Six Degrees of Bill Clinton

Andrew Nieland
Posted Monday, May 29, 2000, at 12:43 AM ET

Issue 1 is the fate of Bill Clinton's law license. Issue 2 is the China trade bill. Issue 3 is the New York Senate Race. Issue 4 is Defense Secretary William Cohen's remarks on NBC's Meet the Press, which set the stage for next week's big issue--the upcoming summit between President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A committee commissioned by the Arkansas Supreme Court recommended that President Clinton be disbarred, provoking partisan argument from pundits across the networks. Clintonites argued that the president has already been adequately censured, and that no Arkansas precedent warrants anything graver than suspension. Conservative panelists like Dick Thornburgh (George Bush's Attorney General; CNN Late Edition) maintain that Nixon's disbarment in New York following his resignation is the most applicable precedent. Liberals counter by noting that eight of the 14 members of the committee recused themselves because they were emocrats or friends of the president, and the rest (as James Carville repeats four times on MTP) were clearly "a pack of Clinton haters." But four of these "Clinton Haters," notes Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R, AK, CBS's Face the Nation) voted in Democratic primaries. Only Carville pursues the argument further, noting that in Arkansas, it's common for everyone, regardless of party affiliation, to vote in Democratic primaries. Jeff Birnbaum (Fox News Sunday) is one of the few pundits to actually pognosticate, predicting that Clinton will keep his license.

Although some senatorial "shenanigans" (Jeff Birnbaum, FNS) are expected, the pundits agree that the bill normalizing trade relations with China will pass in the senate. Lawrence Kudlow (The McLaughlin Group) maintains that the bill marks "the beginning of the end" for Communist China, and Lawrence O'Donnell (MG) magnanimously declares "the world is the winner." Cokie Roberts (ABC's This Week) calls the claims by union leaders that they'll back Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore "baloney." The real threat for Gore, say George Stephanopoulos and John Zogby (TW), is that the unions will simply stay home on election day. The bill induces widespread musing about Clinton's legacy: Tucker Carlson (CNN Late Edition) says that he's made us "stop feeling guilty about capitalism."

As most pundits predicted last week, Rick Lazio has made headway in the polls, surging 12 points to a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton. Why? As was widely observed last week, many moderate and conservative voters are hungry for "anyone but Clinton," and Lazio is all that and more. Mary Matalin (MTP) paints Lazio as an "aggressive candidate with the right credentials," including "the hunk factor." Her husband, James Carville, says that he coddles Pat Buchanan and the NRA and "wants to do away with the Department of Education." As for the issues, it seems everyone's been a bit distracted by the personality parade. When asked on LE to name a few pertinent issues in the campaign, Sen. Daniel Patrick Monyihan (D, NY) could only come up with one: the faltering economy in upstate NY.

Defense Secretary William Cohen makes news on MTP with his offer to have the Joint Chiefs of Staff counsel the Bush camp on strategic disarmament. Cohen, who is a Republican, hopes to grant Bush "equal access" to the information Gore advisors see. Cohen's remarks were prompted by Bush's call for an ambitious missile defense program and unilateral nuclear disarmament by the U.S., which Cohen believes could spur a new arms race. He hopes to keep the issue non-partisan "because it's too important to have a Republican or Democratic label on it."

Uh, You Know It's Fake, Right? "I think he took too many hits in the ring." --Jeff Birnbaum (FNS), on Jesse Ventura's boasts that he could handily win the 2000 presidential election.

Compassionate Conservative? "Clinton has helped the rest of the country ignore them [human rights advocates in the Democratic party]...I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing." --Tucker Carlson (LE) on Clinton's legacy