Washington — So Senator Robert Torricelli bows out in disgrace.
As I watched his thirty-minute farewell address and testimonial to
himself, his wolfish head bent over the microphones, his dark eyes
suspiciously darting from one camera to the other, I was reminded
of Virginia Woolf’s old line: “He’s not as nice as he looks.” At
one point he bawled, “I’m a human being.” Alas, it is true. Genetic
engineering might have more to recommend it than I had hitherto
thought.
Torricelli is, despite all the love he has for himself, a nasty
little man, given to delusions of grandeur. In his embarrassing
speech of congé he blubbered, blinking back the
tears, “Somewhere today in one of several hospitals in New Jersey,
some woman’s life is going to be changed because of the mammography
centers I created….” And more, “Somewhere all over New Jersey
some senior citizen who doesn’t even know my name lives in a senior
center that I helped build.” Oh, unfortunate senior citizen —
Senator Torricelli cares for thee. Do you know how this loving
public servant addressed the aging Senator Frank Lautenberg, before
a group of fellow Democrats at a closed-door caucus meeting in the
Capitol in 1999? According to the May 7, 2001 New
Republic, “The Torch” addressed him thus: “You’re a f—-ing
piece of s—t, and I’m going to cut your balls off.” Needless to
say, this fat little butter ball of a foul-mouthed senator was not
actually going to visit violence on the elderly Senator Lautenberg.
Senator Lautenberg even in old age could stand his ground against
this impostor.
Senator Torricelli is a political bully who uses political power
to do what he is physically impotent to do. As the months have
passed since he was severely reprimanded by the Senate Ethics
Committee for taking gifts from a former campaign contributor the
evidence of his coarseness mounts, for instance, there is the tape
showing Torricelli accompanied by a shadowy thug hounding the
aforementioned campaign contributor. Doubtless there was more
evidence to come before he cut and ran.
I have had my own experiences with his bully-boy tactics. After
The American Spectator published a well-substantiated
report in 1998 that the New Jersey senator had received $136,000 in
hard money from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group involved in the
murder of American servicemen in Iran and in the subsequent
takeover of our embassy in Tehran, he threatened us with a libel
suit through his agile lawyer Abbe Lowell. I ignored his
threat.
When empty threats of libel did not work Torricelli led in
ginning up a year-long government investigation of the magazine
complete with a grand jury to look into our revelations of the
misbehavior of his friend Bill Clinton, another of Lowell’s
unsuccessful clients. It all began on a gray Sunday morning in
Washington on ABC’s “This Week With Sam & Cokie.” There
Torricelli denounced the Spectator, accusing us of money
laundering, which is a felony. Then he wrote Attorney General Janet
Reno and demanded an investigation. The charges they settled on
were witness tampering and threatening murder, the last, perhaps,
provoked by our deadly prose. Of course, unlike the Senator and his
friends in the Clinton Administration we cooperated fully with the
authorities and were completely vindicated. Thus here I am today, a
free and happy man, while Torricelli shuffles off into
ignominy.
“There are times in life you rise above self,” he said as he
maundered on utterly absorbed with self — not even sparing us the
story about his patriotism as a five-year-old. “When did we become
such an unforgiving people?” he asked, his dirge taking on themes
eerily reminiscent of the likewise disgraced Congressman James
Traficant bidding Congress adieu. Despite the Senate’s reprimand he
even boasted of his integrity: “How did we become a society where a
person can build credibility their entire life and have it
questioned by someone who has none?” That reference was apparently
to his former contributor whose testimony convinced prosecutors of
Torricelli’s guilt as their recently divulged documents attest. In
our 1998 piece on him our writer Kenneth R. Timmerman noted:
“Torricelli has never had a reputation for impeccable probity.
During his stint on the House Intelligence Committee he was several
times accused of publishing classified intelligence information to
suit his own political agenda.” Torricelli had no “credibility.”
That is why the Democrats forced him out of his reelection campaign
with their anonymous leaks. He was losing badly, and despite his
delusions of being a tough guy he did not have the courage to
fight.
Now the Democrats, in keeping with their behavior in the 2000
presidential campaign, want to change the rules of the race. They
feel that in New Jersey they should have two chances to beat the
Republican candidate. New Jersey law says Torricelli withdrew too
late for another Democrat to replace him, but the Democrats want to
replace him with Lautenberg. Perhaps if Lautenberg is doing badly
in a week or so they will, notwithstanding the law, seek to run yet
another candidate. In a way the Democrats of New Jersey had in
Torricelli a candidate just like them, a man above the law, a
bully.
