...It is that conflicts of interest are inevitable in this life...

...Why can't we be told the number of people employed by the CIA...

...That danger can be significantly reduced if a ten-cent pill is available for their immediate use...

...As to size—I have already burdened you with my thoughts about quality—he revealed to me that at his post there were as many CIA professionals as there were foreign service officers—in other words, as many spooks as there were diplomats...

...Robert H. Ferrell, in his new book, Choosing Truman, tells the story of how the bosses saved Truman by adjourning the convention for a day to give themselves time to get the situation under control...

...New York City's Board of Education has 83,883 employees, but only 53,734 are teachers...

...One was taking a step...

...We have duplication of labor that is unbelievable," one of the district administrators told The New York Times...

...The Board has contended that there are only 3,500 administrators at its headquarters at 110 Livingston Street...

...Alger Hiss and Henry Dexter White betrayed their country out of conviction, out of love of an idea...

...If they are right out there for the public to see, the public can judge whether there is corruption in our admiration for these writers or in theirs for one another or in their contributions to the Monthly...

...I suspect they even practice standing around, hands on hips, hands clasped behind back—the vigilant look...

...The Firm on practically everyone's VCR...

...If the party is not exciting, it's embarrassing for the child...

...But this time there is some relevance...

...Well, sometimes of course my mind just strays...

...I have 50 percent of the people here responding to 50 percent of the people downtown...

...As this magazine has been trying to warn you, the quality of public employees has seriously declined...

...Does this make any sense at all...

...Sample Answer: The point at which the Concorde will succumb to metal fatigue...

...I f you're a true lover of politics, exciting national conventions are among the high points of your life...

...Yet two-thirds of the show that followed was devoted to Whitewater...

...No, because you still couldn't be fired during the term of your contract...

...Included among all these excess administrators are at least 1,000 who used to be teachers...

...Cash corruption used to be very rare in the federal service...

...The last time we looked, Chicago's parochial school administrators totalled 32, while the public schools required 100 times more administrators to oversee just twice as many students...

...We also have a favorable review of contributing editor James Fallows' new book written by Michael Crichton, who had already authored a promotional blurb for the dust jacket of the book...

...The press and the president and Congress must be alert to the fact that this is an agency in search of a mission to replace the one it lost with the winding down of the Cold War...

...Overbilling is one of the great traditions of American law, one of the few that has consistently been honored more in the practice than in the breach...

...The magazine lists 120 entertainment services in its current issue...

...In the federal prison system, inmates with no current or prior violence on their records are serving 5.5 years...

...The bosses supported Truman and realized that the Wallace forces, emulating Willkie, had packed the galleries and seemed to have the delegates ready to stampede to Wallace...

...The scandal of the Ames case is not that the Russians were spying on us, but the terrible incompetence of the jokers at the CIA who took practically forever to attach any significance to purchases and deposits that were obviously beyond Ames' means...

...In New York, the figure is only 10 percent...

...If I wanted to go to all the trouble of setting up treasure hunts, my daughter would enjoy it just as much," says one mother, "but where would I get the time...

...It has become socially competitive," Donna Hart, the publisher of Parent and Child magazine told the Post...

...Then journalists like Thomas and his Washington colleagues can spend their time worrying about more important things, such as the three Clinton reforms the Monthly appraises in this issue or on his health proposals and alternatives such as the Canadian plan...

...The law cited in The Firm would have to be enforced by prosecutors and judges, most of whom were once in private practice and who are thus highly unlikely to put others in the slammer for sins they have committed themselves...

...As the facts about the Ames case were emerging, Herblock published the above cartoon, which I thought underscored the utter lunacy of protecting the agency's budget better than its legitimate secrets...

...I am willing to downsize my office if they downsize central...

...If Hillary Clinton had sent a copy of her letter to the state securities commissioner to the Arkansas newspapers or found some other way of making it public, she would have met our standard...

...They then can be extended for five-year terms on the condition that they are doing a good job...

...So let's assume the Clintons are guilty of all possible charges that could conceivably arise from the Whitewater affair...

...It makes sense to put these people back into teaching as the New York teachers union is urging...

...The Washington Post reports that one such event recently cost $3,800 and featured a moon bounce, a dunk tank, a ball crawl, a train ride, a Ferris wheel, Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Baby Bop, Barney, Ninja Turtles, and games...

...Wanting to give her vice-chancellors cars so they would not have to endure the indignity of checking vehicles out of the motor pool, but facing a $100,000 limit on purchases that did not have to be reported publicly, Reynolds bought 6 Tauruses at a total cost of $99,998.70...

...Or consider the nine NASA employees who were just arrested for taking part in a bribery scheme...

...To be blunt, overcharges ranging from the occasional to the habitual are customary among most lawyers and almost all large law firms...

...But once you've been robbed and beaten and especially when you've been killed, squad cars will nearly collide with each other in their rush to the scene...

...That's why it's so important for the spotlight to be cast on them by the press, the GAO, the OMB, and congressional oversight committees often enough to make sure they know that the light might just be pointed in their direction at the very moment they're getting into mischief...

...So it depends on how much you think your expression of freedom should involve at least some courage on your part...