The uses of power - by President Clinton and the liberal media - From The Editor - Editorial

National Review, Oct 10, 1994 by John O'Sullivan

* So Mr. Clinton's Haiti policy has "succeeded." That is to say, the threat of a U.S. invasion persuaded the Haitian junta to make way for a left-wing anti-American priest-politician of uncertain honesty, balance, and attachment to democracy.

Thus the episode confirms We three principles of American diplomacy as revealed here in May 1990:

1. We cannot pursue our interests if they conflict with our principles.

2. We can pursue our principles only if they conflict with our interests.

3. Our principles and our interests never coincide.

* At the White House shortly before the D-Day commemoration, President Clinton gave posthumous medals to the families of two soldiers killed in Somalia. But when he offered his hand, one father declined to shake it. He denounced the President, blaming him for his son's death.

Whether or not one sympathizes with Mr. Clinton on this occasion - and he seems to have been sympathetic to his critic - this was a newsworthy event. When President Nixon was lectured on the Vietnam War by a guest at a White House reception, it was front-page news everywhere.

The mainstream press, however, carried no report of this incident. Nothing at all. It did not want to embarrass the President. It was left to the London Sunday Times and Rush Limbaugh to retrieve the story from Liberaldom's memory hole.

Should another G.I. be murdered in Haiti and his father make a similar protest, the press would not remain silent again. Indeed, if the first incident had been reported, the President might not be risking a repetition. So, our masters repeat mistakes which a solicitous press has kept from respectable eyes.

* The current New York Review of Books has the following revelation from Garry Wills:

"One of his [i.e. Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey's] duties during the campaign was to tell flight attendants on the campaign plane that it would be better if they did not take up the candidate's request that they work out with him at the Little Rock YWCA. As recently as this March he was still calling one flight attendant, to discourage her from repeating her conversations with Clinton. Sample icebreakers from Clinton at a tame when he was trying to live down the Flowers allegations: |Oh, I could get lost in those blue eyes . . ."

Mr. Wills cites a Washington Post profile of Bruce Lindsey (July 7th) in which a flight attendant alleges both Mr. Clinton's advances and Mr. Lindsey's warnings, which the loyal Mr. Lindsey "does not remember issuing."

These reports are, on the face of it, mildly scandalous; yet they have generated no scandal. There has been neither the avalanche of moral (and prurient) outrage that followed David Brock's allegations; nor the counterattack on "tabloid sleaze" by Mr. Clinton's journalistic defenders.

In part, this is doubtless because the Washington Post and the New York Review of Books are bastions of liberal journalism. Like the saint so holy that alcohol turned to water on his lips, these journals transform tabloid sleaze into investigative journalism merely by publishing it.

But the deeper reason is that - what with Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and now flight attendants - Mr. Clinton has become almost a symbol of promiscuity. His admirers no longer deny this. Instead, they accept the fact, report its occasional symptoms, and carry on regardless. In nine months, we have gone from "That, Sir, is a monstrous calumny" to "Hey, what's all the fuss about?"

Someone once said that the best way to keep something secret was to stamp it "Press Release." Maybe the best way to suppress a scandal is to report it in the press. Provided you do so often, loudly, and as a matter of course.