Friday
April 15 2005
HILLARY CLINTON: A ROLE MODEL FOR FULL DISCLOSURE?: In
yesterday's
commentary chronicling the tempest surrounding Tom DeLay,
I clipped a quote from an aide to Speaker Hastert that appeared
in the Chicago Tribune. What caught my attention most, however,
was something reporter Jill
Zuckman wrote in the paragraph that followed. Here's the whole
thing:
But
a senior aide to Hastert said DeLay may need to make some public
explanations about the charges since the House ethics committee
has been unable to organize itself with Democrats protesting
Republican-instituted rule changes.
"I'm
not sure why he doesn't lay it out, regardless of whether the
ethics committee ever meets or not," said the Hastert official,
who spoke on condition of not being identified.
"Take
whatever there is and say, `Here it is,'" the official
said. "You have to at one point say, `Here I am, here it
is, what's the question.'"
That
strategy recalled the approach taken by former First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton in the 1990s when she was plagued by questions
about unusual profits made from cattle futures. Hastert's adviser,
however, rejected the comparison. (emphasis added)
Hillary Clinton
randomly cited as a model for full disclosure? This is bizarre.
Since Zuckman doesn't attribute it to anyone else, we have to
assume she's the one who drew the comparison. More bizarre is
that even after Hastert's aide rejected the idea, Zuckman wrote
it into the piece anyway.
So what about
it: did Hillary lay out all the facts when the cattle future story
hit the fan? That's not how I recall it. This
NR piece from February 1995 seems to confirm Mrs. Clinton
was less than forthcoming:
Has
there been any effort to suppress investigation of the transaction?
Yes. Mrs. Clinton was adamantly opposed to the appointment of
a special prosecutor to look into her and her husband's financial
dealings, including her own trading activities, during the late
1970s and 1980s. She attempted to deflect attention from the
matter by explaining away her newfound wealth as a gift from
her parents, until the Clintons' 1978 and 1979 tax returns were
made public and the actual source of her windfall profit was
revealed. Furthermore, despite our repeated and friendly requests
to both the First Lady's and the White House's press representatives,
none of our questions concerning the elementary details of Mrs.
Clinton's trades and the availability of original documentation
has been answered.
So what would
possess Zuckman to recall Hillary Clinton as a role model of "full-disclosure"?
More to the point: how does this little nugget of historical revisionism
in any way qualify to be part of a "straight" news story
on Tom DeLay? - T. Bevan 8:45 am Link
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UPDATE: Stan
Brown fills out the rest of the Hillary story.
Thursday,
April 14 2005
THE TOM DELAY UPROAR: Maura
Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times writes that "Republicans
say a crucial factor in whether DeLay rides out the storm is whether
he retains the president's support." This is bunk. It's also
an attempt to portray Scott
McClellan's comments yesterday as more important (and also
less favorable to DeLay) than they really were.
First, just
as a practical matter, President Bush is not going to run away
from Tom Delay - though he's also not going to run and wrap his
arms around him right now either. The President will almost certainly
keep his distance and let things play out.
More importantly,
however, Reynolds misses how the process works. If Tom DeLay is
going to fall, it's going to happen from the bottom up, not the
top down. In other words, DeLay's survival depends almost entirely
on whether members of the Republican conference in the House stick
with him or not.
At this point
(putting aside Chris Shays for the obvious reasons) that is something
that remains to be seen. As Mike Allen writes in this morning's
Washington
Post:
"People
who are working in support of DeLay's position said the next
several days would be critical, as leaders wait to see whether
any other House Republicans call for his resignation."
In an
interview yesterday with editors and reporters with the Washington
Times, DeLay claimed his support in the House was solid.
Right now, this looks to be true.
One of the
reasons DeLay's support is holding is because most GOP House members
know that many of the charges against him are either completely
bogus (like the one about having family members on the payroll
which, as the Los
Angeles Times reports this morning, a number of Democrats
and Republicans have done for years) or have been blown way out
of proportion.
Still, despite
DeLay's
press conference yesterday where he apologized for "inartful"
remarks about judges in the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, there
is still a great deal of hand wringing among GOP House members
over the way DeLay is handling the matter. They think he's being
too combative and too defensive, which only makes matters worse.
For example,
in yesterday's interview with the Washington Times DeLay
said he's been trying for weeks to present material to the House
Ethics Committee, but said that Democrats are refusing to convene
the committee to keep him from clearing his name. But as this
quote from a Senior Aide to Speaker Hastert appearing in today's
Chicago
Tribune demonstrates, even if DeLay's claim is true some members
question whether blaming partisanship is the right strategy:
"I'm
not sure why he doesn't lay it out, regardless of whether the
ethics committee ever meets or not," said the Hastert official,
who spoke on condition of not being identified.
"Take
whatever there is and say, `Here it is,'" the official
said. "You have to at one point say, `Here I am, here it
is, what's the question.'"
At this
point DeLay seems inclined to go the opposite course: hunker down
and try and ride out the storm. But Democrats are surely going
to milk DeLay's troubles for all they are worth and members of
the press seem more than willing to help keep the story alive.
An anonymous
Democratic staffer summed it up succinctly in the Houston
Chronicle this morning: "Tom DeLay is still an asset,
not a liability." If that balance sheet ever changes, DeLay
will be in trouble.
HEADLINE
BIAS: On a related note, here is a pop quiz. Listed below
are headlines from the four largest newspapers in the country
that ran atop stories of Tom Delay's press conference yesterday
where he apologized for his comments on judges in the wake of
the Schiavo case. Guess which one appeared on page one of The
New York Times:
"DeLay
Apologizes for Comments"
"Embattled
DeLay Says He's Sorry"
"DeLay
Tempers His Statements"
"DeLay
Asks House Panel to Review Judges"
You know
the bias is bad when it stands out like a sore thumb from the
Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the
Chicago Tribune. -
T. Bevan 10:45 am Link
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Tuesday
April 12, 2005
HILLARY'S HOPES: A new Marist
poll confirms that which we already know:
- Hillary
is well-liked in New York and is a virtual shoo-in for reelection
in 2006.
- Rudy
Giuliani is the only person that could possibly defeat Hillary
for Senate. He is also the person New Yorkers would most like
to see run for President.
- Eliot
Spitzer has the highest approval rating of any statewide elected
official in New York which means, barring an unforeseen scandal
or a campaign more inept than Andrew Cuomo's, Spitzer will become
the state's next governor.
- George
Pataki's career in elective politics is probably over. He can't
win reelection as Governor, he can't beat Hillary for Senate,
and only 19% of New Yorkers (including only 25% of registered
Republicans) think he should run for President.
DR.
BUBBA: For all those who criticized Majority Leader Bill
Frist (R-TN) for diagnosing Terri Schiavo by videotape, along
comes the
former president of the United States declaring that Republican
political consultant Arthur Finkelstein suffers from a case of
"self-loathing"
for being both gay and opposed to Hillary Clinton becoming president.
What's the
basis for such a statement, you ask? A degree in psychology? Nope.
Testimony of experts? Please. Clinton cited David Brock's "great
book" Blinded by the Right. At this point I should
probably make a crack about one pathological liar citing another
pathological liar to support a baseless claim, but I'm just not
up to it.
CHUTZPAH
AWARD: Only the Reverend
Jesse Jackson could summon enough nerve to accuse Rep. Tom
DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff of basically running an influence-peddling
racket resulting in their own enrichment using junkets, consulting
fees, and trading favors for corporate donations.
Jackson writes,
"As so often is the case, it's the legal, not the illegal,
that is so shocking." Amen, Reverend. - T. Bevan
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