FIRST FREELOADERS

Okay, it's not an impeachable offense, but there's something cheap and tacky about Bill and Hillary Clinton's freeloading on their vacations. This is not what other presidents and first ladies have done -- all those folks the Clintons claimed they'd be more ethical than. The Fords and Carters paid rent for vacation homes, and the Reagans and Bushes went to their own spreads for rest and relaxation. True, the Clintons don't own a vacation home, or any residence for that matter. But that doesn't excuse their willingness to pay nothing for their five-day stay last week at plush White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida, near Jacksonville.

This continued a Clinton family practice that started with their stay on Martha's Vineyard in 1993 at the home of former secretary of defense Robert McNamara. The Clintons came back for three more freebies in 1994, 1997, and 1998, staying at the Vineyard house of real estate developer Richard Friedman. Twice, they've vacationed for free in Jackson Hole, Wyoming -- at Sen. Jay Rockefeller's spread in 1995 and financier Max Chapman's in 1996. In 1994, they spent all-expenses-paid days in Coronado, California, thanks to Democratic fundraiser Larry Lawrence, whose body was later disinterred from Arlington National Cemetery because he'd lied about his military record.

Then there was the stay at film mogul Steven Spielberg's spread in the Hamptons in 1998. It was gratis, as were the vacations in the Virgin Islands in 1998 at the home of local residents Jay and Dolly Greblick and last year and this year in Park City, Utah, at Hollywood bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg's ski chalet.

So what's wrong with being the First Freeloaders? The Beltway press corps, with the exception of Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News, has ignored the question entirely. Still, there was enough wrong with taking freebies that Gerald Ford felt obligated to pay rent for his twice yearly stays in Vail, Colorado, and Jimmy Carter paid the going rate to vacation at a government guest lodge in Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming. This spared them accusations of sponging or creating potential conflicts of interest. The Clintons don't bother with such ethical niceties. But here's a question the press might ask: Is a president whose vacations are paid for by movie execs likelier to go easy on Hollywood after something like the Littleton massacre?