Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994 TAG: 9402050012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Despite his trouble finding a ``comfort level'' with President Bill Clinton when his nomination for secretary of defense was effected in December, I'd thought Inman an outstanding appointment. He was said to be bright, diligent and - for a Washington insider - reasonably pure of soul, and I assumed the experience he'd gained in the Navy, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency probably equipped him ideally to lead our brave boys in green, blue and navy blue.
What no one had told me, perhaps what no one fully grasped, is that Inman also, like Ross Perot, sees goblins under his bed.
Until Tonya Harding's goons got busy, his withdrawal appearance was January's leading ``bizarre'' story, It turns out that Inman, though in little doubt of his own ability with which he found a ``comfort level'' long ago, doesn't like to be criticized.
He especially doesn't like being criticized by three nationally syndicated columnists - William Safire and Anthony Lewis of The New York Times and Ellen Goodman, who writes out of Boston - and thinks when they questioned his selection to head the Department of Defense they went too far.
How Inman reached this strange conclusion, how he came to imagine that their columns have the power he fears, why he believes he is himself above the criticism that is central to democratic politics, is a question yet to be answered.
Was it the Naval Academy, with its arcane arrogance and indifference to public opinion? Was it the Navy itself, all windswept and framed in the image of John Paul Jones and David Farragut? Or is Inman simply one of those people so thin-skinned they cannot take even the mildest joke if they infer from it some suggestion that they are less than perfect?
I have my own theories about that:
The first is that Inman's career, as distinguished as it has been, has nonetheless been a career in the alleyways and hideaways - rather than the corridors - of power. His real rise was as a gifted intelligence specialist, not a deck commander. He sifted spy stuff, played around with budgets no one knew about, presumably approved undertakings for which he needed no approval, at the NSA and the CIA. Both are notoriously ``off the books'' and protected from the public scrutiny most government agencies resentfully but necessarily must suffer.
When you work in that dark official underworld, which is where Inman established his reputation, you answer only to the man upstairs - like Allen Dulles or William Casey - and there are plenty of actions for which you do not need to account elsewhere, either to the Congress or the press. That may be necessary to wage successful intelligence, but it does not encourage accountability.
My second theory is that Inman doesn't really understand how the press functions in a democratic society. Famous as a schmoozer and leaker, he appears to have gained the impression long since that the newspapermen to whom he revealed interesting little tidbits were there essentially to promote his ideas.
What he seems to have missed is that its underlying function, even after 200 years, is to serve as a watchdog on power. It is a messy business, and no one would argue that the press always does it well or ever very gracefully. But without it, a Nixon or a Reagan or a Bush would have got away with a lot more than they did.
So Inman sulks. Meanwhile, along with the rest of the columnizing fraternity, I cannot suppress a modest satisfaction. When I write a column the cat usually messes on it before I can fax it in, while the four readers who agree with it wrap their garbage in it. Those who don't complain to the editor that I can't pour sand out of a boot. Good for them and good for the system that works that way. I say my piece, they say theirs. I don't think Inman, cowering before Safire, Lewis and Goodman, quite gets that.
\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB