Dear Tim,
The phone lines are abuzz with, well, buzz that Tina Brown is leaving the New Yorker to start a movie magazine for Miramax. Shall we start a pool on who succeeds her?
I share your fascination with the Nigeria story. The national self-interest subtext appears to be that whatever the facts surrounding Abiola’s death, we probably bungled by joining those in the Nigerian government who pressured him to renounce any claims to office upon his impending release from prison. Another of those painless interventions we’re so good at. Abiola’s history appears to be a fascinating mixture of good and bad (Western diplomats apparently whisper off the record about his “mercurial character,” his supposed contacts with drug dealers, and his involvement in the country’s past political corruption; on the other hand, he was closer than anyone else in recent Nigerian politics to having won an honest election, gave generously to his country’s poor, and as both a member of the Yoruba tribe and a convert to Islam, had an honest chance of bridging Nigeria’s deepest schisms). Our policy opens the way to an accusation that, even if Abiola wasn’t murdered, he was “killed” by being forced to renounce his claims to office under duress. In this scenario, it would have to be seen as a compromising detail that our envoy, Thomas R. Pickering, was actually meeting with him when he succumbed.
Isn’t it depressing that Nigeria could be both our fifth-largest source of oil and a country in complete economic chaos?
My own hobby horse this morning is yesterday’s unanimous appeals court ruling denying the Justice Department’s argument that Secret Service agents should be “privileged” in legal proceedings concerning the president. I think it’s the right call, but also spooky: The president is ever more the most isolated man in the world. The Clinton administration has managed to create a world in which no one can even talk to the president without without fear that a random remark might suddenly lead down the path to $100,000 legal bills. (This is one of the most interesting things about Howard Kurtz’s book Spin Cycle–the way the president’s spokesman, Mike McCurry, repeatedly describes his complete and well-founded unwillingness to ask the president anything at all about the matter that is of most interest to the reporters McCurry supposedly feeds.)
It’s probably true, as yesterday’s opinion argued, that a president’s self-interest will prevent him from trying to keep his bodyguards at arm’s length. But it is a shame that future presidents should have to be self-conscious on this score, once the lack of privilege has been established: It’s another way in which the Clinton scandals have made us all draw sharp lines that are better left blurred. As always, I lodge the responsibility for the problem more at Clinton’s door then Kenneth Starr’s. My favorite part of the new opinion reads, “As for efficacy, we suspect that even with a protective function privilege in place, conscience might impel a President to distance himself from Secret Service agents when engaging in wrongful conduct.” Then again, conscience might not be one of a certain president’s most highly-functioning pieces of equipment.
Love, Marjorie
