First Lady Labeled a ‘Liar’; Clinton Raises Verbal Fist

President Clinton had an old-fashioned husband’s response Tuesday to a newspaper columnist who called his wife a liar: He wanted to punch the man in the nose.

Clinton told a White House news conference that he deeply resents an article by New York Times columnist William Safire calling First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton “a congenital liar.”

Clinton initially laughed as he responded to a question about the column, but his smile rapidly faded as he said:

“When you’re president, there are a few more constraints on you than if you’re an ordinary citizen. If I were an ordinary citizen, I might give that article the response it deserves.”

It was White House spokesman Mike McCurry who first told reporters of Clinton’s urge to wallop Safire.

“Columnists have the right to write what they want to, even when it’s an outrageous personal attack that has no basis in fact,” McCurry told reporters. “The president, if he were not the president, would have delivered a more forceful response to that on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.

“The president, being president, knows that he can’t possibly do such a thing,” the spokesman added ruefully.

McCurry, asked by reporters if the first lady was becoming a political liability to her husband, replied: “Last time I checked, she was more popular than any of the people who’ve been in the Oval Office negotiating the budget.”

Clinton has spent much of the last two weeks in budget talks with his two principal Republican adversaries, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

The president’s energetic defense of his wife was his first public response to renewed charges that she has not been fully truthful about her role in several controversial episodes, including the Arkansas real estate deal known as Whitewater and the summary firing of the staff of the White House travel office.

Both Congress and an independent counsel are investigating the Clintons’ investment in Whitewater, a failed real estate development in the Arkansas Ozarks, and whether funds were siphoned off to benefit Clinton’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign.

The discovery of two sets of documents--billing records from Mrs. Clinton’s Arkansas law firm and a memorandum from a White House aide suggesting that she directed the firing of the travel office staff--have renewed the Republican focus on her.

The billing records suggest that Mrs. Clinton was actively involved in the day-to-day work her law firm did for Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the ultimately bankrupt S&L; whose chairman was a co-investor with the Clintons in the Whitewater resort property.

Among other things, she represented Madison in early 1985 when it sought state permission to issue preferred stock and she drafted one document that regulators say was part of a “fictitious” land transfer.

In his Monday column, Safire--a former speech writer for GOP President Richard Nixon--maintained that the billing records were discovered two days after the statute of limitations had run out.

However, the Resolution Trust Corp., the government agency responsible for handling the federal bailout of the savings and loan industry, struck a deal with the Rose Law Firm to extend the statute of limitations until Jan. 31. That leaves the government until the end of this month to sue the law firm.

The president’s own comments came in a news conference at which he announced that budget negotiations with congressional Republicans had been suspended for a week.

“You know,” Clinton said, “presidents have feelings too. . . . I just would like to ask the American people to take a deep breath, relax, and listen to the first lady’s answers, because we’ve been through this for over four years. And every time a set of questions comes up, we answer the questions and we go on. The American people are satisfied. And they will be again.”

Clinton said that the criticism of his wife reminded him of the viciously unfavorable review delivered by Washington Post music critic Paul Hume of a singing performance by Margaret Truman at a time when her father, Harry S. Truman, was president.

“Some day I hope to meet you,” Truman wrote in a letter to Hume. “When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beef steak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below!”

Clinton said that the letter is now tacked to his office wall, courtesy of “a distinguished Republican.” The letter was recently sold to GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes.