William Bennett, who parlayed a book about virtues into a pile of riches, was waxing righteous Thursday on “Larry King Live” as he hawked his latest work, “The Death of Outrage.”
Bennett, who is alive with fury toward Bill Clinton, was unceasing about the lies and calumnies of the president.
“He lied about a squalid, ugly, nasty affair to his aides, to his assistants, to his Cabinet, presumably to his wife, to his lawyers under oath, and then wagged his finger–and I’ll never forget it–none of us will ever forget it–I guess TV won’t let us. Wagged his finger and said, `I did not do this.’ “
King, who is able to transform even the metaphysical into the utterly simplistic and in the process treat a Henry Kissinger and a Hugh Grant with the same deli democracy, responded with an image not totally deficient in insight.
“But they’re not jumping out of the White House,” he said to Bennett. “They’re not quitting.”
Indeed, they are not. And, to the chagrin of Bennett, Clinton shows no signs of ending our long Monica nightmare. Bennett may be left to dream of Clinton climbing the steps of a Marine helicopter on a White House lawn, turning to wave one last time and then departing, say, to the 6,000-square-foot maid’s quarters on the California estate of Steven Spielberg or David Geffen.
It is exasperating for Bennett, who wants Clinton to exit the stage and is convinced that he is on the right side of a national debate about rules of conduct for a president.
So far, Clinton isn’t.
“What does accountability mean here?” Bennett hurrumphed to King. “I think accountability means he has to resign because people say we want to put this thing behind us. The only way we will put this behind us is if Bill Clinton leaves office. That is the accountability.”
Bennett continued, and with fleeting allusion to one of the president’s private attorneys, namely Robert Bennett, his similarly wide-bodied and brainy brother.
“There should be a sufficient sense of shame in the man that he should leave or there should be some friend of his–I know he’s got good spinners, I know he’s got good pollsters, I know he’s got good lawyers, at least one good lawyer, my brother. . . . Does he have a friend who can come to him and say, `There is one more chance to do an honorable thing and that’s to walk away.’?”
At the heart of Bennett’s distemper is a notion of a president as moral leader. There is thus no real distinguishing between political and moral leadership.
Perhaps that’s a Bennett error.
For sure, the case of Clinton must still play out, replete with the possibility that he has broken the law and must, like any of us, get his just deserts. If he lied under oath and obstructed justice, he gets the boot.
For sure, the often deflating essence of his character was there to see during his speech to the nation about his “inappropriate relationship.” The too-slick-by-half, self-pitying, blame-somebody-else, semantical evasions were all on view.
As for those White House aides portrayed by media chums here as shocked by the betrayal of it all, give us a break, please. Clinton’s history is to shaft most of those around him, even “loyal” White House political types (who themselves may not go two days without lying to a reporter).
But on this matter of moral leadership, I checked in with Colin Greer, a liberal anti-Bennett. He’s a New York-based innovator in teacher education and training and the president of the New World Foundation. The author of 10 books, including several on public education, he co-edited “A Call to Character,” a compilation of stories, poems and proverbs whose purpose is to bring parents and their children together.
“A political leader is not a moral leader,” he said. “Just take the war years and (British Prime Minister Winston) Churchill. He was a reprehensible character in many ways; disloyal and narrowly ambitious. Yet at that moment, nobody else could have seen the country through what it had to go through. Do we not say he was of high moral character?
“A leader is a leader in how he deals with the issues the country faces and how he leads it through crises. Personal moral issues are not relevant unless they are functionally disabling.
“So far, they do not seem as if they are disabling. There are no palpable issues he is paralyzed on, in foreign or domestic policy. Even the Republicans are having difficulties mobilizing serious opposition. His moral character is having no operational impact on the country.”
Greer did not downplay the possibility of real legal peril and its consequences for Clinton. If he broke the law, he broke the law. But he remains diametrically opposed to the Bennett world view.
“Lying should not preclude one from leadership in the real world,” Greer said.
Meanwhile, in the unreal world
It’s not classy to kick a guy while he’s down, but Mike Barnicle deserves it.
Barnicle is former the Boston Globe columnist now clearly proven to be a plagiarist and fabulist. When recently suspended for seemingly stealing from comic George Carlin, many media cronies rallied to his simultaneously defiant and maudlin defense, including radio host Don Imus, NBC’s Tim Russert, the Washington Post’s Mary McGrory and CNN’s King.
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Then, more examples of his thievery and deceit surfaced, and he was canned.
As it happens, his downfall had partly to do with a fellow named Ken Tomlinson, a former editor of the Reader’s Digest who lives on a farm in Fauquier County, Va.
In 1995, Tomlinson was touched by and sought to rerun a Barnicle column on the friendship of two unidentified boys who were patients in a Boston cancer ward. One was white, wealthy and from Connecticut; the other black, poor and from Boston.
The black boy died, and his hospital costs were a reason his parents were bankrupted. But the wealthy family heard of their plight and sent them $10,000.
The Reader’s Digest is famous for checking facts, and this time it faced problems, underlined in a Nov. 30, 1995, fact checker’s internal memo faxed to me Friday by Tomlinson.
For starters, the fact checker’s memo said, Barnicle “explained in no uncertain terms that he would not reveal the names of those involved. . . . I asked if he would consider talking to the families and asking them to call me on a confidential basis on our toll-free number. Again, the answer was no.”
“I asked if he’d spoken to both sets of parents–he said he had. I asked if all details of the story were accurately depicted or had he changed some/all to protect identities. All real, he said.”
She then called the hospital “to see if I could work around Barnicle.” She encountered a helpful public affairs coordinator. “Not only was she familiar with the Barnicle column, she understood our predicament and wanted to help.” She wouldn’t be able to release any family names but “would look into the matter and let us know when confident that (the hospital) had treated two such boys.”
She contacted the supervisor on the cancer floor. The supervisor “didn’t readily recognize the children from Barnicle’s description, so she consulted with all of her staff on various shifts.”
“That didn’t pan out” either, wrote the fact checker. So the public affairs official contacted Barnicle, assured him of confidentiality but also was rebuffed.
More hospital queries came up dry, while the magazine “contacted the American Cancer Society in Connecticut and in Massachusetts, and he spoke with (a national advocacy organization for kids with cancer) to no avail.”
It wasn’t until last week that Tomlinson gave this information to the long-gutless Globe, which did a check and belatedly did the right thing.
On Friday, Tomlinson noted how he often re-ran columns by Mike Royko, whose work was shamelessly lifted by Barnicle at times. “Boy, I really miss that guy,” he said about Royko.
For different reasons, Barnicle probably felt the same way.