Just when THE SCRAPBOOK was tempted to give Bill Clinton some small amount of credit for lying low during the Florida litigation, we came across a remarkable interview that the president granted to New York Daily News gossip columnist Mitchell Fink.
"The Republicans don't want any more hand recounts because they know [Gore] won," Clinton told Fink when he was in New York for a fund-raising benefit November 30. That much was just a Gore talking point. The worst was still to come.
Clinton was asked if he thought there would be hand recounts conducted after Inauguration Day, since Florida law will make the ballots available to the public. "Definitely," he said. This, too, is a standard Gore talking point. For the past week every Democrat from Dianne Feinstein, to Dick Gephardt, to Mario Cuomo has been predicting that "someone" in a few months will examine the ballots under Florida's Freedom of Information Act, and (they then ask portentously) what will happen if we learn that Gore actually won?
Here's what will happen, Clinton told Fink: "Then America looks like a fraud. They'd kill us around the world. It will be harder to trust us from that point on."
It's a close contest, given all Bill Clinton has said over the past eight years, but this probably qualifies as Clinton's most irresponsible statement ever. So basically, says Clinton, if Al Gore does not succeed him in the White House, America's government will be "a fraud" in the eyes of the world. Thank you, Mr. President.