Scandal Overload Numbing Our Outrage

Recently I wrote about penetration of the White House by Asian interests. We saw how the president of the United States had been personally involved in the solicitation of an illegal campaign contribution of $250,000 by a foreign national.

That was pretty scandalous, I thought, especially since the facts are not in dispute: (1) John Huang, the Indonesian Riady family’s man here, left his foreign economic post at Commerce to resume fund raising for the Clinton campaign. (2) That phantom fund-raiser introduced the president to a wealthy South Korean businessman in April of this year. (3) The alien shelled out. (4) When caught by The Los Angeles Times, his hot money was returned - and no crime is charged.

Evidently The Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn R. Simpson and Jill Abramson were also working on this story. Under the headline “Asian Interests Are Providing Huge Campaign Gifts, Gaining Political Clout,” they added rich detail this week to the sale of access to Clinton by favor-hungry foreigners.

I had been wondering why the Secret Service was hanging out so often in the lobby of the Hay-Adams Hotel, across the street from the White House. It turns out that Huang (who will not speak to reporters, and has not been asked to speak to Craig Donsanto’s Elections Crimes branch of the Department of Justice) has been holding posh presidential dinners there with a $25,000 price tag.

Many of the “donors” may be front men with green cards, resident aliens of modest means passing along huge gifts of soft money supplied them by the Asian connection. One $425,000 gift came from the son-in-law of a big shot in the Lippo Group, the Indonesian conglomerate that came to Webster Hubbell’s financial rescue after looming prosecution forced that tight-lipped Clinton confederate to quit the Justice Department.

Such unprecedented largess to American politicians from aliens, and their private access to the president and his top aides at a Jakarta conference of Asian leaders, used to be called a scandal. Though TV investigation lags, several newspapers in addition to The Journal are digging after the sleazy sale of influence to foreigners.

But what is lacking - in the press and in the public - is an outdated emotion called outrage. Even when caught red-handed, the White House can be expected to dismiss the latest revelations - as Clinton did with the FBI files of 900 Republicans - as an “honest bureaucratic snafu.”

And even as it reeks of wrongdoing, the Clinton Asian connection will get a shrug from the public: “Too complicated.” Or “Everybody does it.” Or “All a bunch of politics.” Or “Old stuff.”

Ennui is in; outrage is out. Why?

One reason is that the Department of Justice has shoveled all corruption over to the independent counsel, a part-time prosecutor who won’t bring indictments until after the election - after the president has thoroughly blackened the prosecutor’s reputation, and after Clinton hopes to claim pre-emptive vindication at the polls.

Another reason is scandal overload. The ripoff of taxpayers in Whitewater as shown by the convictions in Little Rock; the Travel Office abuse of police power; the Vincent Foster mystery; the obstructing of justice in long-concealed billing records; the abuse of executive privilege to conceal political embarrassment; the refusal of a lawyer, Randy Turk, to show Congress the contributors to Craig Livingstone’s defense fund; the missing six months of records protecting the political operatives who looked into the FBI files never have so few concealed so much from so many.

Another reason the voters’ gorge has not risen is that the opponent has been too eager to become likable to make his case. Bob Dole raised the pardon issue in the first debate and then backed away.

At his final face-to-face chance, Dole should say: “I pledge to you never to abuse the presidential pardon power by using it to protect myself from criminal prosecution, and I call on Mr. Clinton right here and now to promise the same.”

Will anything so old-fashioned as moral outrage ever make a comeback? The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our investigative stars but in ourselves, that we are benumbed.

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