Capitol Hill Trophies

...When Ohio's Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum informed Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine that he would vote Nay unless an obscure provision providing a tax break for goodwill as an intangible asset was eliminated, Mitchell testily told his colleague to take a number: "I've got ultimatums piled this high...

...It was not what Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff had in mind last May when he said that the leadership of the United States would be exercised more modestly and rarely unilaterally...

...Next, the Serbs trained their artillery directly on French United Nations forces, the pathetically inadequate guardians of a "safe haven...

...backed off, the offensive moved forward...

...Last spring, when the Clinton Administration talked of using air power and lifting the arms embargo against Bosnia, President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic rushed to Athens to sign a peace plan insuring a sovereign Bosnian state...

...These resulted in some unedifying spectacles...

...he asked rhetorically...

...Ultimately status quo politics prevailed, and common purpose was held hostage to concessions to be hung on Capitol Hill office walls like trophies...

...One was the President's 43 per cent electoral mandate and unimposing ratings in the opinion polls...

...And in attacking it, the Serbs may have overplayed their hand...

...President Richard M. Nixon tried to assert Executive privilege in 1974 to withhold his Oval Office tapes, but a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that he could not do that in the face of a criminal investigation...

...The Clinton Administration, more resolute than last May, when Secretary Christopher simply consulted the allies, now hinted at the possibility of unilateral action...

...In addition, he got an Executive Order, fiscally meaningless, assigning new taxes to a deficit-reduction trust fund...

...In that "tragic, tragic situation," Secretary of State Warren Christopher told a news conference on July 21, the United States was "doing all it can, consistent with its national interest...

...A Classic White House Dilemma It you were President and one of your lawyers drew up a list of things going wrong, then committed suicide, would you want his document to circulate outside your office...

...In Bosnia, by acquiescing in and even backing partition, the West in effect conceded its inability to protect a sovereign state...

...The State Department's Bosnia desk officer, Marshall Freeman Harris, resigned (as his predecessor George Ken-ney had done) in protest against Administration policy...

...Actually, lawyers tell me that suicide is illegal...

...The "all" included air drops of relief supplies under nato auspices, and support of an ineffectively enforced "no fly zone" over Bosnia to curb Serbian air power...

...In July of this year, in Chicago, President Clinton, having supposedly achieved the combination, lashed out against the "delay and gridlock" holding up his budget and other priority legislation...

...Eisenhower stated, "It is not in the public interest that any of the conversations or communications or any documents concerning such advice be disclosed...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Capitol Hill Trophies In September 1992, in Atlanta, Candidate Bill Clinton told voters they had the power to end gridlock and move the country toward change by electing a Democratic President along with a Democratic Congress...

...The so-called investments in the future—enterprise zones, innovative programs to help poor families—had been sharply curtailed...

...The threat of air strikes did, however, apparently have some effect on the Serbs, who agreed to withdraw from two mountain positions dominating Sarajevo, and to open access to the city...

...President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked it in 1954 to defy subpoenas for Pentagon records and White House personnel issued by Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's Red-hunting subcommittee...

...Once again, the dilemma: the President's need for secrecy about his relations with his advisers...

...The third was the multiple vetoes conferred on individual legislators by the desperately thin margin between victory and defeat on the deficit-reduction program...

...At almost every point in this tragedy one could observe a correlation between signs of American passivity and signs of Serbian belligerence...

...It would overlay the nato relief supply operation with a unilateral operation...

...You're damned right it is...

...DeConcini, with an eye to the lobby for the aging, wanted a smaller bite...

...Nixon's effort to hide the evidence of his own wrongdoing at the least insured that, for a long time to come, Executive privilege would be suspect...

...Nixon wrote in his memoirs, "I was the first President to test the principle of Executive privilege in the Supreme Court and, by testing it on such weak ground...

...Little was left to testify to Clinton's bolder purposes of physical and social renewal...

...That gridlock was a product of three related circumstances...

...Representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had foreseen this in June when, in the first go-around, Democrats who voted against the President's plan went unpunished...

...the need of investigators, if not the public, to know all the relevant facts...

...The day following Christopher's apparent rejection of any stronger effort to succor the Bosnian Muslims, the Serbs opened the biggest bombardment in months against Sarajevo, apparently the start of a drive for final conquest of the Bosnian capital...

...left behind, which the White House kept to itself for 30 hours before releasing it to police investigators on the advice of Attorney General Janet Reno...

...When the U.S...

...It would leave the Americans without the use of Italian air bases, considered an essential supplement to carrier-based planes...

...The U.S...

...Although the President, in his August 3 Oval Office television address, still talked of "reviving the American dream by restoring the American economy," his program had been so diluted in the bidding war for votes that it ended up as a fairly conventional deficit-reduction affair...

...In August, it was down to its final challenge: whether it could protect the people of an interethnic or ethnic community before thousands were slaughtered and hundreds of thousands surged across Europe in a human flood...

...Dramatic television coverage of Sarajevo had brought home to the Administration the peril of a human catastrophe, for which some blame would be laid at the door of the United States...

...It went from "doing all it can" to proposing to its nato partners that the Serbs be given an ultimatum: End the stranglehold on Sarajevo and other beleaguered enclaves, or face air strikes—not just against artillery positions, but against other unspecified targets...

...It was described as "dealing with negative things that have occurred," including the White House travel office controversy...

...Also, Secretary Christopher was back in the Middle East, working to revive the stalled peace talks, and needing answers to Arabs' questions about an American "double standard" for Israel and Muslims...

...Boren had wanted a bigger bite taken out of senior citizen entitlements...

...During a stormy meeting in Brussels on August 1, nato authorized preparations for air strikes, but held back on endorsing the launching of those strikes...

...Saving the Remnants of Sarajevo After the budget there was Bosnia...

...Another was the perception among some legislators up for re-election next year that opposing the President might benefit them more than supporting him...

...But he was also talking about another phenomenon—Democratic in-traparty gridlock...

...In part he was talking about Republican filibusters in the Senate...

...I probably insured the defeat of my cause...

...August opened a new chapter in the involvement of the United States with its allies, with the United Nations, and with European strife...

...The reason for the startling reversal was not hard to find...

...Counsel Bernard W. Nuss-baum insisted on conducting the search of Foster's office in the presence of the police, describing what he found, but not letting them inspect the documents...

...At issue here was not only the matter of Executive privilege, but of lawyer-client privilege...

...Senator Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, one of the six Democrats who voted against the package the first time around, became a crucially needed compensating Yes vote...

...Executive privilege is a doctrine with no constitutional basis, but asserted by Presidents back to George Washington...

...The U.S...

...He got it...

...Abruptly, the Clinton Administration changed course...

...Harris complained that the push for air strikes was too late to save Bosnia, and that the Muslims were being pressed to accept partition...

...Clearly, the spirit of shared sacrifice that had blossomed for a while after President Clinton's State of the Union speech to Congress last February had dissipated...

...The Pentagon considered that impractical...

...Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl threatened a negative vote if the gas tax was higher than 4.3 cents a gallon...

...Tricky as well was trying to preserve the delicate balance between saving Sarajevo and not encouraging Muslim leaders to resist a peace settlement...

...Actions have their consequences, so does proclaimed inaction...

...The thin blue-helmeted UN line was about all that stood symbolically between civilization and savagery...

...That question suggests the classic dilemma raised by the torn-up note Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr...

...sent word to Bosnian leaders warning them not to take renewed threats of air strikes against the Serbs as a reason to dig in their heels against a peace settlement...

...Is Congress rejecting change...

...The torn-up note presented a special problem...

...The suicide was not a crime," said White House Counselor David Gergen...

...So, 4.3 cents it was...

...Washington's purpose was to keep the Bosnians alive, not to make them cocky...

...proposal for an ultimatum to the Serbs created a tricky situation...

...Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, having blocked a broadbased energy tax, nevertheless switched from support to opposition...

...The Foster investigation fell into a murky twilight zone...

...There was clearly a concern in the White House about confidential information the investigators might see...