Whitewater

I've got a story in this week's paper looking at how the state Democrats are unrolling a coordinated response to the continuing Republican probe into Eliot Spitzer's Brunogate problems by branding it the new Whitewater.

“I think you saw in the 90’s a sort of never-ending investigation of Bill Clinton, and it created a widespread national consensus in support of Bill Clinton, and people who were bringing these charges get tossed out of power,” said Democratic consultant Jonathan Rosen, who was recently hired by the state Democratic Party.

Roger Stone, the former CREEP operative who currently works for the Senate Republicans, seemed amused at the analogy. “We also tried to say that Watergate was a third-rate burglary,” he said.

While finance and technology are rapidly reshaping our media, undermining printed words and exalting  read more »

Let’s just do it. Let’s get it over with. For better or worse.  read more »

Al D'Amato gives a statement to Maggie Haberman at the Post:

"I have found Sen. Clinton to be very responsive to the needs of her constituents, whether it is with local governments or individuals.

"Her reputation for working on behalf of her constituents, with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, is well known."

So Al gets to buck the Republican leadership and side with the winner, and Hillary gets a former Whitewater senator to sing her praises. Who loses?

- Tom McGeveran

Bill Weld may not have made much of an impression on Al D’Amato --"he had not even met Mr. Weld until recently," the ex-Senator told the Times -- but the Weld campaign emailed over a pretty convincing set of clips that detail at least two meetings, despite D’Amato’s denials. Weld apparently recalls three more, including the one he described yesterday.

Boston Globe, 1/25/96: "Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York introduced Weld..."

Boston Herald, 6/18/96: "Gov. William F. Weld, who has offered to be a "character witness" for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, last night wined and dined the GOP’s Whitewater attack dog at a $ 1,000-a-head fund-raiser..."

(The canine in question being D’Amato.)

Weld’s spokeswoman, Andrea Tantaros, said the candidate recalls two other meetings, also in 1996.

They were together at a Suffolk County rally for Dole, she says, and at that year’s GOP convention, "They both walked into a room together where Dole was and a bunch of other people and someone said, ’Wow, look at this odd couple.’"

So The Politicker doesn't want to harp too much on undergraduate indiscretions, but it does seem that Jeanine Pirro's new spokeswoman, Andrea Tantaros, turns out to have been in training for the battle against the evil forces of Clinton for quite a while.

Tantaros has worked for House leadership and done an upstate congressional race, but it was back Lehigh University in 2000, that Tantaros -- then the student paper's conservative columnist -- exposed New York's junior Senator as a "power-hungry monster." Here's the parody-defying column, which dwells on the who-killed-Vince-Foster line, and more.

Some favorite excerpts:

....Yup, I guess Mrs. Clinton realizes that her time as first lady is coming to a close and this power-hungry monster feels she and her husband didn`t do enough damage to our country as a whole, so she needs to ruin New York.

Besides the fact that she isn`t even from New York and has never even lived or been educated there, Mrs. Clinton is a power-hungry congenital liar....

`Hill` has been involved in multiple scandals (probably) more than all of the first ladies combined) and has lied probably about as many times as her husband has dropped his pants.... Oh, we can`t forget the most famous, Whitewater. This was the Clinton`s real-estate scam in Arkansas that ended up costing us taxpayers $69 million and White House Deputy Vincent Foster's life. (He was found dead in a nearby park in the heat of the scandal.)

But really, read the whole thing. It's a classic of a lost genre.  read more »

UPDATE: Tarantos emails: "Man I was angry. Either the Wawa was out of smokes or I had been woken up before noon when I wrote that." Anyway: "I make a better press secretary than I did journalist, that's for sure."

Back when Republicans still behaved like Republicans and conservatives actually believed in conserva  read more »

As political leaders from both sides of the aisle rushed to applaud the Bush administration's Jan.  read more »

As Drudge and Eve Kessler both quickly noted, Michael Chertoff, the new Homeland Security chief, was a lead investigator in the forgettable Whitewater probe. She was the only Senator to vote against his judgeship in 2001.

No comment yet from Mrs. Clinton on the 10:00 a.m. nomination.  read more »

But Chuck Schumer, showing the same caution and restraint both Senators displayed in immediately lauding Bernie Kerick, put out a statement at 10:07. He called Chertoff "a strong choice."

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Aside from embarrassing the Justice Department and the F.B.I., the release of Wen Ho Lee marks the c  read more »

Anybody who remains unconvinced at this late date that the Whitewater prosecution is strictly a part  read more »

One of the city's big men, to use the archaic term of deference once applied to the excruciatingly r  read more »

Despite his undignified tumble down Capitol Hill, we will surely hear from David Bossie again.  read more »

Caryn Mann has discovered what happens to a woman who says things the press and the pundits don't wa  read more »

In their ritual review of the Zeitgeist at year's end, many journalists fretted that Americans seem  read more »