The Breakfast Table

A Kosher Radisson on the Temple Mount

Dear Jack:

Sorry I’m filing so late: I was downtown, at 15th and H Street, at about 11:30 this morning when I heard the sirens. Like any former police reporter, I respond in Pavlovian fashion to flashing lights and the buzzing of helicopters, so I made my way to the White House, where I learned: Absolutely nothing, except that it is possible to flood downtown Washington with hundreds of police officers from 10 or 12 different police departments in a matter of minutes, should you wish to do so.

By the way, this overblown event–I’ve been watching the cable channels for the last 15 minutes, and you’d think someone had just crushed Laura Bush under a tank tread–served to remind me of what I consider to be among the funnier Washington oxymorons: Most prominent among the police cadres on the scene were members of the “Uniformed Division” of the Secret Service. If it’s secret, I say, then don’t wear uniforms.

As far as I’m concerned, John Harris of the Washington Post might have spoken to 400 people for his story on what you call the “lovers’ spat” between Gore and Clinton. Among the sources listed in his story are “others,” “many Clinton advisers,” and “people close to Clinton.” “Others” is pretty inclusive, don’t you think?

Let me say this in the story’s defense: John Harris is a great reporter, and he’s playing by the generally accepted rules of White House coverage.

I would expect blowback from Gore very soon; I’m sure he was blowing back, or blowing up, early this morning from his small house in Arlington County, which I believe is also the county in which you reside. Actually, according to the Times, Gore was in New York City yesterday, teaching his first class at the Columbia journalism school. This class was the subject of an appropriately snarky Felicity Barringer piece, in which she noted that the class had been declared “off the record.” An off-the-record journalism class. And the people who run the nation’s journalism schools wonder why people like us make fun of them.

But back to Arlington. (Yesterday it was McLean; today, Arlington. Perhaps tomorrow we should both file from the mall at Tyson’s Corner.)

It must be particularly horrible for Gore, living in Arlington, and not only because among his neighbors is you: It is horrible because the Clintons bought a grand house just around the corner from the vice president’s residence, the one now illegally occupied by Dick Cheney. There’s Gore, living in exile in Arlington in what probably wouldn’t even qualify as a McMansion (and Arlington isn’t even tony by the modest standards of Northern Virginia), and he reads about Hillary’s mansion right there on Embassy Row, just around the corner from what should have been Little Joey’s house by now, and. … Well, you get the picture.

By the way, Gore’s a fool, and here’s why: He’s running wild in the White House, accusing Clinton of losing the election for him, but he forgot one thing: He didn’t lose. He won. He won the popular vote, and he won the electoral vote, which was then stolen by the Republicans. It is typical of Democrats, I think, to turn on each other when they should be turning on their enemy.

On Israel, the latest rumors I’m hearing have Sharon building a Radisson–a kosher Radisson–on the Temple Mount. (Note to Muslim fanatics: I am kidding.)

Jeff