President Clinton

Re “Clinton Steps Up Fund-Raising to Ease Party Debt,” Oct. 9: Am I the only taxpayer who resents paying a salary to a president who does not appear to have any duties? For two long years we saw our president devote himself almost totally to getting reelected.

Now, in the middle of a workweek, the president has the time to go on another odyssey to gather funds for his party. I also very much resent using Air Force One to fly Chelsea Clinton to college and then turn that into a fund-raising trip. How much do the taxpayers pay for this? What share of cost is borne by the DNC? Clinton needs a reminder that he is president to all the people, not just the Democrats.

PAULINE DOANE

San Diego

I have absolutely run out of patience with the Republican Party and its politically motivated “investigations.” Even the well-intentioned Sen. Fred Thompson cannot camouflage the hypocrisy and partisan hostility of the hearings. As the proceedings go on and on I become more supportive of the Clinton administration’s stonewalling.

I wish someone would give Harold Ickes the “$4.5 million and 100 skilled investigators” he mentioned in the hearings so we could find out how the Republicans raise their money. That they stubbornly refuse to change the very practices they are investigating tells the whole story.

BOB LOZA

Burbank

Please spare us from the silly, sentimental nonsense brought to us by Christopher Matthews’ article extolling the virtues of George Bush (Commentary, Oct. 10).

I do agree with his assessment of Clinton’s serious lack of integrity. However, he should recall that it was Bush, the career bureaucrat, who put the intellectually disadvantaged Dan Quayle a heartbeat away from the presidency. He then pardoned Caspar Weinberger to avoid a trial that would certainly have proved that he was not “out of the loop,” as he had claimed, in the Iran-Contra scandal. Was that not an act of cowardly self-preservation?

Bush’s friends don’t have to buy a night in the Lincoln bedroom. It has been far easier and more effective for them to buy Congress.

RALPH G. LONG

Newport Beach