No Summer Vacation for Clinton Follies

Returning to reality after a few days on Idaho’s Silver Creek, where the trout proved wilier and more elusive than ever, it became clear that the political world had not succumbed to summer doldrums. “Clinton Fined for Lying.” “Tripp Indicted Over Taping.” And so on--providing a rich menu of items last week.

Item #1: But the most delicious of them all is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s toe dance on the stage of psychobabble wherein Bubba’s, um, “weaknesses” are attributed to “terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother.” For me she stirred up memories of 1972 when, in the office of the presidential aide Chuck Colson, visitors could view a blow-up of Colson’s widely quoted boast that he would “run over” his own grandmother to reelect Richard Nixon.

Chuck, though now a Christian evangelist, played hardball in his day. Little did he know that he was the political precursor for a slightly different twist by Mrs. Clinton who, it is now clear, would run over her husband’s grandmother for the sake of political victory. Now we know to whom she was referring when she wrote “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Seems to me that we’re all missing the real story here. Forget Monica. Americans should be profoundly concerned about someone having his finger on the nuclear button who was “scarred by abuse” as a 4-year-old. Something to think about.

Item #2: On July 29, President Clinton was fined over $90,000 by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright for having “violated the court’s discovery orders by giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process.” The fine grew out of Wright’s previous charging of Clinton with civil contempt for his “intentionally false” testimony in Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit.

Wright imposed the fine to “deter others who might themselves consider emulating the President of the United States by engaging in misconduct that undermines the integrity of the judicial system.”

Yet, 11 days after Clinton’s unprecedented trip to the legal woodshed, the American Bar Assn.--increasingly lapdogs for the political left--invited this obstructor of the judicial process to address its membership. Any lawyer still a member of this ethically obtuse organization can save a few bucks and reclaim a conscience by firing off a resignation letter forthwith.

Item #3: The whistle-blower Linda Tripp has been indicted on two felony charges by a partisan Maryland prosecutor for taping conversations with Monica Lewinsky. It was reported that prosecutors acknowledged that “such an indictment is virtually unheard of in Maryland.”

Clearly, the Maryland prosecutor’s action fails to pass any reasonable smell test and smacks of the same raw, blind partisanship that ruled the day when Senate Democrats unanimously acquitted Clinton after his impeachment. The same lefties who lionized John Dean a quarter of a century ago for being the ultimate snitch now perversely embrace the predation of a single mother who, at the core, told the truth about those who asked her to lie.

So much for those Clinton pleaders who pound the table to “put this all behind us.” Now is the time for two things to happen: first, for Ken Starr to resign, and second, for him to turn over to a career prosecutor the filing and subsequent prosecution of an indictment of William Jefferson Clinton on felony counts of perjury and obstruction of justice (see Item #2 above).

Item #4: Honk if you’re sick of seeing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein puffing up for the zillionth time in self-righteousness about Richard Nixon. Came last week’s 25th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation, and America was subjected again to the droning on of those two--Woodward with his unctuous mock sincerity and Bernstein desperately trying to rise from journalistic obscurity. A quarter of a century has passed, and Nixon haters still can’t get enough. How pathetic.

Item #5: Wanna tick off those Nixon haters? Don’t let the summer pass without buying Irwin Gellman’s superb biography of Richard Nixon’s congressional years: “The Contender.” This book by the Chapman University history professor is a doggedly researched myth-buster which methodically destroys all the distortions of the early Nixon record that his left-wing enemies yearned to believe were true but were not.

Especially impressive is the meticulous evidence Gellman piles up to separate provable fact from partisan fiction about Nixon’s early political campaigns. “The Contender” is this season’s winner.

Kenneth L. Khachigian is a veteran political strategist and former White House speech writer who practices law in Orange County. His column appears here every other week.