THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Suzanne Fields
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Well, well. Nancy Reagan seems to have consulted her astrologer again and found the time propitious to trash Oliver North.
She accuses him of being unable to tell ``fact from fiction.'' That's real chutzpah from a woman who reads the stars before making her husband's travel reservations. The liberal establishment, who mocked her as First Lady, loves her now.
Ollie responded with old-fashioned gallantry: ``My mother told me a long time ago never to get in a fight with a lady.'' It was an appropriate reaction, since Nancy Reagan was posing as the protective wife defending her husband's honor. She says Col. North lied to the president about Iran-Contra.
She may be right. She may not be. But one thing we can be fairly sure of: Nancy Reagan, as First Lady, is unlikely to have had direct knowledge of what Ollie North knew and didn't know about anything. She should let her husband speak for himself. Mrs. Reagan can express her private opinion about a candidate, but even she knows she's making mischief when she talks politics. The bully pulpit was his, not hers, and now it belongs to Hillary.
First ladies have always had pillow-talk power to wield in whatever way they could, but it may be time to set new ground rules.
It's easy to dismiss Nancy Reagan as having little if any power to persuade Virginians. No one really cares what Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford or Lady Bird Johnson says about political candidates in Virginia or Idaho or North Dakota.
But Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the wake of the failure of the health care initiative, continues to raise questions about her accountability as First Lady. Justice Department lawyers for her and Ira Magaziner, who headed the health-care effort for the president, originally told a federal judge that they turned over all the documents and minutes of the health-care task force meetings to the court. Now the court learns that many documents vanished.
Marjorie Tarmey, an executive assistant to Magaziner, testified that all material dated after May 31, 1993, was pulled from the files before White House lawyers gave them to the court.
Washington correspondent Elizabeth Drew in a new book, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency, raises questions about the role of the First Lady on health care and the veil the White House drew across much of what she was doing.
``The title Domestic Policy Adviser was seriously considered, but it was decided that Mrs. Clinton would essentially have the role without the title,'' writes Drew. ``It would be less threatening.'' Less threatening to whom? The voters? Bill's staff? Donna Shalala, who would have had to report to her as Secretary of Health and Human Services?
As it turned out Mrs. Clinton was quite threatening to those who were drawing up the health-care proposal. She stifled internal debate, intimidating anyone who disagreed with her. In an attempt by the White House to create a more sympathetic portrait of Hillary, Drew reminds us, Hillary granted several interviews in which she told the story of scrambling eggs for an ailing Chelsea, ``which served only to suggest how rare this kind of thing must have been.''
The President gave Mrs. Clinton the authority to choose the attorney general and other major Justice Department officials, according to the Drew accounts. This is no surprise to Washington insiders, but even some of ``cognitive elite'' are shocked - well, surprised - to learn that Susan Thomases, Hillary's friend and adviser, wanted the job of attorney general for herself until ``it was decided that the fact that she had no experience at the criminal bar was too big a hurdle.'' That's a relief.
Before the Clintons left Arkansas, Vernon Jordan strongly opposed a West Wing office for Mrs. Clinton. ``He thought it was, in effect, an announcement of a co-presidency and was too much to spring on the public.'' But she moved into the West Wing anyway, and it was sprung on the public. Sure enough, many critics cried ``co-presidency.''
Moral of the story: It's harder than ever to follow Ollie's mother's advice. But maybe Mama North wasn't talking about a First Lady.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATE by CNB