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Fred Thompson: Saving his Skin With Ickes
Fred Thompson - Taking a chance on Harold
Wednesday, October 1st 1997: Candy Crowley, CNN's ultra-huggable bundle of joy, tells us that Senator Fred Thompson is under fire from his party re his chairmanship of the Senate's campaign finance hearings. Duh!
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott stabbed Senator Fred saying Thompson "mucked it up. Senator Robert Bennett, my hero at the moment, roasted Thompson indirectly saying, "We Republicans have blown it. We've allowed the Democrats, either through our own incompetence or the way the ... hearings have been reported, to shift the focus away from the illegalities that have taken place under current law."
Trent Lott - "Thompson's mucked it up"
And who are Republicans crediting for reddening Thompson's face? Why John Glenn, the mild mannered former astronaut who takes every opportunity to remind Thompson he's trying to cover up the main issue -- Favors for money.
Senator Glenn - Working Thompson over
Thompson, who's just trying to look presidential, has supposedly refused to carry the GOP party banner and use his hearings solely as a frontal assault on so-called Democrat fundraising illegalities. Well, you could have fooled me. More than 80% of the testimony heard before his committee has been negative for Democrats and particularly embarrassing for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who Thompson hopes to face in campaign 2000.
Republicans are anonymously fretting that Thompson is using the fundraising committee to set the stage for his presidential bid -- Framing himself as a Solomon chairman, eager to right past wrongs and hesitant to use his chairmanship in a petty political manner. What choice does he have? Thompson's walking a thin line, exposing Democrat excesses while trying to hide Republican travesties perhaps more scandalous than the Democrats dialing for dollars. As chairman, Thompson has access to damaging information on both sides of the aisle. How long can he cover for fellow Republicans while continuing to barbecue the White House?
Not long.
Already, Republicans are "hinting" that they too may have made fund raising calls from within the paneled walls of their taxpayer-paid Capitol Hill Offices. More than one GOP leader has hinted that House and Senate members call contributors, return their calls and ask for help during office hours -- and not from a pay phone at Union Station. To soften the inevitable stories surrounding "illegal" use of federal telephones, both parties have been relying on outsiders, like former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, who has said, "I don't think any [current members] will admit it, but it's so damn hard not to occur."
Senator Bennett - Wisely wants to leave campaign finance alone
But Thompson, fearful of Lott and Senator Bennett fo Utah, has decided to call Harold Ickes to testify next week. Thompson, with good reason, has been hesitant to put Ickes on display because Mr. Ickes is no stranger to media and the use thereof. A lawyer, Ickes was the first casualty of the White House fundraising clique - a machine he ironically opposed. Ickes left the White House under a strained relationship with the Clintons and took nearly 2,500 pages of his notes with him which he deposited with Dan Burton, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee and due start his own hearings next week. No stranger to Burton's excesses, Mr. Ickes was deposed by Burton's committee on Whitewater issues and the Resolution Trust Corporation. He claims he took the documents from the White House to save on legal fees -- a plausible explanation from a man who's reputed to send out old suits out for re-weaving rather than buy new ones.
Harold Ickes - Will he turn on Bill Clinton or paint Republican faces red?
Ickes has known the Clintons for more than 25 years. He came to Washington from New York in January of 1993 to help with the Clinton Health Care failure and then got caught up in fundraising for the 1996 campaign. Often mentioned as an early favorite for Chief of Staff in 1992, Ickes was out of the running early because of reports of his New York law firm's involvement with, and subsequent investigation for, its alleged work representing a union suspected of ties with organized crime. This investigation found nothing and Ickes and the firm -- Meyer, Suossi, English and Klein -- were cleared of any wrongdoing.
But Ickes can be a wild card. It wouldn't be unlike him to confront Republicans with a laundry list of their own campaign finance shenanigans while testifying before the Thompson Committee. Ickes has the courage and the ability to embarrass GOP senators if he so chooses. Whether or not he'll bone up on committee member's own FEC reports is a matter of conjecture, but sources say he just might toss the boomerang back and see where it falls.
Republican senators think that Ickes, as a top Clinton political advisor, will be able to dish the dirt on the use of the White House to host major donors and shed light on President Clinton's personal fund-raising activities But although Ickes left the White House after Clinton passed him over and selected Erskine Bowles as his chief of staff, Fred Thompson has thought -- more than twice -- about rejecting Icke's testimony to avoid the unpredictable. However, mounting pressure to deliver some "beef" has forced him to throw the dice and hope for the best.
If I were Senator Thompson I'd be shaking in my boots. In order to preserve his own integrity, Thompson should have kept his focus on campaign finance reform exploration -- boring as it may be -- and decline any further extension of his witch hunt. Such things should be left to fruit cakes like Dan Burton. But Thompson, like so many up and coming political stars, couldn't take the heat -- from the media, eager for more blood, and from his own party leadership -- stupidly zealous in pursuit of fleeting glory.
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