Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Good cover for Bush

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 11:42 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

THE PRESIDENT is "bewildered." The American people should be exhausted.

I did say president but, of course, I meant to say former president, as in Bill Clinton. He's the fellow America elected twice to serve as its leader and he's the guy who left the White House on Jan. 20. He' s also the man who must hold the record for having been investigated the longest, the most often and the most ruthlessly by members of the opposing political party in Washington.

When all the dust settled and the $50 million or more had been spent by hand-picked prosecutors hell-bent on burying a sitting president, the only thing we learned that Mr. Clinton did wrong was engage in an outrageous sex scandal.

For that, the nation was led down the path to impeachment which, ultimately, went nowhere but was unfailing in its desire to make us all feel a bit dirtier for the effort. You would think the folks who made a living hounding President Clinton would have gladly hung up their knives when a new president took the oath of office and settled in for the next four years.

But the beat goes on.

The United States does have a new president. His name is George W. Bush. By most accounts, he is trying to be publicly compassionate and, privately, very conservative about leading our country's attention away from the politics of the past and toward a better world of tomorrow, in which politicians get along and are civil to each other in the pursuit of the nation's business.

Why, he's even had a few initiatives that he's implemented during his first month in office, but you'd hardly know about them, given the shrill that precedes his news with the reports of the latest Clinton investigation.

First, there was the trashing of Air Force One story. That played for a couple of weeks until "officials" of the Bush administration got around to telling the people that nothing happened. They could have done that right away or, better yet, not leaked it in the first place. But that wouldn't have served the Republican machine's purposes nor the media's frenzy at the thought of their best and most enduring news story leaving the White House.

What it did, though, was focus attention away from President Bush's efforts to gut our foreign aid programs to Third World countries that taught overpopulated people how to manage their family planning. It was a sop to those who don't believe others should even know about abortions, much less opt to have them.

Then came the White House hijinks stories that gave the new president cover under the darkness of the charges against the former one. Those, too, proved to be much ado about nothing, but they were effective in throwing the media way off the scent of President Bush's next moves, which came without nearly the attention in the press and the public that they otherwise would have received.

And now, of course, we have something really meaty to grab onto in President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, the guy most people have learned to hate ever since they found out who he is and what he is supposed to have done. Finally, an issue that had some traction and some truth insofar as who Rich is, not what wrong the president had done. Here, too, will be another instance of the facts showing that what President Clinton did in pardoning Rich was not only right but also justified, no matter how much many Americans may disagree with the act itself.

A U.S. attorney is now investigating to see if President Clinton was bribed! How absurd. Not for the investigation, because that will give Mary Jo White her 15 minutes of fame that people seem to seek these days as a prelude to a book deal. Even the New York Times is encouraging that probe as the only thing she could do but, if read closely, that is more an advancement of their campaign finance reform stand than a real belief that Clinton did anything even remotely wrong.

What is absurd, though, is any suggestion that on the way out the door, President Clinton did something so blatantly criminal that he would lay himself open to the very people who would be in power for the next four years to hound him into financial and historical oblivion. That is exactly the opposite of what he wanted when he left Washington.

His intent was to do what other former presidents had done before him: leave town, let the next fellow be president and stay below the radar so as not to interfere with the man the American people chose to succeed him.

That was the plan, but the folks who brought us eight years of investigations would not let go of any opportunity to crush Clinton. And the man who took his place, President Bush, while he has mouthed the right words for public consumption, has done little else to end the headline-grabbing stories that keep his efforts off the front pages.

Sure, he's complained a bit and suggested that he'd like to move on, but when it comes time to act -- like telling the grand inquisitor in the House, Dan Burton, to find a new gig -- well, that just doesn't happen. That's because this also fits a broader White House purpose, which is to so injure Clinton that his effectiveness as the leader of the Democratic Party will be nullified to the point that disarray rather than determination will define the Democrats come the next election.

So we will be treated to more of the same for another few months until this, too, fizzles out under the bright lights of the truth. And, while some Americans may never forgive President Clinton for pardoning a fugitive, most will at least understand the rationality of the act and want to move on.

In the meantime, the months will pass for President Bush, who will publicly rue the lack of headlines and attention to his efforts but, privately, jump with the elation that comes from the quietude that results when a president successfully escapes the media scrutiny that would otherwise be his to bear.

President Clinton is bewildered. The people are befuddled. And the other president, George W., has to be bemused.

One day hopefully the media and the GOP will understand that America only has one president and it is not Bill Clinton. That day will only come, though, when the real president, George W. Bush, stands up and shows the country who's the boss.

The whole world waits.

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