February 4, 2001

Controversy, it seems, has been all but banished from Beltway-land, at least when it has anything to do with Bush..  The various celebrity-pundit gab shows spent as little time this weekend as possible on the 42 Senate votes against the Ashcroft nomination - one more than would have been needed to sustain a filibuster - even though it was one of the largest "no" votes against a Cabinet nominee in history.  On the highest-toned of the pundit shows, Washington Week in Review, the Ashcroft vote was barely mentioned at all, and then only as an aside.   Can anyone imagine that a similar vote against a Clinton nominee would not have absolutely dominated the weekend pundit gabs?  But in the new Bush Beltway, everyone gets along, and such minor unpleasantness is quickly forgotten.

At the same time, the Beltway new media - more or less, again, the people who go to Sally Quinn's cocktail parties - remains curiously obsessed with Bill Clinton.  Since he left office, at least three (possibly four) scandalettes have contrived to erupt in the Beltway media.  As with all other Clinton scandalettes (with the exception, arguably, of Monica), they all prove on examination to be pretty exiguous.  They are

1)  The "trashing" of the White House by Clinton staffers before their departure.  This was both the most colorful scandalette and the most exiguous of all.   It began - to general hilarity - with the reports of the missing W's on computer keyboards, reports that are probably true.  Apparently these reports provoked too much general hilarity, because a couple of days later things took a nastier turn.   An email circulated by GOP strategist Rich Galen, and funneled via Matt Drudge into the mainstream media, alleged all sorts of more serious vandalism.  The media obsessed on this for several days before people began to remark on the total absence of evidence for the alleged misdeeds - after which the story cycle was quietly dropped.

2)  The pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.  This has proved to have the longest legs of the post-inaugural Clinton scandalettes.  The actual facts, however, remain obscure.  Apparently his ex-wife is a major Dem contributor (and   successful pop songwriter), which has permitted the recycling of "Clinton fundraising scandals" in general, even though ex-wives as a general rule have little love lost for their ex-husbands.  Apparently, also, Rich is a) less than a sterling character, but b) was indicted - by Rudy Guiliani in his publicity-whoring prosecutor days - on charges that now would be tossed out of court.   But what is most curious about Rich is his previous obscurity.  All news junkies still remember the infamy of, say, Charles Keating or Michael Milken, but if I ever heard of Marc Rich before I had long since forgotten him.  Either Beltway people have much better memories than I do, or any stick will do to beat Bill Clinton with.  Take your pick.

3)  Clinton's Manhattan office rent.  This, apparently, comes to some $600,000/year, admittedly a tidy sum.  If Clinton were to rent those offices till the year 2080 or so, the taxpayers would pay as much for them as they did for Ken Starr.   (Whatever did come of Whitewater?)  If he were to rent them till the year AD 102,001 we might pay nearly as much as has already been spent on development of missile-defense systems, so far without workable results.    

To these we may add

4)  Clinton's "glory-hogging" departure on January 20, which apparently detracted somehow from the due pomp & circumstance of the Bush inaugural.  It was of course the media's own choice if they decided that Clinton's departure was more newsworthy than Bush's arrival.  But the inaugural is perhaps a touchy matter for Bushters in any case.  It provoked the largest demonstrations since the Nixon inaugural of 1968 - though nearly invisible on television - while several independent accounts suggested that the general crowd turnout was the lowest in decades, with vast amounts even of VIP seating going unused.

All of this is peculiar.  The conspiratorial explanation is that the establishment media want to make Bush look better by calling attention - again! - to various and sundry Clinton misdeeds, real or imaginary.  A simpler explanation (which by no means precludes the first one) is that Clinton has become to the Beltway media what horse is to a junkie: the fix they need to make it through the day. 

For a Beltway pundit, nothing can be easier to write than a Clinton scandal story.   Most of it has been stored as macros long ago, and can be pasted in at the touch of one key.  A few phone calls to Sources Close To the White House/Prosecutors/Republicans on Capitol Hill/Whoever will provide the rest.  No actual research is required.  Indeed, too much time and effort spent on research may only introduce unwanted complications, such as the nonexistence of the scandal in question.  Compared to that, reporting on grass-roots reactions to the Ashcroft nomination - not to mention something really complicated, like the California electric-power crisis and its peculiar timing - is hard, unrewarding work.   Unrewarding because the result has no good story line to it, or at least no socially acceptable one.  

So the new basic theme of the Beltway media is clear.  Bush is a nice guy who everyone likes (at least everyone at Sally's parties likes him), and who is doing nothing really controversial.  Meanwhile, Bad Bill will continue to be the media gift that keeps on giving, whenever something is needed to gin up excitement. 

This works well for the talk radio call-in crowd, which all three cable networks covet as the most reliable audience for Beltway junk news.  Meanwhile, though, the remaining 97 percent of the public will continue to tune out Beltway junk news entirely - as well they might.  If the economy goes into the tank, no one will really need Jeff Greenfield or Chris Matthews to tell them they lost their jobs.  The substantial proportion of the public who doubt that Bush was really elected will continue to doubt it.   (Interim reports from the Florida media recounts, tucked in about Page A-17 of the Los Angeles Times, tend for the most part to confirm these doubts.)  If past performance is any indicator, John Ashcroft will say and do outrageous things as Attorney General, and these will become known however much CNN tries to ignore them.

During the impeachment, even the Beltway media crowd themselves sometimes admitted to The Disconnect - the vast gulf between respectable Beltway opinion (e.g., "Clinton ought to resign") and what most people thought in the rest of the country.  The Disconnect continues.  Occasionally it is even still obliquely acknowledged; just today I heard a pundit admit that, out in the trans-Beltway wilderness, millions of people are still irate over Bush's non-election. 

But more and more The Disconnect has become a sort of event horizon.  No one in the Beltway media really cares what anyone outside it says or thinks (save for the entertainment value of crank calls to talk shows).  And, sensibly, people outside the Beltway are learning that nothing any media person says inside the Beltway really matters.   Astrophysicists needn't spend time searching for black holes millions of light years away in some Messier or NGC object.  There is a growing one right here on Earth, on the Potomac.

-- Rick Robinson

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Last revised 11/07/2006 ... by RM Robinson

Email me: Lyonesse@compuserve.com

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