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December 1998 - Volume 30 Issue 12

Clinton's Candor... Surplus Scientists... Libertarian Lunacy... Push Polling... Star's Disingenuous "explicitly."

"Sales of supermarket tab-loids have gone down since the Lewinsky matter surfaced in January," reports Jennifer Harper in the Washington Times. "The National Enquirer, the Star, and the Globe have lost respectively 18.8 percent, 14.4 percent, and 18.9 percent of their readship." This should surprise no one. Their act had been taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the major media, including our most respected newspapers.

"Delaware thanks you, Maryland," says a current television commercial. Thanks for what? For not having slot machines at Maryland race tracks as Delaware does. The ad is not paid for by Delaware. It is sponsored by the Maryland Jockey Club which wants to have slot machines at Maryland race tracks. It tells the people of Maryland, "You lose revenue for schools by not permitting slot machines at race tracts."

This is not one of the glories of the American federal system. Too often, it pits one state against another. "If they allow gambling we must or we'll lose revenue." If other states allow industries to pollute air and water, we must do the same or lose business to them. If they tax business less than its fair share we must do the same to keep the businesses that might leave. "Delaware does it" should not excuse a bad policy in Maryland, but consider how many times have you heard state rivalry used to justify a wrong public policy.

In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee was determining what charges should be brought against Richard Nixon as grounds for impeachment. Even though there was evidence that Nixon had committed tax fraud by withholding documents that qualified him for tax deductions of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the committee voted 26-12 that he should not be impeached for tax fraud. Why? According to Robert F. Drinan and Wayne Owens, who were on the committee, "because it did not involve official conduct."

This is the same reason President Clinton should not be impeached. But his behavior in the Lewinsky matter has been bad enough to merit some punishment. In June, we recommended rebuke by the Congress. Last month, former president Gerald Ford made the same recommendation in the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. This is the answer. We want Bill Clinton to know we the people don't like what he did, but we want to put this matter behind us so we can go on to deal with the problems confronting the country and the world.

The chance that further hearings will develop significant additional evidence of guilt is minimal. After all, the Starr-Fiske team has devoted almost five years to investigating the president. My guess is that most of the new material will be the exculpatory evidence that was left out of the Starr report.

Among the exculpatory material is the evidence developed by Jill Abramson and Don Van Natta Jr. of The New York Times that a network of conservative lawyers conspired to form a link between Paula Jones' lawyers, Linda Tripp, and Starr's team of prosecutors.

But the exculpatory evidence that fascinates me the most is Monica Lewinsky's "no one asked me to lie" statement, which she volunteered at the end of the grand jury testimony. I can see the look of dismay on the faces of the Starr prosecutors as their case sank right there. They had to conceal it in the report, which they did by saying she did not "explicitly" say she had been asked to lie. How disingenuous can you get! She not only didn't explicitly say she had been asked to lie, she explicitly said she had not been asked to lie.

Ken Starr's defenders emulate his disingenuousness. Consider a Washington Post editorial taking Starr's side on the issue of whether he misrepresented Lewinsky's "no one asked me to lie." The Post said, "Mr. Starr's report paraphrased her statement, and it does not allege any such direct requests." The editorial avoids the "explicitly" problem by not mentioning it. Thus Post readers are left with no basis for understanding the way in which Starr was misleading.

The United States has spent $5.8 trillion on its nuclear weapons program since 1940 - more than it has spent on any other program except social security, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution. One hopes this news is reported in India, Pakistan, and other nations playing or contemplating the possibility of playing the nuclear game. They also should know that the expense of making and deploying the weapons is far from being the whole story. Stephen Schwartz, the scholar who conducted the study, says "cleanup costs may be as much as the weapons cost in the first place."

Senator Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who is running for reelection this fall, is the latest victim of push-polling, an especially nasty political trick. The voter is given a negative information, often false or misleading, about the candidate, in the form of a question about how he will vote. One Wisconsin voter was asked if she would vote for Feingold if she knew he was going to "dip into money in the Social Security [trust fund], and it was going to be sent to Russia for the space monkey project." Another man was asked "if I'd vote for a senator who spent money on a study on cow flatulence."

A spokesman for Feingold's opponent told The Hill's Robert Schlesinger: "First of all, we don't do push-polling. Second of all, we don't know anything about it." The first of this statements is no doubt true. Usually, smart candidates avoid doing dirty tricks themselves. The spokesman's second sentence is less likely to be true. Usually someone in the campaign knows about or is actually coordinating dirty tricks played by the campaign's allies.

Daniel Greenberg writes an interesting column on science that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Recently, he reported on the glut of Ph.D.s in biology and other sciences. Why have universities continued to overproduce these Ph.D.s despite many warnings? The reason is that teaching the new Ph.D. candidates supports the professors who run the guilty departments. And once the excess scientists are in the job market, they provide a cheap labor pool to provide assistants to help tenured professors do their research.

"Now many progressives, who had no problem with the media investigating the heck out of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, are shocked that journalists are applying the same treatment to President Clinton," writes Howard Kurtz, the media critic for The Washington Post. The same treatment? By the beginning of this year, I would guess, the press had devoted more space to allegations against Clinton than to all the investigations of Reagan and Bush combined. And that coverage has been dwarfed by the space devoted to the Monica Lewinsky story just this year.

The irony is that the Monica Lewinsky story concerned lying and covering up lies about sex, where Iran-Contra, as James Fallows pointed out in our last issue, involved lies and cover ups about matters of state, about this government's relations with foreign governments. Why doesn't Kurtz add up the columns devoted by The Washington Post to Iran-Contra and the columns it has devoted to the Lewinsky case? That would make a very interesting story.

Speaking of equal time for scandals, you had to love the way The Washington Post buried "Justice Looked at GOP Votes on Tobacco." The story was given half of one column about seven inches down the right side of page 11 even though it told of a Justice Department investigation of possible bribery of Republican senators by the tobacco companies. Specifically, the allegation was that the tobacco companies promised to run ads helpful to Republicans who voted against the bill. Bribery, in contrast to consensual sex, or even lying about consensual sex, is a crime that involves the public duties of public officials.

And speaking of the Post, one of its reporters wanted me to join in attacking Clinton's cover-up of his adultery. I mentioned a very highly-placed person at the Post who had recently been guilty of the same sin, and she said "we can't talk about that." How many Post employees justify that cover-up while condemning Clinton's?

I know all this sounds like I'm picking on the Post. I don't intend to. It's just that it offers this month's juiciest examples. Its offenses against Bill Clinton are no worse than those of the media in general. At its best, it is much better than most, having won our Monthly Journalism Award, at last count, more than any other paper.

The ingenuity of the legal profession in coming up with new reasons for suing someone is a tribute to creative power of the human mind. Consider two cases recently instituted by Ronald Benjamin, a lawyer in Binghamton, New York. In one he is claiming damages for some people who took diet drugs, based not on the harm the drugs did to them, but on the anxiety his clients experienced when they learned the drugs had harmed others. In another case, Benjamin is suing Pfizer, according to Richard Schmitt of the Wall Street Journal, on the claim that "Viagra made his client, who was driving home from a date, run into a tree." Mr. Benjamin prepared himself for his career in law by serving a stretch for grand larceny at Sing Sing. This seems appropriate. After all, the values imparted by that institution are not very different from those American law schools inculcate in their alumni.

Speaking of lawsuits, one on behalf of four college teachers in West Virginia cost the taxpayers $603,608 because a state institution had been at fault. What upset The Charleston Gazette was how the pot was divvied up. The professors got $220,000. Their lawyer got $170,000, and the state's law firm $213,608.

That 1997 turboprop crash near Detroit that killed the 29 people aboard could have been prevented, according to officials of the National Transportation Safety Board. New de-icing procedures had been developed by the plane's manufacturer after a similar crash in 1994. But the FAA had not ordered airlines using the plane to implement them. Why? According to Matthew Wald of The New York Times, "While one branch of the FAA had approved the plan, that information did not get to the branch that would have made it a requirement for pilots."

There is an answer to this problem. In cases where the NTSB is convinced that lives are endangered, give it the power to order the FAA to take action. The FAA is cumbersome and slow to act. The NTSB is faster, smarter, and less a pawn of the airlines.

Still another illustration of our point that more often than not what we need is not less regulation but regulation that is tougher and smarter. After the FDA's Dr. Rudolf Widmark found evidence that the drug Duract caused more liver-cell damage than any other similar medication available, the FDA let the drug's manufacturer, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, talk it into downplaying the danger. The only caution given people who took the drug, according to the Wall Street Journal's Rochelle Sharpe, was "a mild warning about potential dangers printed in tiny type in the 19th paragraph of the 56-paragraph label that accompanied the drug's packaging."

What happened as a result? After four death and eight cases requiring liver transplants, Wyeth pulled the drug off the market.

Two more examples where we need more regulation: 1. furniture, where the Consumer Products Commission does not require either flame retardant or the use of non-flammable material in the manufacture of furniture. 2. dietary supplements ranging from vitamins to the androstenedione that Mark McGwire takes, which the FDA cannot regulate until harm actually occurs, at which time the product still remains on sale until the FDA completes its testing and proves its case against the supplement in court.

Regulation of the furniture industry is resisted by congressmen like Roger Wicker who represent districts with furniture manufacturers. The dietary supplement industry has immense power, having grown, according to The New York Times, from $8 billion in sales to $12 billion in just the last four years.

Food is another area where greater protection is needed. A new inspection program instituted by the Department of Agriculture has cut the incidence of salmonella contamination nearly in half. But they still have a long way to go. Salmonella, according to one article in The Washington Post, "sickens 3.8 million Americans each year."

All food-borne illness combined, according to another article from Reuters, "kills an estimated 9,000 people every year and makes up to 81 million others sick." The National Academy of Sciences has recommended that the White House appoint a food safety chief who would have power over all food safety operations. The power is now divided, with confusing overlapping jurisdictions. "For example," points out Reuters, "the manufacturing of frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, but a frozen pizza with pepperoni Š falls under the Department of Agriculture jurisdiction."

In the president's much maligned speech the night of his grand jury testimony, there was one statement for which he deserves credit that he has not received. It came when he said, "I did it first of all to protect myself," then "to protect my family." Most politicians would have piously referred only to their family and not even mentioned the desire to save their own skins.

Who killed campaign finance reform? According to Washington's most highly respected political columnist, David Broder, "It was the adamant opposition of the Republican congressional leadership that ultimately stalled campaign finance legislation." On one critical House roll call, only 61 of 228 House Republicans voted for reform. On another, the count was even worse - only 51 Republicans.

Republicans oppose campaign finance reform because the present system takes such good care of them. So far the Republicans have raised $260 million for this year's elections compared to the Democrats' $165 million. In Kentucky their senatorial candidate has raised almost three times as much as his Democratic opponent. In New York, Al D'Amato's lifetime service to the special interests has earned about five times as much money as Schumer has been able to raise.

If it is the Republicans who are the main beneficiaries of the current odious system of campaign finance and it is Republicans who are the principle opponents of reform, why does Howell Raines want to investigate the Democrats? Raines, the editorial page editor of The New York Times, has been pressuring Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Clinton-Gore fund raising. This would surely result in a presidency that would continue under prosecutorial assault until January 20, 2001.

Even if Raines fails to bend Reno to his will, he has another strategy for making sure Clinton will continue to be investigated ad infinitum. He is urging Henry Hyde to expand the impeachment proceedings to include "any credible evidence" against Clinton on Whitewater, Filegate, and Travelgate.

Even though the Republicans torpedoed campaign finance reform, as well as the administration's efforts to protect kids from tobacco, rebuild crumbling schools, and give HMO patients a bill of rights, they may win the general election. Their voters are hot to repudiate Bill Clinton, and the Democratic turnout does not look promising. Judging by the primaries, it could be a disaster. According to a report by the Center for the Study of the Non-Voter, Democratic turnout set new record lows in 20 states in the 1998 primaries. Republicans by contrast had new lows in only three states, which were more than offset by new highs in Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, and North Carolina.

A year or so ago, the Washington Post Magazine launched a feature called "The Fine Print." It was an obvious rip-off of our Memo of the Month, which has been a Monthly feature for 29 years. We wondered why all those bright fellows over at the Post couldn't think of their own ideas and not have to steal one from the Monthly. But instead of being angry, we decided to be flattered and have since followed the Post's effort with interest. Sometimes, we have to admit, they do a dandy job. Just last month they came up with a press release from the Ayn Rand Institute calling for students to volunteer to oppose volunteerism. This has to be the high water mark of libertarian lunacy.

Joe Lockhart has a pet peeve that we share. When Bill Clinton tries to address the major problems of this country and the world, it is reported with leads such as: "In an attempt to divert attention," or "In an effort to appear presidential." Another version of the tactic comes in the reports that "Lewinsky scandal dogs Clinton in Russia" or "Clinton dogged by Monica story in Northern Ireland." Did Russian reporters or Irish reporters ask a lot of questions about the scandal? The answer is no. The questions were asked by reporters working for news services used by American editors. In other words, it was the American press that was dogging Clinton.

Have you ever felt you were falling asleep while driving? I did once and it remains a terrifying memory. I was so desperate that I turned up the radio to full volume and started slapping myself. I was too stupid to think of pulling over the side of the road; but even this is sometimes not possible because of the nature of the highway or the unsafe area you're driving through. I was lucky enough to get home safely but an awful lot of people aren't so fortunate. The result is an estimated 200,000 asleep-at-the-wheel accidents each year.

Many of the victims don't even realize they are drifting off. There may be an answer to that problem. A "sleep alarm" has been has been developed by a company in New Mexico that sounds a warning if a driver's eyes close. According to a letter written to Business Week, "General Motors 'studied it for a full year and finally turned it down at the board level, we were told, because it might fail and lead to more lawsuits.'"

Fifty thousand criminal cases were begun last year by the federal government. How many of them were about perjury? Eighty-seven.

"As prosecutors, we encounter people who lie under oath all the time," a prosecuting attorney recently told Roberto Suro and Bill Miller of The Washington Post. "A day doesn't go by when somebody doesn't come to court and bend it a little. If you were determined to prosecute every falsehood people made in court, that is all you would be doing."

One clear justification for prosecuting perjury is when the lie covers up a crime. Bill Clinton lied to cover up consensual sex. Consensual sex is not a crime. "Covering up an affair is a universal impulse," writes Jonathan Rauch in the National Journal. "The proper response is disapproval, not prosecution." Or as Maureen Dowd, not usually a Clinton defender, puts it, "These are not grounds for impeachment; these are grounds for divorce."

Let me make clear that I do not believe "everybody does it" should excuse adultery. It should not. What it should do, however, is moderate the righteousness we bring to the criticism of others. The moral fervor would be better directed at an effort to improve our own behavior.

~Charles Peters