Washington -- Is that Maureen Dowd over there snickering into
her hankie about the ineffectual oaf we have in the White House?
Ha, ha, ha, Miss Dowd is wrong again. The President's public
diplomacy last week has changed the atmosphere in Washington more
rapidly than apparently she knows or than I would have anticipated.
Republicans who were wavering about a regime change are now
resolute. Even the reluctant, such as Colin Powell and Brent
Scowcroft, are demonstrating a change of mind. Even hand-wringing
Democrats are rethinking their quibbles, as they recall the
disrepute they suffered when they opposed Bush I's entry into the
Gulf War.
Bush II's supposed fecklessness is an idée fixe
with la Dowd, and the regularity with which she is wrong
about him only emphasizes her obsessiveness. Remember a little
while back when she advanced the preposterous notion that criticism
of the President's Iraq policy by former aides of Bush I was
evidence of the father's disapproval of his son's policy?
Apparently she thought that the former president was incapable of
calling his son on the telephone. Well, of course, Bush I dismissed
her thesis as balderdash in a widely reported news story, and on
"Meet the Press" his former Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger
did likewise.
Dowd's thesis will, however, probably remain credible to her
readers, notwithstanding its easy refutation. So presumably will
her continued claims that Bush II is an ineffectual oaf even as the
astuteness and resolve of his leadership grows more obvious. Error
becomes fact in newspapers if the source of that error is obsessive
enough, and the error masked as fact is agreeable to liberal
opinion.
Consider this flawed fact deposited in the New York
Times last Saturday. Governor Bill Clinton was among the
prescient few Democrats who "endorsed" the Gulf War. Quoth the
Times: "Party strategists say it is lost on no one that of
the three Democrats who have been on the national ticket since
then, Bill Clinton endorsed the war." He did not. This is one of
the many things Clinton was caught lying about during his first
presidential campaign. The lie was easily refuted, thus prompting
the candidate to tender yet another lie, which was even more
convincingly refuted. Now eleven years later Clinton's lie stands
as fact and the refutations are forgotten. Perhaps eleven years
from now history will remember that Clinton told the truth before
the Grand Jury, and Kenneth Starr was jailed for attempting to
assassinate the President.
Here are the facts. At a September 16, 1991 breakfast for
journalists in Washington Clinton described himself as a supporter
of the war. No one thought to question his claim until an Evans and
Novak column the following March cited an Associated Press story
published in Arkansas two days after Congress authorized
hostilities against Iraq. In it Clinton is quoted as saying, "I
would agree with the arguments of the people [Democratic members of
Congress] in the minority…." In response to Evans and Novak,
Clinton's campaign dismissed the Associated Press story as
"inaccurate" and suggested the press turn to a January 15, 1991
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Evans and Novak did and found
Clinton saying that he "agreed" with Arkansas' two Democratic
senators -- both of whom voted against the war. Two statements of
fact about Clinton elicited two lies by Clinton, and the lies now
stand as fact in the New York Times.
The above paragraph is why some of us write, to set the record
straight. Of course, we can only set the record straight with those
who will read us. I lapidified the above facts about Clinton's
record on the Gulf War and his lies about it in my biography of
him, Boy Clinton: The Political Biography. Like stone they
stand there for all to see. Apparently my liberal friends will not
read the facts and did not read the Evans and Novak column. So they
pass on error.
Today they probably share Dowd's delusion that President Bush is
a lightweight. This is the delusion they held about Ronald Reagan
and probably still hold. Yet facts are facts. Last week Bush II
moved the country closer to "regime change," as he said. The
atmosphere has changed remarkably. Sources I recognize as reliable
even talk of action against Iraq before the November elections.
Mid-November brings on the wet season in Iraq, which will make our
action more difficult. I am not prophesying a pre-election attack,
but I would not rule it out. Bush II has been a very effective
leader.
topics:
Bill Clinton, Law, Iraq, NATO
