On the Prowl
ON THE PROWL When Maddy Gets Mad As Richard Holbrooke inched toward confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., none other than Madeleine Albright launched a last minute bid to sabotage his...
...Though Brzezinski went easy on his former student, he became a vocal critic of the Clinton administration's inept Kosovo policy...
...George Pataki, who has pressed the GOP's Long Island bosses into service for Lazio...
...Though he has yet to turn in such a memorable performance himself, Billy is no political slouch either...
...King Maker There he goes again...
...The American Spectator • August 1999 13...
...A CNN Washington bureau off-air reporter claims that King's Hillary thing is the talk of the office...
...If it isn't her, it's Al Gore or someone else in the administration...
...In apologizing to Hyde, Baldwin hoped to smooth things over enough with moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats to receive a fair hearing on such issues as NEA funding and movie violence...
...Clinton has everyone buying into the rosy projections," said a Republican appropriations analyst in the Senate...
...Today, Republicans are just rolling over for Clinton...
...Among the most enthusiastic greeters was Rep...
...Campaign Secrets Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign manager in waiting, Harold Ickes, has quietly been searching for a campaign press secretary, but with little success...
...King doesn't know what he's talking about...
...Currently most of the New York Republican establishment is working hard to help fundraise for longshot Senate candidate Rep...
...The seemingly unanimous verdict was that Rove and the New Bushies need to taken down a couple of notches on the ego meter if they're to win everyone over...
...A former associate attorney at Williams & Connolly, who worked closely with Williams on several cases, claims that even if Hillary would have caught the firm's eye, Williams would have nixed her hiring...
...During impeachment hearings late last year, Alec made history when, on national TV, he called for Hyde and 12 August 1999 • The American Spectator his family to be stoned to death...
...There won't be any money, Lazio has it all tied up," he says...
...Albright was said to he livid that Holbrooke would try to play Brzezinski against her...
...taxpayers will be footing...
...King of Long Island What's gotten into Rep...
...One theory is that the maverick King is trying to push Lazio out of the way, hoping his higher profile and name recognition will win out...
...While the New York office is still budgeting, a Treasury Department source says that already it's estimating at least six additional agents (average salary: $9o,000) will be needed to protect the first lady on the campaign trail as well as perform background checks and provide security assessments at campaign and fundraising sites...
...It's win-win for conservatives," says a political operative, who is one of several Buchananites floating the idea past Pat, and who believes that a Reform ticket with Buchanan would force Bush to the right...
...The salary isn't the only Senate campaign-related bill U.S...
...Secret Service officials in New York were asked to assess the costs of running security details throughout the state for a period of eight months...
...He wants to help them any way he can...
...Lazio's main benefactor is Gov...
...Billy the Kid Movie star Billy Baldwin, younger brother of loudmouthed and increasingly rotund method actor Alec Baldwin, recently met with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde...
...It was a pleasant meeting, no punches thrown or threats exchanged...
...In town to lobby Capitol Hill for his coalition of wind-bag lefty actors, Billy asked Hyde's staff to arrange a private meeting with Hyde, according to a Hyde aide...
...In the Reagan years we were constantly having to fight with Democrats over our OMB projections...
...Capitol High While in Washington for a June 22 fundraiser, George W. Bush made a much anticipated stop on Capitol Hill, where he was treated like a sun king...
...More recently, he even tried to use her old boss and mentor, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, to undercut Albright...
...Seems CBO's figures for congressional and White House programs were at least $30 billion higher than OMB's...
...There are a few problems with the story: Williams died in 1988, before the Clintons became household names, and certainly before King—a man who claims to never read books or study bios of people who might be on his shows—would have been aware of them...
...But what was Billy really up to...
...The same can't be said for Bush aide de camp Karl Rove, who made the rounds of various conservative publications and think tanks...
...He seems to be always angling to get her on the air...
...Holbrooke is clearly Clinton's boy, and we wanted to give her a chance to either support or not support his nomination more so than she has in the past," says the Senate source...
...Some inside-the-Beltway politicos aren't ruling it out...
...He wanted to apologize for his brother's boorish behavior...
...Rick Lazio, who is mulling a run for Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seat regardless of what Rudy Giuliani decides...
...ambassador to the U.N., none other than Madeleine Albright launched a last minute bid to sabotage his chances...
...She didn't want to speak on the subject either way, and made it clear her decision not to speak should be interpreted for what it was: a noncomment on nonsupport for the nominee...
...When House and Senate appropriators saw CBO's cost breakdowns for several 2000-01 appropriations bills, committee chairmen went honkers...
...According to a source on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and another in the State Department, Albright declined an opportunity to defend Holbrooke on Capitol Hill in the weeks leading up to his confirmation hear":8 ings...
...Second, OMB's figures are seen at CBO as far too optimistic, a clear sign the White House is cooking the numbers to pressure Congress into spending far beyond what revenues can support in the next couple of years...
...But most of all he'd never hire attorneys who might bring undue attention to the firm or someone who was overly active ideologically and politically...
...And that's without adding in an extra $7 billion CBO estimated for defense appropriations...
...To handle such queries, the first lady's press office intends to bring in a temporary aide at a salary of $45,000, according to a White House press office associate...
...It was magic in there," she said, dreamily...
...The Case for Reform Could Patrick Buchanan be mulling a switch to Ross Perot's Reform Party...
...It's no secret the ambitious Holbrooke tried hard for Albright's current job...
...Rolling Over and Over So much for Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott backing the Congressional Budget Office in its seemingly endless war with the White House's Office of Management and Budget...
...CNN chatterbox, USA Today columnist, and Al Gore shill Larry King now claims that in a luncheon conversation with the late Washington power lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, Williams told him how enamored he was of a certain Hillary Rodham Clinton and how he'd tried to hire her for his Williams & Connolly law firm, but that she had chosen to stay with her husband in Arkansas...
...Seems that after a string of box-office duds, his only career may be in Hollywood politics...
...By contrast, the Reform Party has about S2o million in the kitty for its presidential candidate, and it also receives federal matching funds...
...First, rarely have the cost estimates by the two agencies varied so wildly...
...The appropriations committees have demanded that CBO revise its numbers to bring them in line with the favorable OMB figures...
...It appears one of the job's requirements would he clearing any press requests with the White House press office, which would then determine whether or not the first lady would comply with them...
...Why is this a big deal...
...One long-time campaign consultant in New York can't figure out why King, who represents western Long Island, is now talking up his own candidacy for the Senate...
...Though estimates vary, Buchanan is believed to have raised only about $2 million for his campaign, not enough to muster a serious challenge to George W. (or anyone else) on the Republican front...
...Jennifer Dunn, who after a closed-door meeting with Bush gushed like a giddy school girl to reporters about the man who will be prez...
...Buchanan easily beats out Lowell Weicker for the Reform nomination, then gets a national stage to debate Gore and Bush...
...That's more than enough to sustain a candidate through next year's abbreviated primary season...
...He needed us more than we needed him," said the Hyde aide...
...Williams was a devout Catholic and in many ways a politically conservative man," says his former law partner...
...Peter King now...
...It's getting kind of embarrassing...
Vol. 32 • August 1999 • No. 8
