Respond

July/August 1999 - Volume 31 Issue 7

One of our favorite stories involves the late Marvella Bayh, whose son Evan is a senator from Indiana, a seat that had previously belonged to her husband, Birch. When she got the news that her husband had been declared the winner of his first senate race, she exclaimed, "Daddy this means we get to go to Europe!" That's all the background you need to understand the news that Senators Richard Shelby, Ted Stevens, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell and their wives attended the Paris Air Show last month as the official representatives of the United States Senate.

They say Al Gore can't pick Energy Secretary Bill Richardson as his vice presidential running mate because of the Chinese spy scandal. But how much hay is George W. Bush going to be able to make out of that scandal - which, after all, went on undetected for the four years his father occupied the White House?

The causes we share with Steve Forbes are few, but there is one matter in which we agree. He says the new $20 bill looks like "Monopoly money" and promises to replace it. Why on earth did Robert Rubin and Larry Summers give us such dubious-looking currency?

Speaking of Al Gore, here's what Dick Morris has to say about his choice of campaign manager: "Vice President Al Gore has selected the former skipper of the Titanic to save his sinking presidential campaign. Tony Coelho ... earned this amazing promotion after masterminding the Democratic Party's most massive defeat in 50 years - the 1994 loss of the House and the Senate."

When Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. Robert C. Smith asked a luncheon audience for questions after his speech to the conservative Federalist Society, someone inquired about Smith's views on Bill Lann Lee, the acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights division who is high on the conservatives' most unpopular public officials list. Smith replied, according to Slate, with an indignant denunciation of the Energy Department security lapses. They should have kept a closer watch on the fellow, Smith said, concluding that people were saying "the bombing in Kosovo was designed to distract the public's attention from the Bill Lann Lee matter." Smith appears to have thought that Bill Lann Lee was Wen Ho Lee, the scientist suspected of having leaked nuclear secrets to China.

When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1995, they enacted a six-year limit on committee chairmanships. This has become a matter of the deepest regret to the 11 committee chairmen who will have to surrender their chairs after the next election. They include Bill Clinton's pal Henry Hyde (Judiciary), tax foe Bill Archer (Ways and Means), and tobacco advocate Thomas Bliley (Commerce). The chairmen are not, however, going quietly into the night. Most are said to be plotting to preserve their essential powers. Transportation Committee Chair Bud Shuster, for example, "will likely take over a recently formed subcommittee with consolidated oversight of all highway and rail matters," according to The Wall Street Journal's Greg Hitt.

Now that the recent conflict in Yugoslavia has cast doubt on Tom Friedman's dictum that countries with McDonald's don't go to war, The New York Times columnist has substituted Starbucks for McDonald's. He now says, "A country with a middle class willing to pay $3 for a cup of coffee with foam on it is much less likely to go to war with its neighbors."

Speaking of Bud Shuster, his dear friend Ann Eppard, who has been indicted by a federal grand jury for taking payoffs while working as Shuster's aide, has continued to rake in "hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees," according to Lorraine Adams of The Washington Post, from clients "seeking to capitalize on her access to Shuster and her decades-deep knowledge of the committee." Adams adds that Eppard has continued to serve as Shuster's chief fund-raiser, remaining on the campaign payroll at $3000 a month.

Who was pulling the strings behind Dan Quayle's recent attack on George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism"? Texas Monthly says the pupeteer was John Sununu, the co-chairman of Quayle's presidential campaign, who blames George W. for his 1991 dismissal as President Bush's chief of staff. A friend of George W.'s told the magazine "Sununu is exactly that petty and exactly that stupid."

If you live around here, you've probably spent hours fuming in traffic in front of the Wilson Bridge, which carries Washington Beltway traffic across the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland. The Washington Post has run more than 20 editorials advocating a new drawbridge to ease the traffic. But it has stopped mentioning that the main reason an expensive new drawbridge is needed is to permit the passage of ships loaded with newsprint. Guess who uses the newsprint? The Post, of course. Why did it stop revealing it's interest? "We had it on record adequately and fully for some period of time," says Stephen Rosenfeld, who recently replaced the late Meg Greenfield as editor of the Post's editorial page. "It was no longer an issue."

Cynics suspect that the Post doesn't want its readers to know that most of those hideous traffic jams that torment Beltway motorists when the drawbridge is up are caused by The Washington Post. Not to mention that Post readers who are also taxpayers will be paying for the new bridge.

We owe that item to the Washingtonian's Chuck Conconi and Harry Jaffe. And we are indebted to the Washingtonian's Vivian Ronay for our photograph of Eleanor Mondale which we publish in the interests of fuller explanation of why Monica Lewinsky created that mini riot when a White House guard told her that Mondale was in Bill Clinton's office. Our only question is, what did Hillary do when she found out?

When things were looking bad for the administration in Kosovo, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott asked his fellow Republicans to sign a letter calling for the resignation of National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. But, according to The Hill, he was able to get only 17 signatures and decided to abandon the effort. Among the cooler heads who refused to sign and were said to have influenced others: John McCain, Richard Shelby, Chuck Hagel, and John Chafee.

Here's a Who's Who exclusive. If Hillary Clinton lives in New York it's not likely the First Couple will see much of one another. Bill Clinton, of course, will have to spend some time at his library in Little Rock. But most of all, he is said by a very reliable source to be looking longingly at the possibility of residing in Southern California. (Maybe he's still wondering what it would be like with Sharon Stone.)

~Susan Threadgill