Saturday, February 14, 1998

What's so right-wing about this machine?

By Joseph Spear

Bill Clinton's predicament is not, in Hillary's unfortunate phrase, the product of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy.' It is, in the apt locution of conservative savant William Kristol, more the work of an 'attack machine.'

The triggerword 'conspiracy' implies savvy and smarts, and the gaggle of wackos and wowsers who are dedicated to the deposal of the president at any cost doesn't deserve that much respect.

They don't conspire. They just load and fire.

The existence of a large contingent of fervid Clinton haters is well documented. They accuse him of satyriasis, theft, drug dealing and collusion in 56 murders. Normal people view this crowd, deservedly so, as a collection of screwballs.

But what of those who launched the investigation of the Whitewater land deal, which has devolved into the sex scandal that now threatens to besmirch the Clinton legacy for all time? Is it not ungenerous to ascribe political motive to them?

Well, let's see. In 1994, Whitewater was being probed by a veteran Republican prosecutor named Robert Fiske. But the two senators from North Carolina, Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, did not regard him as sufficiently ardent. So they lunched with a Helms crony named David Sentelle, the judge who heads the panel that appoints independent counsels, and -- coincidentally, of course -- Fiske was fired and Kenneth Starr was hired.

Why Starr? He had been a Supreme Court clerk, had been an administrator in the Ronald Reagan Justice Department, had been a Reagan solicitor general, had been a federal appeals judge, had been a private attorney. But he had never investigated anyone, had never sent anyone to jail. Is it possible Starr was chosen for his political expertise? Perish the thought.

So, let us sum up the situation in unambiguous language: A right-wing independent counsel is appointed by a right-wing judge after a meeting with two right-wing senators. The right-wing prosecutor continues his private practice, in which he has represented the Republican Party, Big Tobacco and a right-wing foundation. He takes time out to speak at a law school founded by a self-anointed holy man and right-wing crackpot.

Moving on: There resides in the land a rich right-wing publisher who bankrolls many right-wing foundations and publications that specialize in Clinton bashing. The right-wing publisher underwrites a school at Pepperdine University which the right-wing prosecutor Starr announces he will administer.

The right-wing prosecutor coerces the testimony of two documented liars but needs the help of a woman who refuses to cooperate, so he throws her in jail for a year and a half. By 1998, the right-wing prosecutor has spent $34 million and three-and-a-half years in the fruitless pursuit of Clinton's scalp, and he is getting desperate.

Then a sex thing falls in his lap. Our right-wing prosecutor -- son of a Church of Christ minister, former Bible salesman, pious ideologue who stops on his morning jog to sing hymns aloud -- is in his element at last.

The way it comes about is this: A shrewish holdover from the Bush administration tape-records a former White House intern talking about an affair with the president. The shrew tells a right-wing book agent, who arranges for the tattler a right-wing lawyer who has worked for a right-wing foundation funded by the right-wing publisher. The telltale goes to the right-wing prosecutor, who wires her up to secretly record the intern. Newsweek magazine hears about the investigation and its nascent story is outed by a right-wing cybergossip.

From this circumstantial evidence, I, too, have concluded that Clinton's plight is, by and large, a right-wing thing.

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