75 articles
THE SCRAPBOOK has learned that the incredible efficiency with which Congress and the president cooperated to rename Washington National Airport the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was the result of a crass political deal. The fix was in. Just three days after Clinton signed the airport…
Remember the quaint phrase "appearance of improprity"? Back in the scandal days of Ed Meese and John Tower and the Keating Five and Newt Gingrich, it was the media's favorite hanging offense. Whenever the editorial need arose to condemn officials whose wrongdoing hadn't been proved, "appearance of…
I recently picked up a collection of poems by a writer named Ann Carson and was happily struck by the simplicity of the biographical note -- or bio, as it's called in the trade -- written about the author. In its fine stark entirety, it reads: "Ann Carson lives in Canada." Not even the province in…
PAUL BEGALA IS NOT YOUR ORDINARY PR sleaze -- so why is he acting like one? In his private life, the presidential adviser is by all accounts a decent, upright person, an ardent Catholic with three children and a stable marriage. Off camera, he is friendly, intelligent, and witty. He is well liked…
WASHINGTON IS OBSESSED with campaign fund-raising practices. In 1997, political elites spent considerable energy debating the legality of Al Gore's telephone fund-raising, while a Senate committee held televised hearings on White House coffee klatches.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard professor, acclaimed author, and an occasional contributor of thoughtful articles to the New Yorker, made a very sensible observation on "The Two Nations of Black America," the recent PBS documentary he hosted on the economic successes, and failures, of black…
THE UNITED NATIONS WANTS TO DISARM Americans and other gun owners around the world. No, this is not some wild claim cooked up by the fevered imaginations of militia crazies. For the past couple of years, three different U.N. agencies -- the U.N. Disarmament Commission, the U.N. Panel of…
When Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the Today show last month to charge that a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" was behind the many allegations against her husband, it had to be a moment of triumph for Sidney Blumenthal. A long- time journalist turned senior White House staffer, Blumenthal has been…
There are many witnesses to the trail of Hurricane Monica. There are blameless ones like Bill Clinton's valets and stewards and Secret Service agents. There are not-so-blameless ones like his political handlers and sundry enablers. And all of them have lawyers. Most of the lawyers have been…
First, a warning. This article reports on the public statements that certain women have made about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Many of these statements are crude, vulgar, and sexually explicit. As a result, parts of this article may be offensive to children, men, and others not yet accustomed to…
"I DON'T HAVE TO STAY HERE and take this." That's what Sandy Berger, President Clinton's I national-security adviser, said in exasperation during a February 11 meeting with Senate Republicans, who were berating him and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for shortcomings in the administration's…
Under the heading "A Little Paranoia Isn't All That Crazy, a timely full- page advertisement in the February 12 Wall Street Journal for GBC Shredmaster paper shredders touts models that "will shred up to 19 pages at a time, at a blazing 45 feet per minute . . . even enough capacity for the White…
Public television has never been kind to Ronald Reagan. All through the 1980s, shows like Frontline and Nova assailed him, depicting him as a buccaneer, a menace, and worse. Conservatives, understandably, developed a thirst for eliminating PBS altogether.
RECENTLY AL HUNT, the Washington executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, published another in his series of columns in defense of President Clinton. Slyly, Hunt omitted any mention of the president. Instead, he drew a contrast between two Republicans: Senator John McCain, a heroic prisoner of…
Hannah Arendt
WITH FRIENDS LIKE George Stephanopoulos, Leon Panetta, and Dee Dee Myers, Presient Clinton scarcely needs enemies. During Clinton's first term, they were among his closest aides, always in daily contact with him. So their conspicuous absence now from the core group of strong Clinton supporters is…
Tina Brown, the reputedly super-sophisticated editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, attended the state dinner at the White House for Tony Blair last week. But her "Fax from Washington" in last week's issue, which sounds more like a late-night love letter, raises the important question: Was it her…
WHO was that Democratic senator carrying water for resident Clinton last week on This Week with Sam and Cokie, with his no-holds-barred condemnation of independent counsel Kenneth Starr? Why, it was none other than the moral colossus from Englewood, N.J. -- Robert "I was deeply moved by the…
D. M. Thomas
Ninety years ago, Max Beerbohm drew a series of cartoons titled "The Young Self Meets the Old Self" about the strange twists in the lives of the famous and near-famous of his day. Max, we miss you now! A generation of young liberals who were jolted into political activism by presidential lying are…
THE SCRAPBOOK is no fan of the independent-counsel law. Among other dire effects, it has contributed almost as much as the O. J. trial to the alarming lawyer glut on television. Have you noticed that every network now has a seemingly endless supply of former independent counsels as commentators?…
J. V. Cunningham
You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to pull off one of those vast, right-wing conspiracy tricks on New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. In fact, it helps to wake up in 1958.
Patricia Pearson
Julianne Malveaux, a syndicated columnist and television talking head, may be the most . . . venomous pundit in the business. Perhaps you remember the charming comment she made in 1994 about Clarence Thomas: "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men…
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28.
"STOCKS SOAR ON OPTIMISM OVER ASIA," announced a page-one headline in last week's Washington Post. Anyone would think the Asian crisis was all but over, and the U.S. economy safely set to grow at 2-3 percent this year, and the stock market primed to whip past 10,000. . . . Well, don't bet the ranch…
It's worth remembering that Kenneth Starr wasn't always the left wing's idea of a right-wing conspirator. Before his appointment as independent counsel, Starr enjoyed widespread respect and was considered a likely Supreme Court nominee.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's invitation to journalists to investigate the vast right-wing conspiracy was taken to heart by CNN, which aired a one-hour prime- time documentary on independent counsel Kenneth Starr's "strong political background." The portentously titled show, "Investigating the…
French monarchs used to reward their favorites by admitting them into the bathroom for private moments. The Clinton White House hasn't yet ascended to that level, but it is still interesting to see which journalists are favored with invitations to state dinners. For example, on February 5,…
The good news is that some clear thinking about U.S. policy toward Iraq has emerged from the muddle of the past few months. Responsible political leaders, outside the Clinton administration, have come to grips with the iron logic of the current impasse: If you want to save the United States and its…
With sex dominating the news, electric-utility reform is not exactly the stuff of conversation on the Washington cocktail circuit. And with reason: It is more complicated than airline and telecom deregulation were, and it relates to a service that most people take for granted. But consider this: If…
THE DOGGONE, LOWDOWN, country-western-style string o' bad luck that is Gennifer Flowers's love life finally broke two weeks ago. Bill Clinton's January 17 deposition in the Paula Jones case, the Washington Post reported, acknowledged at last the love affair that Flowers had claimed on the eve of…
If you don't know Dr. Ray Greco, you don't live in the northern tip of West Virginia, and a shame, too. Norman Rockwell couldn't have drawn a more appealing physician -- kindly, wise, all-capable. Dr. Greco is also a bit of a radio star, hosting a Saturday-morning call-in show called "Let's Talk…
REP. STEVE BUYER OF INDIANA is not a household name, even among Indiana Republicans. But House speaker Newt Gingrich stood aside on February 4 for Buyer to address a closed-door gathering of all 228 House Republicans. Buyer took on Topic A: the pathetic response by congressional Republicans to the…
FINALLY! WE'RE TWO WEEKS INTO the most sordid presidential scandal in memory, and people have at last roused themselves to a state of moral indignation. A villain has been found -- a suitable target for ethical outrage. Is it the president who allegedly used the Oval Office to cheat on his wife…
THE SCRAPBOOK offered a bounty -- a one-year subscription to THE WEEKLY STANDARD -- to the first person who mailed in the incriminating photo shown here, in which this magazine's executive editor impersonates a Green Bay Packers fan. The winner of the subscription is Democratic senator Russ…
We now know three things for sure that we did not know two weeks ago when the president of the United States categorically denied both a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and an attempt to dissuade her from contradicting him.
Michael Lind
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for an entry-level staff assistant. This is an administrative position working with the business and circulation staff. Please send your resume to: Business Manager, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, D.C. 20036.…
ERSKINE BOWLES SHOULD HAVE GONE HOME. Two weeks after he reluctantly agreed to stay through 1998 as White House chief of staff, Bowles was supplanted. He kept the title, but his duties are now performed by Mickey Kantor, the Washington fixer-lawyer and ex-commerce secretary. Kantor was brought in…
Republicans are always complaining that Bill Clinton has stolen their best issues, and crime is their Exhibit No. 1. Sure enough, in his State of the Union address, the president boasted that his administration is pursuing a " strategy of more police, tougher punishment, and smarter prevention."…
It is an American illusion that other nations are Lager to have pointed out to them what the U.S. government regards as their defects. . . . It is our little conceit that once other nations have learned how we feel, they will mend their ways." The author of this opinion is neither Susan Sontag nor…
With the best of intentions, some Republicans are pushing to incorporate into the U.S. tax code the crowning achievement of Swedish social radicalism: the idea that the individual, not the family, is society's basic unit of taxation.
There was a time not long ago, though it's hard to remember now, when the talk of fellatio in our office was confined to whispered exchanges of Pamela Lee Web addresses. But Monica Lewinsky has changed that. The president has again embarrassed the media into making his privates public. Decorum is…
Greg Mitchell
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON is eager to turn the public against Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, for the obvious reason that he might be intimidated and back off. But there's a less obvious reason, too. The public's view of Starr would be enormously important in either of two eventualities: a…
PRESIDENT CLINTON MAY HAVE FINALLY denied flat out that he had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but the country is still waiting for prominent Democrats to say they believe him. Strip away the qualifiers, and public support for the president has ranged from hesitant to ainusingly…
POTOMAC, MD., 7:30 A.M. The clock-radio comes on. NPR has nothing new. The pundit reaches across his pillow for the remote control and flicks on the network morning shows. They're back to health and fitness stories. C-SPAN has some congressman on discussing telecom reform. The pundit's heart sinks.…
Here's some helpful spin for Ann Lewis, James Carville, and the other bitter-end defenders of Bill Clinton: Not everyone judges the president harshly for allegedly indulging a certain sexual taste with a young White House intern.
Trent Lott did give a stinging response to Bill Clinton's State of the Union address. Not the tepid performance a few minutes after Clinton finished speaking, but his answer two days before the speech on This Week with Sam and Cokie. George Will asked Lott if he thought "moral turpitude" was…
JUDGED AS RHETORIC, STATE OF THE UNION addresses are always failures, and the great flopping mess that President Clinton dropped on a joint session of Congress last week was no different. Like all previous efforts in the form -- and indeed like his own presidency -- the speech was themeless,…
WHEN THE MONICA LEWINSKY storm broke, many reporters wrote that Bill Clinton would lack for allies among congressional Democrats: He has always held them at arm's length. But by the time he delivered his State of the Union address, he had them in his hip pocket. Almost in lock step, Democrats had…
Isaac Bashevis Singer
AT STAKE IN THE MONICA LEWINSKY affair is no less than the balance of forces in American politics. If the alleged events are conclusively proven -- even if the scandal results merely in the airing of more and more unpalatable facts about Bill Clinton -- there is a strong possibility that the whole…
There are claims so old, to paraphrase a famous line from the Partisan Review's William Phillips, that one can't remember the answers to them -- or recall much beyond the fact that they were demolished a long, long time ago.
FOR SIX YEARS, COVERING THE BILL CLINTON scandals has been like being in a greased-pig contest. So the Monica Lewinsky disgrace raises the question, What do you do with a greased pig once you catch him?
Joel Carpenter
That brilliant, appalling, and unignorable pianist, Martha Argerich, will always be thought of as a young tigress: her hair tumbling down her back, her shoulders hunched, her eyes blazing -- as though she would rather devour the keyboard than play it. Many critics consider her the greatest living…
Speaking of Bill Clinton's power to seduce: He is luring the GOP Congress into surrender on Medicare.
If you want a friend in Washington, get a reporter. The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt, for example, has been smoochingly loyal to Vernon Jordan, a Hunt buddy and also a member of the board of directors of Hunt's employer, Dow Jones. Here's a typical effusion from the silver-maned pundit on ABC's…
Last week's cover piece by Tucker Carlson, "Horror in the Court," told the story of Latrena Pixley, a 24-year-old Washington, D.C., woman who murdered her young daughter six years ago and was recently awarded custody of her 2- year-old son. Laura Blankman, a 27-year-old police trainee who has taken…
For most Americans, the dramatic drop in the nation's crime rate has been a piece of pure good news. But at the New York Times, it has caused deep intellectual puzzlement. After all, if you subscribe to the old-time liberal religion of "root causes," crime rates aren't supposed to go down until…
"With dictators, nothing succeeds like success." That observation, by Adolf Hitler, is not as trite as it sounds. Hitler was referring to his own successful remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. Before he moved into the Rhineland, Hitler was securely "in his box," as the Clinton administration…
It's almost always a mistake not to speak of the dead, especially when one has good things to say. I passed up a chance to do so a while back, and I continue to regret it. An acquaintance -- one on the cusp of becoming a friend -- died in his middle sixties. He was a widower and a painter, an…
Lately I've been reading the new book from the always-discerning journalist Michael Fumento, an essay into the question of why Americans are such fatties. And we are, of course; even our foremost advocate of diet and exercise, Richard Simmons, is a fatty. Fumento's The Fat of the Land, published…
She appears, in happier times, to have called him "Schmucko," with a vulgar sort of familiar affection. Later on, after things got complicated between them, she renamed him "the Creep." And in those surreptitiously tape-recorded conversations with her confidante, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky also…
PRESIDENT CLINTON ISN'T DEAD YET. A prosecutable case against him will be difficult to make, since it may come down to the word of 24-year-old Monica Lewinsky against the denials of Clinton and Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan. Chances are, the president will survive the three final years of his…
Saddam Hussein is back in the news -- and back on the minds of U.S. policymakers, who soon must come to grips with his prolonged defiance. It may be useful, then, to revisit the Iraqi leader and his aspirations. For this is no tinhorn dictator or mere bombastic demagogue, but a thoroughly ruthless…
WITH UNCTUOUS PIETY, former independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, of Iran- contra fame, declared repeatedly last week that he feels sorry for Kenneth Starr. Poor Ken, he said: so far away from investigating an Arkansas land deal, now trapped in the story of a presidential peccadillo.
IN THE FIRST HOURS AND DAYS of the burgeoning Monica Lewinsky scandal, reporters naturally wanted to find out whether the president had personally urged the onetime White House intern to lie under oath, or if he himself had lied in the deposition taken by Paula Jones's lawyers. But in their…
TWO DAYS AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE sex story broke in the United States, Al Hayat, an influential Arabic-language newspaper published in London, ran large, above-the-fold photographs of Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. " President's Relationship With Daughter of Jewish Doctor May Be Cause of His…
Close readers will recall the assertion in last week's Casual by Fred Barnes that the Super Bowl is a conservative event and that "liberals often spend Super Sunday at the movies or browsing at Borders."