April 21, 1999

No Controlling Authority

At the start of last week, Al Gore, the understudy to the Bomber-in-Chief, defended the US role in the air strikes against Yugoslavia by proclaiming, "We have the moral authority to provide the leadership." Roughly at the same time, federal district court Judge Susan Webber Wright was releasing her decision holding Bill Clinton in civil contempt for lying during the Paula Jones lawsuit about his one-way sexual encounters with a workplace subordinate. "It simply is not acceptable to employ deceptions and falsehoods in an attempt to obstruct the judicial process," Wright reasonably huffed. She slammed the President for his "contumacious conduct." (The American Heritage Dictionary definition: "obstinately disobedient or rebellious; insubordinate.") And she whacked him for undermining the "integrity of the judicial system." Here was a real censure, with a yet-to-be-announced fine. The amount of $300,000--what Newt Gingrich had to pay after he was caught misleading the House ethics committee--would carry a certain poetic symmetry.

It was hard to figure what Gore had in mind when he referenced "moral authority." The bombing violates the UN Charter. which does not allow for non-defensive military action without UN approval. It contravenes the NATO charter, which defines the alliance as a collective defense against armed attacks. The United States has not derived a surfeit of "moral authority" by engaging the Chinese, who have practiced a version of ethnic cleansing in Tibet, by being cozy with Turkey, which treats its Kurdish minority in ways similar to Slobodan Milosevic's treatment of the Kosovars, or by its actions--that is, the utter lack of action--during the maniacal genocide in Rwanda. Regarding the latter, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger put on a fine display during a press conference last week when a reporter asked why the Clintonites had not been gung-ho to prevent mass slaughter in central Africa. Berger stammered and stuttered a reply: "The genocide in Rwanda was a horrible...uh...despicable....We--this happened, as you know, very swiftly. This happened in a two-week period. The President has reflected when he was in Kigali and since...on whether the international community could have done more, more quickly....Part of it is capacity. I mean, one of the reasons why we can act in Kosovo is because we have NATO there."

Now, one does not build moral authority by dissembling about the past. I recall the dark days of the Rwanda holocaust well. The entire human rights brigade in Washington was beseeching the Clinton Administration to intervene. Try to jam the radios used to broadcast the killing orders, they pleaded. Try to place pressure on the French, who have influence in the area. Announce that war criminals would be pursued. Use the word "genocide" in describing the tragedy. The human rights activists were met with worse than silence. They received a shrug conveying the message, we know it sucks but we don't feel politically we can do much.

Moral authority? After a NATO pilot bombed a civilian convoy, General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander, said he had evidence that it had been the Serbs who had shot up these dozens of refugees. Within hours of Clark's statement, NATO acknowledged it was responsible for this killing. Mistakes do happen in wartime. But why was Clark trying to Clinton his way through this rough patch? Why believe him on other matters? NATO's moral authority was not enhanced by this in-panic prevarication. And where was the apology and the punishment that should have followed such a bold act of disinformation?

To keep the public in support of this (at the moment) little war, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, at a congressional hearing on Thursday, cited the "goodness of American power." If she had tapped into that goodness prior to the present crisis, she might have paid attention to Kosovo and the nonviolent opposition that was active there. For almost ten years, Kosovars had peacefully protested and resisted Milosevic. Through that time, Washington and the world community showed little interest in their plight and their challenge to Milosevic. It was not until the shadowy Kosovo Liberation Army emerged about a year ago--as Serbian repression increased--and supplanted the nonviolent opposition that the Clinton gang decided to focus on Milosevic's misdeeds there. And then Albright thought a dose of American bullying--aimed at forcing the KLA and Milosevic to sign a peace accord founded on premises that neither side truly accepted--could set matters right. If the Clintonites believe that moral authority is what they bring to this fight, then it is no wonder things are not going according to plan.

Milosevic is an evil SOB. But that does not render any action taken against him good. "Milosevic carries the blame for the disaster in the Balkans," an anonymous human rights activist from Yugoslavia wrote recently on the web site for the British-based Institute on War and Peace Reporting. "But the lack of a coherent Western strategy for the region and a clear plan for the use of NATO force contributed to the tragedy in Kosovo."

Al Gore's proclamation of "moral authority" rings as hollow as the choruses of "Happy Birthday" being sung for NATO this week in Washington. As 40 heads of state gather here to mark the 50th anniversary of the alliance, the festivities will be clouded by Kosovo. When all the poohbahs blow out the candles, the wish will be obvious: Milosevic dies of a heart attack and reasonable, democratic Serbs assume control, surrender, and remake the entire political culture of their republic. But unless the bombing campaign miraculously produces a turn-around in Kosovo, the United States and NATO have left themselves with few choices: ground troops (which would contradict Clinton's previous assurances they would not be needed), a diplomatic deal with the devil (which would leave in place a murderous brute portrayed by the hawks as a fin-de-siecle Hitler), or a declare-victory-and-run retreat (which would amount to betrayal of the Kosovars). None of these steps would demonstrate great moral authority.

Spin To Sell

On the subject of moral authority--or lack thereof--let's turn to Lanny Davis, former spin-jockey for the Clinton White House. He is riding the latest float in the books-on-Bill parade. In his misnamed memoirs, Truth to Tell, Davis depicts himself as a fellow who tried to put the truth out. But, dammit, those lawyers at 1600 Pennsylvania were too tight-fisted. Now, during cash-in time, Davis proudly reports on how he was able to manipulate the media. For instance, if he feared negative information pertaining to the White House was about to become public, he would preemptively slip that story on deep background to the Associated Press, knowing that the Washington Post and the New York Times were not be likely to place a wire-service scoop on their front pages. He also leaked bad news to the Los Angles Times, realizing that other major dailies would pay less attention a story broken by an out-of-towner. And he often dished to the Wall Street Journal, because it places much of its political news on the back page of the front section. It deserves noting that Davis was able to play upon the institutional prejudices and petty jealousies of the Big Newspapers because these institutional prejudices and petty jealousies are deeply ingrained. Still, Davis insists he was merely putting out "good" spin, that is factually based spin, not "bad" spin, which is deceptive.

To any journalist who ever witnessed a Davis performance, this will produce a hearty laugh. I remember the long, trying days of the Senate hearings on campaign finance improbity in 1997. During breaks in the mismanaged and often tedious proceedings, Davis would set up shop in the hallway outside the committee room and quickly shoot into far orbit, denying any Clinton wrongdoing, insisting all evidence to the contrary was being distorted. His far-out spin embarrassed other White House officials attending the hearings. "Not my style," one said to me once, as he watched Davis go through his routine. One morning, after we learned that the White House had not told Senator Fred Thompson's committee that videotapes existed of the notorious coffee fund-raisers at the executive mansion, Davis joked that his spin sessions that day were being secretly taped. I mentioned to other Clintonites that Davis would have been serving his master better had he displayed contrition. "Yes," said one of his colleagues. "But the people he works for"--the Clintons--"are big fans." Davis seemed to relish his ability to spin faster than a gyroscope. That day, he was particularly annoying. I kept pressing him on whether the White House had erred in how it had handled the videotapes dispute. He yielded no ground and remarked repeatedly that the fault was with the Senate committee, because it had not specifically asked for these tapes in its information request. His line was beyond belief. "I believe in giving out the facts in a cool-headed manner and hoping they speak for themselves," another White House damage-controller once told me. "Lanny is everything that is wrong with spin." Which qualifies him to write a book on it.

Get Me Rewrite!

When last week Dan Quayle, the former boy-Veep, again announced he is running for the White House, The Washington Post published a front-page profile of the gaffe-man that contained several wet kisses. "Quayle," David Von Drehle reported, "has aged into an almost unbelievably handsome man, slim and tan with clear blue eyes and graying hair--he no longer has the air of a fading frat boy. If passing 50 were like this for all men there would be no more market for red convertibles." Whoa, there. Time for a cold shower. Would Von Drehle ever describe a politician as, say, "unbelievably stupid"? Would his editors let him get away with a description of that sort? Not in Quayle's case, certainly. In the next paragraph, Von Drehle continued his up-beat portrait of this punchline-cum-politician: "In his maturity, Quayle speaks with some poise and produces fewer blunders. He can deliver a soundbite with efficiency." As proof, Von Drehle cited the following Quayle utterance: "Milosevic has a better claim on Kosovo than Ho Chi Minh had on Vietnam." That morsel is a sign of maturity? Comparing the claims of Ho and Milosevic on, respectively, Vietnam and Kosovo is pointless. But if one dared to engage Quayle on this topic, one could easily show he was wrong. Ho Chi Minh, a communist, was regarded as an anti-colonial hero throughout Vietnam and would have been elected head of a unified Vietnam in 1955, had the CIA-backed Ngo Dinh Diem, an exile handpicked by Washington to lead South Vietnam, not pulled South Vietnam out of the election, in violation of the Geneva Accords. Milosevic's Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, not Serbs, has been part of Serbia only since 1918. (That year Kosovo, in the wake of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was deeded to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which became Yugoslavia in 1929.) Quayle's soundbite made no sense. But it was not as obviously foolish as potato-with-an-e. Von Drehle was probably too dazzled by Quayle's looks to evaluate the sounds-good quip.

While we're contemplating history and soundbites, recall that famous moment during the 1992 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton, not yet the First Enabler, defiantly defended her controversial business dealings in Arkansas by declaring, "I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies, and had teas. But what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession." Last week, Simon and Schuster announced Hillary will publish a book "about how the Clintons entertain" at home, that is, at the White House. From health care to hors d'oeuvres. Is she shooting for the hostess vote in New York State? Or is this a sign that Rudy Giuliani should relax--and Martha Stewart ought to start worrying?