Cheap tricks won't garner Clinton-haters public support

Published: Monday, July 27, 1998

Monday, July 27, 1998

POLITICS: Gutter scandal exposes partisan attempt to destroy administration

By Solomon Matsas

I do not get the feeling that many people take the current Washington mess very seriously; most of us want the whole matter to disappear. But with many critical aspects of this sordid business hopelessly mired in a murky hole of distorted reporting, unsubstantiated accusations, self-propelled rumors and richly financed, openly political bludgeoning, one lone characteristic now emerges without contradiction. One repeating theme lurches out from the demeaning vacuum with sharp clarity.

This is a case of loathsomely salacious, prurient obsession, not on the part of the president, but on the part of the driven partisan prosecutor Kenneth Starr. After more than $40 million in taxpayer money and nearly five years, his legalistic zealotry, devoid of any measure or notion of balanced proportion (which are defining, qualifying criteria in all criminal inquiries), now borders on the ominously bizarre.

Starr's personal, political, and religious financiers are sorely expecting certain specific results from this so-called investigation, or, at the very least, they have game-planned for the longest possible period of embarrassment and harassment of Bill Clinton. Starr has so far served his ham-handed but fervently focused backers very well.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders, taking turns from week to week, are simply doing what they can to oil their scandal machine. They cannot challenge this president on major social issues. The topics the voters rank as most important - the economy, crime, health care and education - are not arenas where the religiously-dominated Republican leadership can challenge the country with new ideas.

On these issues, and a host of others as well, this president is more knowledgeable, sensible and persuasively capable. They know very well that they cannot compete with Clinton on his level, nor can they present convincing alternative proposals in the marketplace of policy debate.

Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott and their constantly jockeying wannabes, still have their old, elite-protecting status quo plans, now tinged with a '90s-style dose of veiled and not-so-veiled bigotry - the same self-serving, openly disingenuous ideas that the public has heard many times before and either rejected outright or seriously modified. Therefore, the Republicans shamelessly trot out character scandal as their only weapon, no matter how tawdry and pathetic a tactic that inevitably becomes.

The Republican leadership is obviously going nuts tracking the current national polls. They consistently record how a majority of Americans in both parties think this president is doing a very good job, in spite of every conceivable obstacle. However, these high-ranking conservative true believers and their miserable minions of morality mongers, indifferent to the facts, have been determined to discredit Clinton from the very start. They also want very badly for the public to care about their divine and moral mission. So far, the public does not care because the public sees clearly the cheap political tricks that form the nucleus of the on-going controversies.

Nevertheless, the Clinton-haters are so crazed with frustration, so bent on destroying the administration that beat them where it counts most - in the voting booths - that they will apparently do anything and everything to reach their avowed goal.

So far, all they have done is parade their desperation before the world.Matsas can be reached at smatsas

@saonet.ucla.edu.