Who's Who

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2000 by Susan Threadgill

In his new book The Breach, Peter Baker describes "a different approach" taken by Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyers as they sought his acquittal. "Sitting on the Republican side of the chamber, some of the White House attorneys were regularly striking up conversation with the senators during breaks. Strom Thurmond, the ancient senator from South Carolina, kept sidling over to the defense table to flirt with Nicole Seligman and Cheryl Mills. "`How come you're so cute?' he would ask, then clutch one of their arms, `I just love holding on to you,'" Baker writes.

In 1992, Richard Holbrooke co-chaired a commission that recommended that the White House be the "center for strategic planning" for national security, domestic policy, and economic policy formulation. Our pal Al Kamen wonders how Holbrooke feels about that recommendation now that he seems slated to land outside the White House as Secretary of State.

Kamen, by the way; also reports that doubts as to who would be formulating national security policy inside an Al Gore White House seemed removed last month when Gore's brain truster Leon Fuerth announced himself to 300 members of the Council on Foreign Relations as the "putative national security adviser."

Arthur Laffer, the father of Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics who last year made Time's list of "the century's 100 greatest minds," has, according to a company he sued, developed a lucrative "pattern and practice of preying on small cash-strapped companies by promising to sit on their boards of directors, reneging on his promise, and then suing to extort the stock he was to receive for his services." According to the New York Observer, "the economist has considerable leverage in the disputes because companies that eagerly announced his appointment to their boards are loath to lose the legitimacy his name brings and are ill-financed to fight his lawsuits."

You may have wondered why there suddenly appeared on the House floor a resolution condemning the Turkish massacre of Armenians, an event that, however lamentable, did after all take place 80 years ago. The explanation is that Republicans control the House and a Republican congressman, James Rogan, is in a closely contested race for reelection in a California district that happens to contain more than 20,000 registered voters of Armenian descent. "The fact this is of interest to his constituents is not lost on the leadership," Rep. Thomas Davis, head of the House Republican reelection committee told Eric Schmitt of The New Fork Times. "This resolution will be a very tangible debating point for him."

The resolution does seem to have set off a bit of a scramble, though, to hire top lobbyists. The Turks have hired former speaker designee Bob Livingston, former house appropriations committee member Gerald Solomon, and former representative and international specialist Stephen Solarz. The Armenians are countering with former representative and pundit Susan Molinari.

Livingston, Solomon, and Solarz are being paid a total of $1.8 million for their trouble, leading one to think that there might be another explanation for the resolution: Perhaps Davis just wants to do his little part to help bring down our trade deficit.

"Who's Who" hopes Al Gore wins, but we have to admit we will sorely miss what The Washington Post's Mike Allen describes as George W. Bush's "serial syntactical aberrations?" Their number is impressive enough to warrant anthologizing by the web site of ABC News under the heading of "The English Patient." In case you missed them, the latest came when he proclaimed that "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully," and when commenting on Gail Sheehy's allegation that he is an undiagnosed dyslexic, Bush said, "the woman who knew I had dyslexia, I never interviewed her."

Over the last decade, we have often reported on the interesting relationship between House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster and his former staffer and friend Ann Eppard. Eppard, who was not supposed to lobby him for a year after she left her staff job to open a transportation lobbying firm, in fact, according to The Washington Post, "arranged for meetings between Schuster and her clients, regularity dined with the congressman and his clients, and frequently dropped by his office to introduce different clients before leaving, so they could discuss legislation with Schuster."

Among the goodies she showered on Schuster was a Christmas vacation trip to Puerto Rico, financed by two of Eppard's clients who paid for a four-bedroom villa for Shuster and his family. She was indicted for receiving "more than $200,000 from a lobbyist while she was serving as Schuster's chief of staff. She escaped with a fine of only $5,000. Schuster has not been indicted. But last month the House finally did take note of his transgressions which, by the way, included illegally spending "hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on expensive restaurants and charter airplanes for personal rather than campaign use." So what did the House ethics committee do? It sent Schuster a letter of reproval. It is, according to The New York Times, "the mildest form of sanction the committee can mete out."