American Politics Journal

Safire Fingers Lindner
by Jeff Koopersmith

March 26th, 1997 -- NEW YORK (APJP) -- As much as I love to laugh at Bill Safire, I must admit that he has finally uncovered what could be the smoking gun in the money-for-favors scandal drowning the White House.

But don't bet on it.

Mickey Kantor

This morning old man Safire fingered Carl Lindner -- big-time Republican giver -- for "shoveling money" to Democrats through state parties in order to cover the $400,000-plus total he gave them last cycle. Safire wants us to believe this was a "payoff" to the White House for Mickey Kantor -- then the U.S. Trade Representative -- to argue to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the Chiquita company deserved to bring bananas into Europe in a very big way.

Kantor was successful, and the big money began to flow the very next day.

It's no surprise that Lindner knew Clinton, and was a member of the Lincoln bedroom pajama party as a reward.

But take a closer look at Lindner's campaign finance scorecard: it also shows he gave megabucks to the GOP as well.

Safire, once again showing that he is a whore for the Republican Party, failed to discuss similarly large contributions to Republicans -- who, of course, control the trade committees and subcommittees of the House and Senate, which have enormous influence over what the U.S. position might be within the WTO.

Bottom line: Lindner-directed contributions hurt the White House far more than the House members and Senators that might have benefited from his monetary largesse.

Kantor now denies Safire's premise, saying he knew nothing of the Lindner contributions and that he acted based on staff recommendations not on instructions from Democrat fundraisers or the Oval Office.

But the denial may be too late. Perhaps the DNC and State party beneficiaries should have returned the Lindner contributions along with the possibly tainted Asian money, now totaling nearly $3 million. After all, the Banana King's bucks seems suspiciously dirty.

Of course, there is another side to this story. Carl Lindner is an American businessman. One of the duties of the Trade Representative is to fight for position within the world economic community to give American business a chance to fight for market share on a more level playing field. Lindner's bananas had been shut out of markets outside the U.S. for a long while. Shouldn't Kantor have argued on his behalf?

If not, then we might as well shut down the Commerce Department and the Trade Rep's office.

Unless someone at the White House, the DNC or elsewhere decides to testify that Lindner's money was, in fact, a payoff for Kantor doing his job, then Safire and his cronies are out of luck. Perhaps Mr. Safire would also argue that all money from employees and executives of the Big Three automakers, Gallo, ADM, GE and about a 10,000 other corporations should also be suspect and perhaps returned to sender.

It amazes me that Safire pretends that the nation isn't run by business interests -- and has the moxie to select only the players that hurt the Democrats most, ignoring Republican malfeasors as if they didn't exist.

Oh, by the way, Bill: how do we know that Lindner didn't funnel his money through state parties merely to avoid slippery attacks from senile journalists making their reputations on the backs of others?