Clinton Takes a Vow
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Clinton Takes a Vow MAY 17 will be remembered as the day President Bill Clinton personally promised his first veto. His target was the bill rescinding $ 16.4...
...Liddy had attracted a lot of attention by saying that he uses cutouts of the President and the First Lady for target practice, and by counseling precisely where to shoot an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who confronts you...
...Does anybody understand what will be left after we cut—oops, slow the growth of—all the entitlements...
...A Washington Post- ABC poll showed his approval rating at 56 per cent, up 10 points in a month—the month after the Oklahoma City bombing when, for once, he looked quite Presidential...
...Now and then, as a matter of conscience, a member violates the rule—often anonymously, sometimes openly...
...Are we stealing from the next generation for the sake of the elderly, or is it vice versa...
...The bill faced an uncertain prospect in the Senate and, depending on the outcome, a possible veto...
...The inattention and alienation of the public left Congress to fight the titanic battle of the budget with the lobbies?and with itself...
...Sixty-two per cent do not believe the government threatens their personal rights and freedom...
...Small wonder...
...He also had a plan to lure Democrats from their Miami Beach convention to a houseboat loaded with prostitutes who had eavesdropping microphones in their pillows...
...In 1975 Representative Leo Ryan (D.Calif...
...They are a little "kinder and gentler," in the words of George Bush, and also are feeling a lot more vulnerable...
...I can remember my own first encounter with Gordon Liddy in January 1973, while covering the initial trial of the Watergate burglars...
...The same poll showed a substantial majority of Americans, ranging from 56 to 60 per cent, opposing various Republican budget cutting plans...
...And guess what...
...The Scary Mr...
...Fred Fielding thought him "a strange person...
...They fired back that he was being political, that he was down on them because they are generally down on him...
...His letter surely sounded as though he was...
...Liddy...
...Shocked into Awareness STILL, IT SEEMS TO ME that in the short period since the Oklahoma City bombings Americans have begun to undergo a profound mood change...
...Surprised...
...government about the fate of her husband...
...Republican strategists attached to the legislation vital money for Oklahoma City and counterterrorism, California earthquake relief, and debt relief for Jordan...
...But the skirmish over rescission was merely a warmup for the big battle of the budget, joined the next day...
...Torricelli is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, but he insists he learned the story from outside sources...
...It was written almost as a provocative in-yourface document...
...What does it tell you that half of those surveyed could not name Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, but 64 per cent could name Judge Lance Ito as presiding over the O. J. Simpson trial...
...What will happen to Torricelli...
...School teacher Missy Frye was torn between teaching her children to love everyone and to trust no one...
...In a Baltimore County focus group conducted by Kurtz, few knew that Congress has debated term limits—supposedly a hot-button issue...
...In 1983 Senator Barry Goldwater (R.Ariz...
...They appear suddenly aware that hatred of government can exact a heavy price if carried too far...
...Torricelli joins a small but interesting list of legislators who have acted similarly in the past...
...Since brandishing the veto pen he threatened to use on an unsatisfactory health reform bill while addressing a joint session of Congress, he had talked about such action mainly in terms of wanting to avoid it...
...Escapism, however, is as much the problem as alienation...
...A Washington-Post-ABC nationwide poll found that, since Oklahoma City, anger at the government is down and satisfaction with it is up...
...There was little indication, though, that beyond the Beltway?indeed, beyond Pennsylvania Avenue?the public was caught up in the battle initially being fought between Senate and House Republicans, with Democrats and the Administration sounding ominous Greek chorus intonations from the sidelines...
...Liddy to you...
...A Matter of Conscience CONGRESS is supposed to maintain secrecy when the Administration secretly tells it about its secret activities...
...Would it surprise you also to know that many Americans are reconsidering their enthusiasm for antigovernment rhetoric on talk radio...
...a member of the Intelligence Committee, in the course of discussing the case of the American spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, before a Zionist group in Miami, disclosed that the CIA had a spy in Israel...
...NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said he was sorry if anyone thought he was talking about all Federal law enforcement officers...
...The National Rifle Association (NRA) must have felt a lot of heat after the resignation of ex-President Bush from its ranks, since it finally apologized for its fund-raising letter with the inflammatory reference to government agents as "jack-booted thugs...
...White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta called it a "Grey Poupon budget" for people in limousines...
...It said that "if you have a badge, you have the government's go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens...
...If he suffers more than a reprimand, it will be a first...
...Three out of four Americans believe that people are "too quick to criticize the Federal government...
...When some of his former associates from the Nixon campaign days were asked to evaluate Liddy for Gerald and Deborah Strober's recent history of the Nixon Presidency, Frederich Malleck called him "a little weird...
...The rescission bill, as it emerged from the Senate-House conference, was one that Clinton could not sign without abandoning any semblance of principle...
...The champions were Truman with 250 and Franklin D. Roosevelt with a whopping 635 vetoes in three-plus terms...
...Only 40 per cent have heard about a Republican "Contract With America...
...Eighty-eight per cent are not afraid of the Federal government...
...A Wall Street Journal reporter, Clare Ansberry, went to Butler, Pennsylvania, a town of 35,000 that is a thousand miles from Oklahoma City, and found something new stirring: a sense of the fragility of life...
...chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made public a letter to CIA Director William J. Casey saying he was "pissed off" about the mining of Nicaragua's harbors without adequate notice to Congress...
...The confrontation came at a relatively propitious time for Clinton...
...Speaker Newt Gingrich initially was of amindto fire Torricelli from the Intelligence Committee—which he has the power to do—but finally settled on having the matter investigated by the House Ethics Committee...
...Would the Republican "reconciliation resolution" rescue or doom Medicare...
...Such was the menace in his eyes that I said, "Yes, Mr...
...In 1987 Senator David Durenberger (R.-Minn...
...A poll directed to finding out what citizens learn from the media found that only 24 per cent seemed to know the Clinton Administration had cut the budget deficit...
...The poll quoted a typical comment from a pharmacist in Elgin, Texas: "The bombing in Oklahoma just opened up our eyes to what could happen and did happen...
...Robert Odle described him as "an odd duck," and Jeb Magruder said, "This guy is Adolf Hitler...
...Who knows...
...He was the one who burned his hand over a candle to show how macho he was, the one who shot out lights at George McGovern's campaign headquarters, the one whose scheme for dealing with opponents was hiring professional killers and kidnapping potential demonstrators to Mexico...
...The politicians have been reaping the harvest of years of telling the public not to believe or care what government says...
...I don't know how he interprets "lunatic fringe," but since Watergate I have always found Gordon Liddy scary...
...That's Butler, Pennsylvania, but Butler is not alone...
...Chatting with a colleague in the courtroom before the proceedings began, I made a reference to Liddy...
...Clinton's vow was all the more dramatic because he had previously shown himself to be averse to employing the Executive power...
...For months, as she fasted in protest, Jennifer Harbury was given the runaround by the U.S...
...Liddy G. GORDON LIDDY IN THE FIRST DAYS after Oklahoma City, President Clinton got a lot of lip from talk show hosts when he said there is too much hate talk on the airwaves...
...The latest such case has involved Democratic Representative Robert G. Torri-celli of New Jersey...
...That put the White House slightly ahead in the soundbite sweepstakes...
...If ever there was a moment for a bold stroke of the Clinton pen, this was it...
...And about half think that private militia groups threaten their personal rights and freedom...
...That is new spending intended to be offset by other cuts...
...My private poll told me that the second you mention a figure above a trillion dollars, 58.4 percent of the people switch channels...
...From the other side of the bar, he wheeled and snapped, "Mr...
...Typically, he would say he was "not elected President to pile up a stack of vetoes...
...His target was the bill rescinding $ 16.4 billion in already appropriated money for this year, and his announcement was seen as the harbinger of possibly bigger vetoes to come...
...Its inclusion wasclear-ly designed to make the bill veto-proof, or at least tough to reject...
...Well, it should be noted that in addition these figures indicate deep pockets of disaffection...
...In this century every President has used it—Bush 46 times, Ford 66, Reagan 78, Eisenhower 181...
...The House pushed through the Republican plan to shrink the government, reduce taxes, cut back on the growth of Medicare, and balance the budget by the year 2002...
...I never claimed to be a hero...
...Government does what...
...There usually follows a big flap in which the Administration may threaten to cut off the flow of information and the Congressional leadership may threaten to discipline its errant member...
...Only one in three knew that Congress has so far confined tax increases to the upper brackets...
...To people taught by the media to concentrate on the newest crime or sex scandal, does the year 2002 mean anything...
...And, as Howard Kurtz reported in the Washington Post, most people do not believe what the media say about the Establishment because they consider the media to be part of it...
...He has been defended by President Clinton, who said the Guatemalan scandal would not have come out were it not for the Congressman...
...In a possibly defining moment, however, G. Gordon Liddy was disinvited from presiding over a fundraising dinner of the National Republican Senatorial Committee billed as a salute to talk radio...
...In the Post-ABC poll 58 per cent agreed with Clinton's charge that some talk show hosts "spread hateful ideas and give the impression that violence is acceptable...
...But most Americans appear to have been shocked into an awareness that when dissatisfaction with government goes to an extreme, at the end of the continuum lies Oklahoma City...
...Independent-minded and media-wise, he exploded a bombshell by calling a news conference to reveal the CIA was covering up its knowledge that a Guatemalan Army colonel formerly on its payroll was implicated in the murder of an American innkeeper and a Guatemalan guerrilla leader married to an American woman...
...Ninety per cent do not think taking violent action against it can ever be justified...
...For a while Harrington was denied access to secret House files, but efforts to censure him failed...
...while not admitting he was the source, defended the leak of the CIA's involvement in Angola's civil war, in defiance of Congressional restrictions...
...Nurse Becky Grey paused a little longer in her nursing home rounds to listen to disoriented residents and stroke their hands...
...But never mind...
...Why the veto, which Alexander Hamilton called "a shield to the Executive," comes so hard to Clinton is difficult to understand...
...In the attempt to gain voter support, complex issues were reduced to slogans...
...In 1974, Democratic Representative Michael Harrington of Massachusetts wrote a letter to a colleague, quickly leaked to the press, that disclosed the CIA's role in the overthrow of Chile's Left-wing President Salvador Allende...
...In addition, he expressed disappointment with the timorous Republicans and said, "I don't believe I am feeding the lunatic fringe...
...Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, called it "a revolutionary, bold budget...
...It would have hobbled initiatives the President has repeatedly proclaimed to be near and dear to him, like environmental regulation, the Federal School to Work Program and the emblematic National Service Corps...
...Government-bashing no longer seems chic...
...Say a stimulative tax cut is "Keynesian economics" and that figure rises to 96.3 per cent...
...Mayor Richard Schontz told a group of leather-clad, tattooed motor bikers, "Government serves all the people...
...Everybody knew about President Clinton saying he wears underwear briefs, and about Gingrich's mother having said her son called Hillary Rodham Clinton a "bitch...
...In any event, he says, his oath of office takes precedence over his obligation to keep secrets, and a criminal act cannot be kept secret...
Vol. 78 • May 1995 • No. 4
