Making Mountain Out Of A Molehill What Scandal? Clintons Have Been Inept But Hardly Scandalous

You might think the Republican Party’s True Believers could tell the difference between second-rate bumbling and big-league corruption - being experts on the subject themselves.

But no. The elephants are squealing as if they’ve found a tiger in the camp. Sorry, it looks more like a mouse.

Suppose Hillary Rodham Clinton actually did what Republican Sen. Alphonse D’Amato, a moral paragon who formally was rebuked for violating Senate ethics, insinuates. Suppose that when she was a private lawyer, she spent more hours than she now recalls giving legal advice to a troubled savings and loan concerning a dubious trailer park deal. Suppose she and her husband also lost $50,000 in a real estate investment linked to that S&L. Suppose that after she became first lady, she ordered a White House official to fire seven obscure travel office staffers who were suspected, but ultimately not convicted, of corruption. Suppose, too, that she later tried to minimize her activities. For good measure, suppose that her husband, like several other presidents, committed adultery.

Her crimes? Having grubby law clients. Conflict of interest. Losing money. Small-scale patronage. Deception. Fighting to keep her marriage together. And, not least, being the president’s spouse.

Is this the best excuse the GOP can find to run the Clintons out of town? Might be. The GOP’s presidential candidates leave voters cold. Bill Clinton is soaring in popularity while Republican policies in matters of national importance have plunged the approval ratings of Congress to depths unmatched since the eve of the 1994 elections.

The Clintons are as inept at scandal-making as they are at real estate investing. There hasn’t been a real, four-flushing betrayal of the national trust since Ronald Reagan’s crew corrupted housing programs and ran a covert war from the White House basement. And for big-league abuse of power, few could top Richard Nixon. Yet, true to the gritty nature of politics, both Nixon and Reagan also racked up solid achievements.

Clinton has not. Unless you count a growing economy, sizable cuts in the federal bureaucracy, significant progress in foreign policy - and blocking the predatory excesses of the GOP Congress.

But we wouldn’t want voters to focus on policy, would we?

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: Clintons need to start telling truth

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