CLINTON WATCH : Keep Your Paws Off

On some days the members of the Clinton family--oh, so new to the presidential limelight--appear to be having a minor anxiety attack about how public their lives have suddenly become. They haven’t seen anything yet.

The President of the United States is the most public of all public figures in America--and very close behind him are the other members of the First Family. In the next Administration the First Family will be made up of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their 12-year-old daughter, Chelsea. It will also include, to some extent, their cat, Socks.

It’s true that presidential cats, unlike some other presidential associates, do not get involved in policy decisions or Cabinet appointments and therefore do not merit being treated like political stars by media photographers. Even so, the Clinton First Family will have to accept as inevitable Socks’ attractiveness to a picture-hungry pack of paparazzi.

What First Family members don’t have to accept, of course, is dirty tricks from the press. For it is now alleged that some sort of special substance--perhaps even catnip--was used by a photographer to lure a (rightly, genetically) wary Socks outside the governor’s mansion in Little Rock so the paparazzi could get a clearer shot at the First Feline.

The Clinton family also shouldn’t have to accept the indignity of having its cat hoisted up high by a television cameraman for the edification of other craven lensers, as also happened outside the mansion.

And, for the record, neither should Socks.