I was channel surfing Tuesday night and stumbled onto The Lying Olympics. It's a game show in which clever lawyers cross examine devious lawyers while cross Senators examine the ceiling or their fingernails.
It started out as the Senate Whitewater Hearings, but now it has been on cable so long I half expect to see Otis, the Mayberry town drunk, stagger through on his way to an Andy Griffith rerun. As far as the media goes, Sen. Alphonse D'Amato might as well be a castaway with Gilligan and the Skipper Too.
That's weird. I thought an unexplained, mysterious White House suicide linked to an S&L scandal would get at least as much scrutiny as Ollie North's security fence. But I forgot how Democrats play media Monopoly with a whole deck of "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards, while Republicans only get jokers. No wonder: A recent Freedom Forum poll showed 89 percent of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton; only 4 percent confessed to being Republicans.
Still, what I saw on Tuesday night was more dramatic than a sweeps-week miniseries. It's not every day you can watch some close friend of the First Family lying under oath.
And Susan Thomases was going for the gold in the Olympic Decathlon: prevarication, obfuscation, omission, falsification and selective amnesia.
Everyone but Sen. Paul Sourbanes, D-Denial, knows Ms. Thomases is a champion truth-hurdler. Records show she was summoned to the White House by Hillary Clinton immediately after Vince Foster's death - but she can't remember being there, who she saw or what they talked about.
She even denies that she and Mrs. Clinton discussed the "suicide note" found in Mr. Foster's briefcase. She's certain neither would have brought it up.
Like many families, mine has been singed by suicide. When my step-brother took his life in 1983, the first question each of us asked was, "Did he leave a note?" It is several time zones beyond belief that two of Mr. Foster's closest friends would not ask the same question.
The latest catalogue of Clinton sleaze, Blood Sport, reveals that a few days before his death, Mr. Foster met Ms. Thomases outside the White House. The kindergarten buddy of Bill Clinton unloaded his fears and frustrations about being the White House janitor assigned to clean up Whitewater and Travelgate.
But none of that turned up in the summary of an FBI interview with Ms. Thomases. She says it was an FBI agent's "omission." Sure. And a White House security guard was "mistaken" when he saw Hillary's top assistant, Maggie Williams, carrying arm-loads of files out of Mr. Foster's office before a police search was allowed.
Anyone who has played Clue can solve this mystery. Mr. Foster kept incriminating Whitewater files in his office, his secretary has testified. Immediately after his death, Mrs. Clinton melted down phone lines calling her trusted pals to sweep up evidence. Mrs. Williams took the files to Mrs. Clinton, who concealed them for months from Congressional subpoenas. Then the missing files suddenly appeared on a table in Hillary's private study one day - with her fingerprints and Mr. Foster's notes all over them.
Mrs. C. in the study with a lead pipe. Obstruction of justice. Perjury. Contempt of Congress and the American people.
Just this month, Mr. Clinton had to testify in a criminal trial of his Arkansas cronies; begged the Supreme Court to delay Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit until he leaves office; confessed that he secretely encouraged Iran to arm the Muslims in Bosnia; and hid behind "executive privilege" to conceal Travelgate evidence.
Yet Bob Dole is the man under the media microscope. Go figure.
And when Mr. Dole did something refreshingly honorable for a politician, and resigned from the Senate to campaign for president full time, most of the media parroted Democrats who called it an act of desperation (see Cohen below).
As Mr. Dole pointed out in his emotional farewell to the Senate, "the press does not lean our way."
No. Pundits predict a GOP bloodbath because two or three Republican governors want to tinker with platform wording on abortion - but 40 pro-life Democrats in Congress who oppose their party's pro-abortion platform are virtually invisible.
Conservatives must swallow hard this year. Bob Dole is not Mr. Suave. Every stumble will be magnified. But after 35 years in Washington, the shirt-cuffs of his integrity remain spotless - no gravy stains from reaching for extra helpings.
Liberals, on the other hand, need to do some soul-searching. Mr. Clinton's flaws - adultery, lying, sexual harassment, hypocrisy, draft evasion, blaming the media for his lies about GOP "cuts" - were dismissed as doubts in 1992. Now they can't be ignored. Re-electing such an empty suit ratifies dishonesty and lowers the qualification for our highest office to one rock-bottom question:
Any criminal convictions - yet?
Mr. Clinton would never resign to campaign, because he never stops. But we don't have to resign ourselves to four more years - or the last card in his deck of free passes, whichever comes first.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
