Waiting for Reno to Deal
With Congress in recess, the
White House on vacation, and Iraq relatively quiet, the pundits served moldy
leftovers on Thanksgiving weekend. Issue 1 was Janet Reno's decision whether to
appoint an independent counsel to investigate Clinton's and Gore's fund-raising
phone calls. The pundits and political guests unanimously agreed that Reno
wouldn't.
Susan
Page (CNN's Late Edition ) expressed the consensus that such a decision
will set off "World War III between congressional Republicans and the White
House," and that Reno will surely appoint an independent counsel to investigate
the alleged link between campaign contributions and Secretary of the Interior
Bruce Babbitt's rejection of an Indian casino license. Once authorized, that
independent counsel will follow the money back to the White House and
investigate the phone calls anyway, Page explained.
Offering the only new spin on the independent counsel was
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, guesting on CNN's Capital Gang . He
insisted that Reno must appoint, comparing the sneaky Chinese donations
to the rampant spying and other efforts to influence American politics by the
Soviet Union after World War II. The U.S. government concealed the extent of
the Soviet penetration, injuring democracy and fueling conspiracy theories in
the process. Unless government comes clean about the Chinese
influence-peddlers, the tragedy will repeat, Moynihan said.
The
pundits combined the ongoing Asian economic meltdown with the Pacific Rim
economic summit to frame Issue 2. Mark Shields (PBS's NewsHour With Jim
Lehrer ) and Alan Murray ( Washington Week in Review ) marveled at the
difference between Vancouver and earlier Pacific summits. In the old days, U.S.
officials would arrive at the meetings and concede the 21 st century
to the Asian tigers. Then they'd submit to public browbeatings from the tigers
for running such huge trade deficits. Roles were reversed at this summit,
Shields and Murray noted. Asian countries are pandering to the United States
for bailouts and Asian capital is flowing into U.S. markets.
Several pundits recited the economic arithmetic
of the Asian meltdown: 1) Desperate Asian economies will dump goods here,
benefiting U.S. consumers--but hurting U.S. workers--and reducing our
inflation. 2) U.S. exports won't fall because Asia isn't an important export
market for U.S. goods. 3) Japan is rich enough to bail itself out. Pat Buchanan
( The McLaughlin Group ) denounced the "crony capitalism" of Asia and
predicted that the coming International Monetary Fund bailout will run into the
hundreds of billions of dollars. Kate O'Beirne ( NewsHour ) called the
bailout welfare for undeserving corporations. Al Hunt ( Capital Gang )
represented the pro-IMF caucus, citing the success of the Mexican bailout.
Iraq
dropped to Issue 3 after three weeks at No. 1. Suffering issue fatigue, the
pundits could only repeat themselves. George Stephanopoulos (ABC's This
Week ) still thinks we have no alternative but to assassinate Saddam. Bill
Kristol ( This Week ) still thinks we have no alternative but to commit
ground troops. George Will ( This Week ) still thinks that the diminished
U.S. military gives us no alternative at all. In such a situation, description
substitutes for opinionizing. "Saddam blinks and so does the White House," said
Margaret Carlson on Fox News Sunday .
Repetitive Pundit Syndrome took its toll on O'Beirne. On
NewsHour , recorded Friday night, O'Beirne made sense when she argued for
a unilateral strike against Iraq. Her logic? Saddam's neighbors "want to
appease whoever they think--between the United States and Saddam--is going to
be the ultimate victor." Therefore, a show of force will rally the region to
our side. By the next evening on CNN's Capital Gang , O'Beirne had fused
her two salient NewsHour points--the IMF smells like corporate welfare
and a unilateral strike against Iraq is warranted--into a Unified Bill Clinton
Theory. She said the president reliably says the correct things about foreign
policy and economics, and then reliably blows it by deferring to the
internationalists at the United Nations and the IMF. O'Beirne's theoretical
overreach proves that pundits--like truck drivers--can only work a fixed number
of hours before they become reckless.
Yuck Yuck: We should back the Republican
proposal to rename Washington National Airport in honor of Ronald Reagan, said
Bill "Shecky" Kristol on This Week , just to "annoy" Democrats like
Stephanopoulos every time they land in D.C.
Surfacing: The pundits plumbed the upcoming global-warming treaty
conference in Kyoto for its political content. The American left has gone
international to win a "phony treaty" that curbs greenhouse gases, Kristol
alleged, because they can't accomplish their goal domestically. He added the
non sequitur that nerve gas is more of a threat "to our children than global
warming." Page predicted that no breakthrough would emerge from Kyoto because
Stuart Eisenstat was attending as lead U.S. representative instead of Gore.
Bob X: Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, and
Iraq-bound guest the Rev. Louis Farrakhan all pretended to be reasonable people
on CNN's Evans & Novak . After Farrakhan left the set, Novak
congratulated himself and Farrakhan for exhibiting such good talk-show manners.
Predicting that he would "get a lot of heat" for treating the minister with
respect, Novak said that Farrakhan was "more measured and a lot less
confrontational and provocative than a lot of the politicians we talk to
regularly on this program."
Yes, yes, the measured and
polite Farrakhan. Has Novak never attended one of the minister's rallies?
Farrakhan is always circumspect in the first act. But when the groundlings
grumble for red meat in the second act, Farrakhan abandons the smiling visage
and the angel-of-peace routine and spews. If Evans and Novak want to capture
the real Farrakhan, "Pundit Central" suggests that they accompany him to one of
his rallies. His transformation from reasonable man to demagogic bigot is as
frightening as it is predictable.
--Jack
Shafer
