The Week - presidential candidates; Hillary Clinton's family background; other political news

National Review, August 30, 1999

But don't look to the American Bar Association for help on that project. "I may be the only person who's flown on both Air Force One and Con Air," Webb Hubbell joked to the ABA convention on August 6. One might wonder why the ABA, whose mission is to "increase . . . respect for the law and to achieve the highest standard of . . . ethical conduct," would invite a disbarred convicted felon whose crimes include stealing from fellow lawyers. Then again, the ABA invited Hubbell's former boss, Bill Clinton, to speak to them the week after the president was fined. This is in sharp contrast to the ABA's treatment of another disgraced president. Not only was Richard Nixon not invited to speak to the ABA, he was formally condemned and disbarred for such nebulous villainies as casting "aspersions upon the integrity of the profession." These days, the ABA does that just fine all by itself.

Both Ken Starr and The American Spectator have been cleared of any wrongdoing in the case of Judge David Hale. The scandal-fatigued have probably long since forgotten the charge leveled by White House spinners and sycophants against Starr and the conservative magazine. The allegation was that Richard Mellon Scaife funneled some piddling sum through the Spectator's "Arkansas Project" into Hale's pocket in order to influence his testimony-all under the knowing eye of Ken Starr. Janet Reno declared that (unlike the various campaign-finance scandals) such charges "must be pursued" and, in something of a first, quickly launched an investigation. About a year later, a report from outside investigator Michael Shaheen clears Starr, the Spectator, and, yes, even Scaife of all the charges. But the allegations served their purpose: to provide Clinton mouthpieces with a useful smear.

A judge threw out most of a lawsuit against the Christian Coalition by the Federal Election Commission-the latest in a string of judicial rebukes of that agency's habitual overreaching-but the rest of the news for the Coalition was bleak. To its continued staff disarray and financial difficulties was added the embarrassment of a remarkable New York Times story. Citing "former national leaders," Laurie Goodstein reported that the Coalition had padded its mailing list, exaggerated how many voter guides it distributed, and even "hired temporary workers to look busy in the mail room and phone banks to impress reporters and camera crews." This is only the latest chapter in the rocky organizational history of the Christian conservative movement; think of the Moral Majority, or Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. While the inability to build lasting institutions must be counted as a failure of the movement, its maturation and assimilation into the GOP succeeded in shifting American politics to the right. If the Christian Coalition was never as big as it said it was, the movement was always bigger than it anyway.

Has Gray Davis, California's hugely successful Third Way Democratic governor, made his first mistake? Davis faced lawsuits from ethnic and liberal organizations challenging Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that cut off benefits to illegal aliens. He agreed to mediation, which resulted in an out-of-court agreement to let 187 go by the boards. Yet a June Los Angeles Times poll shows that 187 has the same voter support now-about 60 percent-that it did five years ago, even if the Republicans have run from it. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa thanked the president for his "great impact" in beating 187. Not President Clinton, but President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, who will be sending more of his citizens north.