-Caveat Lector- <http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6784-2001Mar14?language=printer> The Rich Pardon: Messy? Yes. Crazy? No. By Richard Cohen Thursday, March 15, 2001; Page A25 When he left the White House, Bill Clinton lost quite a bit. Gone was Air Force One. Gone was the power to pardon, to make war, to address Congress and, of course, to commute the death sentence of the Thanksgiving turkey. The one power he still retains, though, has become more and more apparent in the past two months. He can still make people crazy. The latest person to flip out is Andrew Sullivan, ubiquitous on television and a columnist for the New Republic. In a recent essay, Sullivan pronounces the former president a "truly irrational person," someone "on the edge of serious mental illness," a "psychologically sick man," "pathological" and one of those "truly gifted sociopaths" who makes others "participate actively in the sickness" -- certainly the case, it seems, where Sullivan is concerned. The evidence for Clinton's lunacy is that there is no evidence. Sullivan cannot deduce why Clinton issued that pardon to Marc Rich. He goes through some of the possible reasons and concludes that "the rational answer is that there is no rational answer." Therefore, as anyone can see, Clinton is nuts. I offer you the case of the delirious Sullivan because, among other things, he is somewhat representative. Although the anti-Clinton storm has abated, it's still hard to venture out without hearing a denunciation of the man -- fervid in tone, purple in color and often irrational as hell. But if Sullivan, not to mention plenty of others, cannot explain why Clinton did what he did, I can. First, however, I have to clear my throat and reiterate my position on the Marc Rich pardon: It was an abomination. Having said that, let us just assume that Clinton was sufficiently anti-prosecutor to be predisposed to this pardon. After all, he had spent his entire presidency hounded by one prosecutor or another. So when Rich's lawyers said that was exactly the case with their man, too, Clinton could see they had a point. We also have to remember who was making this case. It was (a) the former White House counsel, Jack Quinn, and (b) Clinton's friend and fundraiser Denise Rich. He liked them both, trusted them both and their arguments were augmented by a kilo of letters from almost everyone in Israel attesting to Rich's virtue. Indeed, a perusal of the pardon file makes clear that the real tragedy in Rich's case is that he is Jewish and not, therefore, eligible for sainthood. One of those imploring Israelis was none other than Ehud Barak, then the prime minister. He did not write. He called. This was the same Barak who had gone way out on a limb for a Middle East peace. This was the same man whom Clinton now considered a colleague, a comrade -- a veteran of countless Camp David and Wye Plantation nights. Barak was going down in flames pushing a peace plan that Clinton wanted. He asked for only two things: a pardon for Jonathan Pollard and one for Rich. As is his wont, Clinton split the difference. This messy, messy process may have been appalling, but it was hardly the work of a "sociopath." Yet Sullivan, the product of some fine British schools, feels perfectly entitled to use that and other psychiatric terms -- and the New Republic runs it without an advisory label. The best explanation for why Clinton prompts such an overreaction was proffered by Toni Morrison in an October 1998 New Yorker essay: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president." Clinton, she wrote, "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." She even mentions his "unpoliced sexuality" and the determination of many to put him in his place. As Morrison might have predicted, his place is now Harlem -- as well as Chappaqua. Clinton was never the perfectly assimilated son of the meritocracy as Morrison suggests. He's always been two people -- the boy from Hope and the boy from Georgetown and Yale. He's culturally bilingual. He can talk up and he can talk down -- and behave the same way. On pardon night, one foot already out the door, he may simply have done what anyone in Hope might have done -- granted a favor. That wouldn't make it right, but it wouldn't make it crazy, either. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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