
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994                   TAG: 9403120007
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By JAMES LILEKS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SLICK, SLOPPY OR STUPID?

THE WORD ``impeachment'' is in the air in Washington, like a faint breeze from a breached septic tank. It's ridiculous. Even the people who would like to see Bill Clinton driven to the edge of town with a hail of stones have to admit that they need some trumped-up charges before they hold a kangaroo court.

So far, Whitewatergate has yielded no evidence that the Clintons did anything wrong, other than flop around chin-deep in an incestuous swamp of Little Rock power brokers. No charges have been filed against them. Maybe the story is one of innocent mistakes and sloppy ethics. But this may be the first administration to crumble because it tried to cover up evidence that nothing illegal took place.

Here are the players in the recent developments:

Al Goreo. Dispatched for damage control on the Sunday morning yakhead shows, the veep gave a dutiful defense of his boss, mustering all the leaden conviction of a decent man who has to shoot himself full of ethical novocaine to quiet his own nagging doubts.

He also promised there would be ``a firewall'' between the White House and the investigating agencies, which, in this climate, sounds like a novel device for disposing of documents, or troublesome aides: ``Webster Hubbell perished today when he walked into the firewall,'' the news will say. ``The White House reported he was unable to see where he was going because of the tall stack of Whitewater documents he was carrying.''

Former White House Special Counsel Bernie Nussbaum. He's a millionaire lawyer who profited handsomely during the Reagan years and, as a good Democrat, no doubt wears sandpaper boxer shorts to atone. He was also the lead blocker for the flying wedge that swept into Vince Foster's office and carried off Whitewater-related documents after Foster had been found dead.

Nussbaum also met with a few heads of the Hydra investigating the Whitewater development and its sugar daddy S&L, Madison Guarantee. In one of these meetings, someone gave Bernie advance warning that the words ``Bill'' and ``Hillary'' would appear in an upcoming criminal investigation of Madison shenanigans. Advance warning like this is considerate, but even by Beltway Mutual Back-scratching Association standards, it's a little too cozy.

So Bernie fell on his sword, its hilt cheerfully held steady by the president. He is the first member of the administration to resign over Whitewater, Foster excepted.

Hillary Clinton. No longer regarded as the acme of human evolution, Ms. Clinton is starting to be regarded in Washington as a Nixon-in-a-skirt, stonewalling, swearing and shredding in the bunker as subpoenas rain down. Employees of the Rose Law Firm, the viper pit from which Hillary was birthed, report that Hillary started atomizing Whitewater records when the allegations first surfaced during the campaign.

The response from Rose has been, in essence, ``There were no Whitewater files, and if there were any, they are being collated, and they certainly weren't shredded, and if they were, we are taping them back together, and I have an example right here in my hands of a reconstructed Whitewater file that proves the Clintons lost money.''

There's more. Webster Hubbell IV, the associate attorney general at Justice, is under investigation by the Rose law firm for overbilling clients, including the government. (Also known as ``You'' and ``Me.'') There's Vince Foster, whose condition most newspapers have now upgraded from a suicide to an apparent suicide, just in case it turns out his quietus was of the assisted variety.

And there's Bill Clinton himself, pounding the podium, insisting that no one has a stronger sense of right and wrong than his wife. Perhaps. Also, irrelevant. Gandhi had a deep sense of right and wrong; so did Hitler. It's not how much you believe, it's what you believe. The Clintons can believe so strongly in their own shining Rightness that they ignore the small stuff, such as financial arrangements that resemble Crisco-swabbed nude bankers playing Twister. They are concerned with the Big Stuff, such as the necessity of shoving the big wet wad of socialized medicine down everyone's throat.

In any case, the irony is sharp. The couple that ran against the greedy '80s turns out not to have been vaccinated against the profit motive themselves. Land deals, dirty banks, friends in high places - they could be poster children for the '80s.

Defenders say that they weren't willingly corrupt, unlike Reagan cohorts. Hmm: Republicans are crafty devils, and Democrats are just stupid. If that's the story they want to stick with, fine by me.

Newhouse News Service

by CNB