It’s Semper Fi, Chief--for Now

All presidential assistants, current and former, have a loosely connected but nonetheless real kinship to each other. Each of us was lifted to the largest proscenium stage in the world by one man and there allowed to become “celebrities.” When an assistant departs the White House he or she usually enters what we sardonically refer to as “the private sector” to become modestly wealthy and sometimes more famous. But the fact is, we would not have been attractive to our new arena without our presidential patina.

Now the niggling question: What does this band of brothers and sisters, glistening in the glow of the president’s power, owe the man who gave them opportunities so few are granted? So long as the presidential assistant is not commanded illegally, what does he or she owe the president?

What causes the question to be asked is the George Stephanopoulos issue.

Stephanopoulos, wearing the new velvet garments of ABC pundit, was not only the first to publicly mention the possibility of impeachment, but he continues to be inferentially critical of his former boss, so soon after departing the embrace of the president.

Like Stephanopoulos, who toiled as an obscure congressional aide before he was brought to the side of Bill Clinton, I was in advertising and political consulting in Texas (unseen and unknown by the public) when LBJ brought me to the White House. I confess I would not be in my present place without my intimacy with Lyndon Johnson. I owe him. Big time. My modest judgment is that George Stephanopoulos is in the same debt to President Clinton. I dare say that no publisher would pay him $2.5 million to write his memoirs, nor would ABC offer him a sizable compensation to voice his views, if he were still leading a hermetic existence on Capitol Hill.

Though I know Stephanopoulos only casually, he is generally judged to be smart, insightful, energetic and charming. These are all much admired qualities. However in Washington, there are thousands of young men and women inhabited by those same personal assets, but the public lanterns don’t shine on them, simply because the president has not chosen them to serve in the White House.

Well, say others, George is in a new role. He has to speak candidly as a forthright newsman. Would it be violating his new profession to merely say, “Until unconfirmed accusations become facts and prove me wrong, I take the president at his word.”

Count me as an old-fashioned, out-of-date vestigial remain of a long ago time when words like “loyalty” and “gratitude” were regally honored. Alas, in my own turf of Hollywood, as well as in Washington, those words are too often queasily attended. The new mantra so glossily prevalent in politics and just about everywhere else is the satiric revision of the Marine Corps shibboleth: “Semper Fi, I got mine!”