Clinton's Politics of Ingratiation

...Then there is Mark Whiteacre, who was a senior executive at Archer-Daniels-Midland, the "Supermarket to the World...

...Holding onto the lectern for support, he was still a figure I could only call majestic...

...In his fireside chats FDR turned our Philco radios into shrines, and when he said that America could not afford to live with one-third of a nation ill-housed and ill-fed, we thought he would do something about it, and he did...

...Thus Clinton, with 49 per cent of 49 per cent, won a plurality of a minority...

...Decades ago we were taught in journalism school that a statement damaging to an individual is potentially libelous, unless an arrest has been made or charges have been filed...

...Whiteacre agreed to carry a concealed FBI microphone that recorded a conspiracy to fix prices on two agricultural products...

...Voters have apparently come to believe that with all the special interest money pouring in, especially foreign special interest money, the government no longer represents the average American...

...Bed and Breakfast On election night November 5, ex-Senator Bob Dole was gracious in defeat, President Clinton was humble in victory, and the pageantry of democratic continuity and renewal was splendid...

...The agent transferred the money to a New York bank, flew to New York, withdrew it, and $ 100,000 in freshly laundered hundred-dollar bills was delivered in an unmarked envelope to campaign headquarters...

...Later I went through college with the aid of a National Youth Administration stipend that paid me 50 cents an hour to work in the library...

...ADM ended up pleading guilty and paying an unprecedented antitrust fine of $ 100 million...

...Blowing the Whistle We are familiar with the whistle-blower in government...

...Close to a Shakedown In reverie my mind drifted back to 1972, when a campaign official told an airline board chairman over dinner that $ 100,000 was expected from him...

...Three years ago, that is how he came to suggest he might not oppose a school prayer amendment...

...He was our friend, and Bob, let me tell you, he was a savior...

...That was generally taken to mean that he had dropped his opposition...

...More serious for Texaco executives was the taped discussion of the shredding of records requested by the plaintiffs, which could be used by government attorneys in court...

...The airline was American Airlines...

...Roosevelt may be a myth to Bob Samuelson today, but 60 years ago that myth looked more like hope...

...I recall that in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower said something at a news conference that appeared to contradict stated policy, James "Scotty" Reston of the New York Times reflected that Press Secretary James Hager-ty might have to declare, "The President does not necessarily speak for his Administration...

...One of Jewell's lawyers, Lin Wood, told me he assumes the paper's defense against the charge of "reckless disregard of the truth" will be that the information came from a law enforcement officer who seemed to be reliable...

...Never mind what he said...

...The recent Presidential race, estimated to have cost upward of $800 million, indicates that the post-Watergate controls have broken down...

...J. Edgar Hoover made selective leaks to pressure the FBI's quarry into a cottage industry...

...ADM has charged that Whiteacre stole millions of dollars and has suggested that he may, at one point, have tried to commit suicide...

...That could produce the latest confrontation over protection of sources...

...Looking back at the campaign, it is noteworthy how little one heard about "change," the buzzword of the '92 campaign...

...By an impressive margin women chose Clinton, while the angry white male of 1994 seemed to have settled down to being the disgusted white male of 1996...

...After several other disputes, I left the network where I had worked for 23 years...

...A symbol of this was the report of the White House Lincoln Bedroom being turned into a $ 100,000 a night bed and breakfast...

...That's all right for a young essayist making an argument against activist Presidents...

...In 1975, assigned by CBS to cover CIA misdeeds, I ran into evidence that CBS Chairman William S. Paley had made an agreement with the CIA during the 1950s to provide CBS credentials as cover for CIA spies...

...The Real Roosevelt October was "Roosevelt History Month...

...Many such incidents—close to a shakedown—as well as the sale of ambassadorships were documented in the 1973 report of the Watergate Committee...

...Most Presidents will "misspeak" occasionally...

...In the same year, CBS reported that Democratic Representative Bill Gray of Pennsylvania was being investigated by the FBI for his financial dealings...

...He revealed that his bosses knew cigarettes are addictive and lied when they said otherwise...

...The tapes exposed what you might call a smoking gun of bigotry...

...Some 90 million Americans found no reason to go to the polls...

...In any event, it is hard to see what new rules could withstand the political "big bucks" imperative...

...But FDR looked a lot different to one whose mother got a relief check under Governor Roosevelt's New York state program for widows and orphans...

...My friend Jeffrey Wigand said he just couldn't live with himself knowing the harm that cigarettes do...

...That newsroom rule has generally been ignored of late under competitive pressures and the symbiotic relationship established between law enforcement officers and some news people...

...Those who did vote seemed to do so holding their noses...

...If it was a myth, it was the kind of myth that would cause a 13 year-old German refugee, whom I later came to know, to change his name from the Germanic Klaus to Franklin Delano...

...It transferred $ 100,000 to the Swiss account of a Lebanese agent, listing the sum on its books as a "special commission...

...A grand jury was convened in New York to look into the matter...

...The latest to do so was Richard A. Lundwall, Human Resources Coordinator for Texaco Inc...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Clinton's Politics of Ingratiation In his 1995 State of the Union address President Bill Clinton came out foursquare against a balanced budget constitutional amendment, calling it a "gimmick...

...But the article gave no attribution of any kind...

...His staff had to plunge into a damage-control operation, trying to explain that the President didn't mean what he had plainly said...

...The Supreme Court has held that there is no absolute right to withhold a source when the interests of justice dictate otherwise...

...Bloch was staked out and pursued by the press and the FBI, but was never indicted...

...One whistle-blower I came to know is Jeffrey Wigand, who was research director for the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company in Louisville...

...Many voters did not believe either Clinton or Dole would keep their promises to cut taxes and balance the budget...

...Roosevelt has been romanticized," wrote Bob Samuelson, "and now Presidents are expected to pose as national saviors...

...No one seemed surprised that Dole made a pilgrimage to Independence, Missouri to don the mantle of Democrat Harry S. Truman, while Clinton adopted the reassuring locutions of Republican Ronald Reagan, complete with "Morning in America," and harked back to Theodore Roosevelt...

...The only difference between then and now was that the ante was way up from $100,000...

...In his acceptance speech on election night the President once again promised reform of campaign financing...

...Whatever the ultimate outcome of the whole Texaco affair, his job prospects are not bright...

...He said that "Roosevelt was more the prisoner of events than their master," that unemployment was higher in 1939 than in 1931, that what provided victory in World War II was not Roosevelt but America's industrial power...

...And, to fat cat Democratic contributors at a fundraising dinner in Houston, that he thought he had raised taxes too much...

...In each case, beyond his delighted immediate listeners, he was causing trouble for himself...

...institutional loyalty is not academic for me...

...Behind the hoopla, though, there lurked some ominous signs of a deepening alienation of Americans from their government...

...The Journal would face the dilemma of having to weaken its defense to uphold a journalistic principle...

...To facilitate that, he said, he used a concealed tape recorder...

...He added, "You have to be straight with the American people" about the dangers it would pose to Social Security and to the economy in a recession...

...In the past year three big companies have faced embarrassment and penalties because of insiders who risked their futures to go outside...

...Sixty per cent said he had not told the truth about Whitewater...

...Public financing of Presidential contests was also initiated to eliminate some of the need for feverish fundraising...

...But, Bob, I knew Franklin Roosevelt, in the sense that we all did...

...Now, Jewell says he plans a libel and defamation suit against the Atlanta Journal, among others...

...Following Nixon's resignation, we had five years of reform legislation—laws banning favors in return for contributions, banning pressure to secure contributions, banning laundering of campaign funds and donations by foreigners...

...Because of the legal loopholes found by so-called "soft money" and political action committees, and the sky-rocketing cost of campaigning on television...

...In a less placid time than this era of relative prosperity and relative peace, Amer-icans might be outraged by the very thought of anauctioned-off government...

...He reportedly sounded out Senate Republicans about calling a special session of Congress on the subject, but the response was cool...

...He has been sued for violation of contract in disclosing company secrets...

...The modern prototype is Ernest Fitzgerald, the Air Force analyst fired by President Nixon in 1969 for disclosing cost overruns on a transport plane, and finally reinstated after a 13-year court battle...

...Now that he has been re-elected, perhaps it is time for him to stop playing Mr...

...The first time I saw Roosevelt in person was in 1939, opening the New York World's Fair...

...Wood will then demand that the officer be identified and brought in to testify...

...Fifty-five per cent said Clinton was not honest...

...It is my contention that no one should be allowed to write about Franklin D. Roosevelt who did not experience his era...

...It really is one those cases of, "You had to be there...

...The solicitation was made by Herbert Kalmbach, President Richard M. Nixon's personal counsel...

...A week after being re-elected, prior to a meeting with Congressional Republican leaders, the President said, "I don't believe we need it," but if we have a balanced budget amendment, it should be drafted to provide an exception in the case of a recession...

...To a youthful audience on MTV, he said that if given a chance to do it over again, he would try to inhale marijuana...

...Companies have ways of getting back at whistle-blowers...

...Robert Samuelson of Newsweek, who was born in 1945, the year FDR died, wrote a well-documented essay to demolish what he called "the Roosevelt myth" in the magazine's October 21 issue...

...The story was false and Attorney General Dick Thomburgh eventually apologized...

...Then came Roosevelt's Presidency in 1933 and all those alphabet soup agencies—the NRA to spur recovery, the SEC to protect investors, the FDIC to insure bank deposits, the WPA to provide jobs and build bridges, the REA to electrify our farms...

...It could be read in the 49 per cent turnout at the polls, the lowest since the lackluster Calvin Coolidge year of 1924...

...The airline had several matters, including a possible merger, pending before the government...

...Let me add that the whistle-blower's problem of public responsibility vs...

...Company CEO Peter Bijur has apologized for the racist statements, and Texaco has agreed to what is said to be the biggest bias case settlement ever, totaling $ 180 million...

...When Lundwall was fired as a result of downsizing, he turned over some of his tapes to lawyers for 1,400 black employees conducting a discrimination suit against Texaco...

...He was named Louisville's "Best Teacher of the Year...

...Fifty-three per cent told exit pollsters they had reservations about the candidate they just voted for...

...The voters seemed to have had enough of revolutionary rhetoric, which is why Speaker Newt Gingrich, the hot-blooded ideologue, was in the doghouse as the most unpopular single personality of the electoral season...

...A Hazardous Symbiosis The Extra edition of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution on July 30 said Richard A. Jewell was the "focus of the Federal investigation" of the July 27 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, and that he "fit the profile of the lone bomber...

...But President Clinton, with his known command of the language, cannot easily fall back on misspeaking...

...Meanwhile whistle-blower Lundwall, in what is viewed as a strategic move by Federal prosecutors seeking his cooperation, has been charged with obstruction of justice...

...More recently, in 1989, ABC reported that an American diplomat, Felix Bloch, was under FBI investigation for espionage...

...As it is, those who did bother to exercise their right voted basically to maintain the status quo of divided government and returned to the mundane things they could do something about...

...It is hard to say what makes a whistle-blower, with all the accompanying risks of excommunication and reprisal...

...Samuelson's research told him people wearied of the New Deal's erratic experiments, and those who disliked Roosevelt hated him...

...Nice Guy to every audience within the orbit of his charm...

...Clinton seems to practice a kind of politics of ingratiation that sometimes makes him say whatever an audience will applaud...

...His duties included keeping the minutes of executive meetings...

...More serious than the gender gap was the huge credibility gap...

...When I last saw him, he was testifying in anti-tobacco suits and teaching science in a high school...

...But if the controversy serves to put the overeager news media and the loose-lipped law enforcement officers on guard about the perils of leaks, it will have served a useful purpose...

...Within a day dismayed subordinates, starting with Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, were swearing up and down that Clinton remained "actively opposed" to the amendment...

...I broke that story on the CBS Evening News...

...Dole, having beaten off the Republican extremists in the primaries, sought to lay claim to the Center, where he found President Clinton ensconced...

...A current phenomenon is the corporate whistle-blower who, for one reason or another, is willing to violate a culture that demands absolute loyalty as the price of success...

...I can remember the time before Roosevelt, when the jobless sold apples on street corners, when banks were closing about one a day, and the homeless wrapped themselves in newspaper they called "Hoover blankets...