Congress in Confusion
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Congress in Confusion George Gobel, a favorite television comedian of mine in a past generation, reported one Labor Day evening that fatal accidents on...
...The situation creates a tangled predicament for U.S...
...I can still remember newsreels of her in a modest one-piece bathing suit...
...Three years later the Senate, having come under the control of Jackson's Democrats, rescinded the resolution...
...Republicans want Congressional hearings in order to keep the issue of Clinton's depravity alive, but appear hesitant about plunging into a fulldress impeachment inquiry...
...Come to think of it, political leaders have seldom been great national heroes, except in wartime when people looked to a Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Winston Churchill or a Charles de Gaulle to guard them against a foe and take them to victory...
...Don't count him out...
...But tackling the Taliban problem requires concentration and perhaps anew Presidential directive as well...
...In 1834, the Senate censured President Andrew Jackson for despotic assumption of powers...
...At the age of 10, I do not think I could have named the President of the United States (Calvin Coolidge), but everybody knew and was thrilled about "Lucky Lindy," the Lone Eagle, who flew to France in the little airplane all by himself...
...Even though some of his poll numbers are slipping, they are still way up there...
...Other organizations can count on getting similar "exciting" offers as Clinton moves into Phase 2 of his comeback campaign...
...In Raleigh, North Carolina, Dan Page, the Republican candidate for Congress, stuck his neck out with commercials tying the incumbent, Bob Ethridge, to President Clinton...
...Can the Comeback Kid, who said that 1996 was his last campaign, succeed in this one...
...Traffic in drugs is their chief source of revenue...
...There had been the "Saturday night massacre"—the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox...
...That is the kind of thing that scares politicians...
...But anger is not a course of action...
...Phase 1, which the President nearly overdid, was the grand confession, delivered with misty eye and quivering lip...
...The news that a number of Republicans have had extramarital affairs, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, has not helped matters...
...The fanatical Taliban, who control most of Afghanistan, said bin Laden had been placed under house arrest for violating the terms of his sanctuary...
...Among both Democrats and Republicans one hears murmurs about a middle way—"censure, condemnation, rebuke, or whatever," in the words of Chairman Orrin G. Hatch of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Congress in Confusion George Gobel, a favorite television comedian of mine in a past generation, reported one Labor Day evening that fatal accidents on the road were running behind projections...
...How effective a reprimanded Clinton would be is a different issue...
...Heroes and Politicians It must have been the Great Impresario who arranged our split screen view of the descent of President Clinton and the ascent of Mark McGwire...
...It was Democratic Senator Joseph I. Lieberman who initiated the rebuke idea—lash Clinton to the mast, but don't sink the ship—which has begun to look like an inspiration...
...The public is troubled, angry, disgusted, yet not clearly focused on a way out of the mess...
...Never mind that he later was soft on Hitler's Germany...
...I recall the crowning of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh as a national hero...
...policymakers, who are not anxious to repeat the historic 1980s mistake of backing Iraq against Iran, only to have to fight a war with Iraq...
...That paved his way into American hearts as a certified national hero...
...I prefer to remember 1927...
...They didn't want him to be forced to resign...
...How different it is now...
...Wasn't it time to say that the public was not being very cooperative about issuing clear marching orders, at least in the first days after Friday, September 11, when the Starr report appeared on the Internet before being published around the country the next morning...
...Members of Congress reported that they were soon flooded with angry messages...
...The White House spinmeisters were madly spinning, in vain, while the home run hitter, without any visible public relations advice, was quite naturally making gracious gestures to Sammy Sosa and Roger Maris' family, and even to the man upstairs...
...The polls said the people didn't like Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr...
...National heroes usually come singly, but space exploration gave us the collective hero, the men with "the right stuff...
...The bombing of U.S...
...Although they are aware that Americans want desperately to bring this controversy to closure, they can't figure out how the people want it to be closed...
...A Tangled Predicament For a moment in August, America was diverted from the Presidential scandal when it became aware that something ominous was happening in Western Asia...
...The event ensured that, on the Monday after the lost weekend of the Starr report, the President would be seen going about the nation's business...
...The legislators are free to pass a Sense of the Senate or House resolution, or a joint resolution, saying anything they wish to say...
...Some of you are "just not trying...
...Democrats seem unsure whether supporting Clinton or ditching him would hurt them more...
...They didn't want him impeached...
...But some Republicans thought that could backfire against Page...
...American scholars who have visited the region recently believe that focusing on one notorious terrorist tends to overpersonalize a much more sweeping problem...
...They didn't like President Clinton either —his ratings for moral character fell to an all-time low...
...embassies in East Africa was linked to a wealthy exiled Saudi terrorist, Osama bin Laden, who was holed up in a training camp in Afghanistan...
...By calling the astronauts to congratulate them, President Nixon enhanced himself, as President Clinton enhanced himself by calling Mark McGwire...
...But they still thought he was doing a good job...
...However, the Constitution does not prevent dealing with him either...
...There remains a roomful of backup evidence to the Starr report for the House Judiciary Committee to get around to, and more is said to be coming...
...Now busy with self-justification, his personal credibility in shreds, Clinton is not likely to be able to persuade Congress to do much...
...To accommodate Clinton, the organization waived its off-the-record rule...
...The public had blamed almost everyone in sight for the mess—the President, the prosecutor, the politicians, the media...
...Congressional leaders, uncertain about the course they should take, found the public's attitude contradictory, ambiguous and just generally unhelpful...
...Neither has the image of teachers in classrooms clearing their throats and saying, "Okay, let's discuss moral leadership...
...missile attack was launched on that camp with no apparent effect on bin Laden...
...But the politicians, ready to rise above principle and give the people what they want, have a grievance...
...But he was seen circulating freely, and was heard threatening new terrorist attacks...
...That would make him the first Oval Office occupant to address the Council in its 77-year history...
...Arms and troops flow freely across their common border, and Pakistani planes are said to have supported a Taliban attack last month on an opposition stronghold...
...Now Entering Phase 2 On Wednesday, September 9, the venerable Council on Foreign Relations in New York was shaken out of its morning coffee by a call from the White House asking whether it could, with only five days' notice, host a maj or speech by President Bill Clinton on the global economy...
...He wagged his finger and said, "Some of you people are just not trying...
...Behind the Afghan-Iranian tension lies bitter antagonism between Shi'ite Iran and mainly Sunni Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan and dominance in the region...
...The Taliban have a working military relationship with Pakistan...
...The line came to mind as I contemplated a Congress attempting to figure out what punishment would fit President Clinton's sin...
...Almost too exciting," said Council President Leslie Gelb in a fax message to members left out amid the hasty arrangements...
...His major legislative initiatives—tobacco control, patients' bill of rights, school reform— already lay dead in the water before the release of the Starr report...
...And as Churchill found out, victory in war provides no guarantee of winning the next election...
...That was before candidates for national hero started disqualifying themselves by acts of violence, by using prohibited drugs, by a mania for money that made them look too much like politicians...
...Now that Pakistan has tested nuclear weapons and is supporting the anti-American Taliban, some reconsideration of United States policy, including the unilateral sanctions against Iran, may be in order...
...The people had made up their minds...
...Senator Barry Goldwater could tell President Richard M. Nixon he was washed up...
...There had been six weeks of televised Senate hearings on Watergate...
...In Afghan fields the poppies blow, as heroin—whose use by Muslims is taboo—is shipped out to corrupt the infidels...
...The Constitution says that Congress can discipline its own members, but says nothing about the Chief Executive...
...Who in the White House has time these days for such concerns...
...Iran, incensed over the murder of eight of its diplomats and a journalist in the process, has been threatening to invade Afghanistan...
...Oh, for the Nixon days, when the public sent a clear signal...
...One of my earliest national heroes was Gertrude Ederle, who swam the English Channel in 1926...
...There had been the Nixon tapes and the tape gap...
...He could make command appearances before public interest groups, but that isn't the same as governing...
...Pakistan, long an American ally, was a staging area for the CIA's war to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan...
...As Andrew Kohut wrote a year ago in his book, Deconstructing Distrust, "American attitudes are weighed down by discontent with the dishonesty of public officials...
...The Taliban, once the beneficiaries of American support for the anti-Soviet mujahedin, are now fiercely anti-Western and especially anti-American...
...Phase 2 is, putting the whole affair behind him and getting back to work...
Vol. 81 • September 1998 • No. 10
