With all the hubbub over George Stephanopoulos's supposed "betrayal" of Bill Clinton, one could easily lose sight of this: Amazingly few of his employees and associates have actually felt compelled to "betray" him by telling the truth. After all, so much to betray, so little betrayal.
This was the subject of a fantastic rant by columnist Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer last week on the subject of Lanny Davis. Davis is a friend of Bill, as Rosenbaum put it, "in the sense Bill Clinton has friends: people he can lie to shamelessly, whose lives and reputations he can ruin callously and still count on to go on TV and defend him."
What most ticked off Rosenbaum was Lanny Davis's attack on Juanita Broaddrick. "How do we know she didn't lie to all her friends?" Davis had been quoted in the Washington Post.
"Amazing!" wrote Rosenbaum. "Without knowing the facts, without pausing for a moment to wonder 'Gee, he's lied to me so many times before and I've looked like such a fool so many times before for defending him, wouldn't it be a good idea to hesitate for just a moment before smearing a woman who says she's been raped and calling her the liar? Don't I have any responsibility to think twice before mouthing off, just this once?' Even if he (apparently) doesn't care whether Bill Clinton screwed Juanita Broaddrick, he knows Bill Clinton's screwed him repeatedly. But there he is lining up, assuming the position so eagerly, so readily, once again.
"In some ways the case of Lanny Davis is special, more egregious, but perhaps more explicable. I blame Yale. Well not Yale University, precisely, but the Yale Daily News and the culture of Establishment suck-uppery it cultivates. When I arrived, an alienated outsider at Yale, Lanny Davis was already on his way to becoming the ultimate Insider, the chairman of the Yale Daily News, an exalted position that is not attained without strenuous sucking upward to the upperclassmen who hold the striving Yale Daily candidate's fate in their hands. I think it is not insignificant that the initial heated competition for a coveted place on the ladder to the chairmanship of the Yale Daily was, appropriately enough, called 'Heeling.' It is, you will notice, a term adopted from dog training.
"And not for nothing. Good dogs, compliant dogs, go far, although that may be Lanny's tragedy: so much heeling, so little to show for it on his own -- until, relatively late in his career, his being a Friend of Bill, chief sycophant to the Commander in Chief, gave him a shot at the gold ring."