Editorial: An Official Washington Pair / Red Starr Rising
Tyrrell, R. Emmett
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. An Official Washington Pair I write from within the august boundaries of the Beltway to report to you that two giants of the region have fallen from...
...Yes, the British press is also mindful of the story...
...ethics...
...George Will, "The Conservative Critique o f the Welfare State" OCTOBER 1971...
...They are overwhelmed with feelings...
...My agents tell me that Starr's prosecutors could indict the president's lesser cronies at any time...
...Again demonstrating the inveterate shakiness of Official Washington's current wisdom, I quoted the past year's assaults on our Troopergate story, including Klein's vit The most momentous story of the Clinton administration is hardly being reported beyond the boundaries of two American cities, Washington and Little Rock...
...I suspect that the explanation for the press's sluggishness in reporting the Whitewater luridities is a simple, understandable botch...
...Readers of the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and The American Spectator realize that what I refer to as the Clintons' "living heritage" of misdeeds is no exaggeration...
...Here in Washington Wes Pruden, the independent minded editor of American journalism's David-with-a-slingshot, the Washington Times, writes that the rest of the American press is beginning to catch on...
...Like Senator Hanna, the late nineteenth-century political power, Dole might have more usefully put his massive clout to work at nominating a more fluent campaigner...
...Is it because the British press has a sense of irony...
...Documents that have been mysteriously withheld from federal authorities have appeared in her living quarters and with her fingerprints on them...
...Those feelings are anguished...
...He called the Troopergate story "absurd," "patently outrageous," and "baloney...
...I think Pruden is right, but the press still has not gotten word of the Clintons' problems out to the provinces...
...In fact I have left a few categories of misdeeds riol...
...Shortly thereafter Klein encountered me at a reception and accused me of a "low blow...
...E D I T O R I A L S by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Revelations of the past four years make it apparent that Klein participated in the cover-up of the Clintons' moral flaws...
...But any politician skillful enough to get to Washington knows exactly how to deliver import quotas and price supports for cotton growers...
...An Official Washington Pair I write from within the august boundaries of the Beltway to report to you that two giants of the region have fallen from favor with Official Washington...
...The momentous story that I have in mind is Whitewater...
...They recognize that authors of anonymous books are to remain anonymous for as long as possible...
...15 The American Spectator . September Y996...
...Has she been taping her conversations in the White House...
...When the Clintons came to Washington the town's editors and news directors followed the common practice of putting their best political reporters onto the Clintons...
...comes from God knows where, goes to wherever the presidential candidacy of one John Anderson or the Clintons' healthcare reform once went...
...Anyone with the political itch thinks only of the presidency...
...Fact two, voting trends since 1968 give the Republicans the Electoral College votes of the South, the Southwest, the Plains states, and the Rocky Mountain states, which, combined with the electoral votes of, say, Alaska and Indiana, give Dole more than enough votes to win the election...
...We know that she spends most of her working hours defending children against the hordes of W.C...
...Such current wisdom comes and goes...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...At this writing, the jury is out on two more of their cronies in Little Rock...
...We also know that she spends vast amounts of time at the hair dresser and in communication with the dead...
...Incidentally, Official Washington is eminently capable of lying to us...
...Klein's editor was addressing the colleagues at Newsweek who apparently are Yuppies too...
...Truth be known, that which passes for journalistic ethics is such a chaotic melange of good sense and nonsense that most Americans could not care less...
...They cannot come up with such murmurings against Madeleine Albright, Janet Reno, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, or Donna Shalala-all very prominent and worldly women in the Clinton administration...
...one wonders why...
...She is increasingly coming across as a master of cover-ups...
...From Primary Colors it is obvious that Klein knew during the 1992 campaign that Bill Clinton was atom cat and Hillary a terror...
...Finally Official Washington is again neglecting the unwelcome facts of recent history...
...trash...
...That was a mistake...
...Though Stewart doesn't mention it, respect for "traditional practice" was nonexistent when Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh indicted Reagan defense secretary Caspar Weinberger on the eve of the 1992 election...
...out-such as Vince Foster's death, the White House security breaches, and Filegate...
...Both deserve a brisk defense...
...He has now confessed to this dastardly act and taken a Yuppie leave of absence "to reflect on the whole affair," says his Newsweek editor, "and to talk to you, individually or in small groups...
...call her Hillary Milhous Clinton...
...He had to recognize while traveling with them what many of us recognized from afar, namely, that the Clintons are liars, abusers of power, and general scamps, fully capable of the conflicts of interest that have now been revealed in congressional investigations and in court...
...Recently three of the Clintons' cronies were convicted of twenty-four felony counts for Whitewater-related infelicities...
...That is the generic term Americans rather grossly apply to the Clintons' living heritage of real estate cons, bank cons, tax cons, electioneering cons, perjury, obstruction of justice, and general gaucherie...
...25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator Representative government in a vast and complicated society responds with special sensitivity to the special pleading of organized groups with very specific interests...
...That is to say, the word is spreading amongst journalists that the Clintons are both in very big trouble...
...She has been accused of bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and playing a large role in Travelgate...
...Washington's current wisdom on Klein is, as usual, wrong...
...It completely missed the Republican rout of 1994...
...Fieldses who would bring down harm on them, and against all the Grinches out there who would steal Christmas, and the trolls, and the Big Bad Wolf...
...Now there is no question that Dole has faltered in refitting his primary campaign into a presidential campaign...
...Fact one, a little more than four years ago the ABC News-Washington Post presidential poll had Clinton trailing Perot and Bush with but z6 percent of the vote...
...Klein wrote a book that confirmed what most Americans already believe, to wit, in 1992 we elected a charming scoundrel to replace the gentleman George Bush...
...That Dole has fetched the sneers of Official Washington does not mean that he will not be president next year at this time...
...All of these are now being investigated by the meticulous independent counsel, Kenneth Starr...
...The apologists insist that none of these criminal proceedings implicates the Clintons, but desperation is creeping into their protests...
...The following year, after David Maraniss's biography of Clinton confirmed Troopergate (without acknowledging yet still employing some of the troopers' testimony) I was invited to 14 September 1996 • The American Spectator Red Starr Rising gloat in the Wall Street Journal...
...The independent counsel may well bring charges against the beardless Nixon in the White House, Hillary...
...It was wrong about the elections of Reagan and Bush...
...Official Washington has him down and out against Boy Clinton and with no hope of recovering...
...But those who have kept up with Whitewater know that she has C piled discrepancy atop discrepancy ancy in testifying before federal authorities...
...Official Washington has been wrong far more often in prophesying elections than it has been right...
...Was she the force behind the requisitioning of those FBI files...
...Official Washington comprises that noblesse of local politicians, journalists, and general-purpose luminaries who croon the current wisdom of any given moment...
...Why are so many people reporting so many unsavory things about her...
...Her closest associates have suffered mass amnesia before congressional committees...
...Another breach of journalistic ethics...
...In a sunnier era these journalists might be delighted that their fellow hack had earned $6 million on his novel...
...For the first two years of the Clinton administration it remained completely ignorant of the Clintons' moral laxness and life-long association with crooks...
...Curiously nowadays such restraint is unknown...
...Unfortunately in this era of false pieties these journalists are blubbering that Klein's anonymous act of creation has caused America's readers to doubt Newsweek's journalistic...
...Either that or the geniuses of Official Washington were covering up for the Clintons and lying to us...
...This is a mystery I cannot explain...
...They should have resorted to their best criminal reporters...
...It is hard to know how to deliver "justice" for 205 million Americans...
...The current wisdom on Bob Dole is equally wrong...
...Today Official Washington's current wisdom is that two fine fellows are going the way of the dodo, Joe Klein and Bob Dole...
...Moreover, it is not only Clinton cronies who might be charged before the election...
...He is, after all, more of a Mark Hanna figure than a Ronald Reagan...
...I said then what I shall say again: "Joe, all I did was quote you...
...Politicians, like the rest of us, like to do what they know how to do...
...I suspect the fatuous Stewart is putting words in Starr's mouth...
...Most members of the American press corps are earnest to the point of-well, of Puritanism...
...The writer James Stewart, reporting in the New Yorker, raises the possibility of the president's being indicted, but then he backtracks in a confused caveat that makes it sound like Starr will delay indicting any lesser Clinton cronies until after the election because "Starr says he intends to abide by the traditional practice of the Justice Department and take into account the effect of any charges on the electoral process...
...Yet when The American Spectator published Troopergate, which could be read as the first draft of Primary Colors, Klein led the journalistic lynch mob, calling the revelations of Clintons' bodyguards "uncorroborated [four state troopers substantiating the testimony of at least one and possibly several Clinton paramours] and hyperbolic...
...In casting poor Klein out into the darkness because he lived up to his obligation as Anonymous and remained anonymous, Official Washington has ignored Klein's initial offense...
...Klein is less a transgressor of journalistic ethics than Bob Woodward, he of the mysterious interview with the mute Bill Casey...
...Some seasoned critics of the Clintons are beginning to sense that Starr's investigations are actually closing in on the president...
...Klein is the Newsweek columnist and CBS political commentator who has for months been suspected of writing the scabrousand pleasingly accurate -roman a clef of the Clinton presidential campaign, Primary Colors...
Vol. 29 • September 1996 • No. 9
