WASHINGTON INSIGHT

MANILOW GOES POLITICAL? Forty lawmakers made opening statements at the launch of the House’s campaign fund-raising hearings last week, but one of them stood out. Instead of reading from a prepared text, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) plunked a boom box in the middle of the hearing room and turned the volume on high. The music, a spoof on the Barry Manilow song “Copacabana,” made Ros-Lehtinen’s point about a meeting held by a Democratic fund-raiser at Havana’s plush Copacabana Hotel:

“At the Copa. Copacabana. The DNC Spot in Havana

At the Copa. Copacabana.

Big checks and favors were always the flavors at the Copa.”

Said Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban American elected to Congress: “I hope that this committee examines to the fullest any intent by the Castro regime and its sympathizers in the United States of influencing U.S. policy toward the Cuban dictator.”

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OUT OF THE FIRE AND. . . : When the going gets tough, according to inside-the-Beltway wisdom, the tough-enough get going--out of Washington. But the aphorism presumes that when a scandal-plagued figure leaves town, those pesky reporters stay behind; President Clinton is not so lucky. Questions about the president’s fund-raising phone calls and the delayed release of White House coffee videotapes have followed him to South America. And, in the surest sign yet that the fund-raising flap finally has gotten under the skin of almost everyone in the Clinton camp, often-jovial White House spokesman Mike McCurry came very close to snapping at reporters Tuesday. Confronted in Brazil with a question about the Justice Department’s review of Clinton’s phone calls, the ever-helpful McCurry practically seethed. “If you’re interested in that story,” he said, “the timing is such that you can contact the travel office and drop off the trip and get to Washington in time to cover it, probably.”

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PUNCH LINE: One result of the bruising Senate battle over campaign finance reform is what some call the increasingly “bad blood” between Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). But both are now trying to downplay the frictions. “We still have a good relationship. We joked on the telephone last night,” Daschle said the other day, adding, “and I’m sure we’ll joke again at some point in the future.”

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BACK TO THE FUTURE: Intense jockeying is underway for appointment to the 17-member National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, known inside the Beltway simply as the baby boomers commission. Clinton, GOP leaders Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) each get to fill four slots. Democratic leaders Daschle and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) get two picks apiece. The president, Lott and Gingrich must agree on the chairman of the commission, but they had better hurry. The commission is required by law to meet Dec. 1 and report its findings and recommendations by March 1, 1999.

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READING THE LEAVES: Faced with news that is behind schedule and deadlines that don’t move, reporters will resort to analyzing almost anything. So when last week’s hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee didn’t begin on time, some of the journalists assigned to cover it began devising a chart of sorts. If the hearing started four minutes late, that meant that committee was “bitterly divided”; a delay of seven minutes implied it was “hopelessly split”; 12 minutes late signaled a “return of gridlock”; 15, “sign of a leadership vacuum”; and 24 or more, “usual for Ways and Means.” In the end, the hearing started 38 minutes late.