-Caveat Lector- <http://interactive.wsj.com> August 16, 2001 Asides Foster Footnote It's fine by us if Bill Clinton tries to recoup Knopf's $10 million-plus book advance by settling every score in sight, as Michael Tomasky suggests in substituting for Albert Hunt nearby [included below]. Anything to keep the pot stirring. Given Mr. Tomasky's account of our involvement with the late Vincent Foster Jr., however, we'd like to call attention to some remarks in our editorial on the report on the Foster death by Special Counsel Robert Fiske. On July 5, 1994, a year after the death and with further investigations and further scandals yet to come, we wrote: "Barring some unimaginable new disclosure, we find no reason to doubt that the former Deputy White House Counsel committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park, as first reported. This should end much mystery and speculation, and here Mr. Fiske has performed a public service. Mr. Fiske's question-stilling probe, we'd note in our own behalf, is precisely what we suggested immediately after Mr. Foster's death." Also, "[D]epression is a disease. It is not caused by travel office scandals, press criticisms or the normal stress of public life. It is caused by biochemical changes in the brain, and while these are poorly understood they are treatable. When we wrote that if Mr. Foster's death had purely personal roots we would join the mourning, we had in mind that posthumously he might do for depression what Betty Ford did for alcoholism." - - August 16, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Commentary Clamoring for Candor By Michael Tomasky, a political columnist for New York magazine. The New York Times, editorializing recently on Bill Clinton's $10 million book deal, observed that his "periodic attempts to explain what he actually did" came up "far from satisfactory." It asserted that "the one thing that would be most helpful now, to all of us, is candor." You can guess that the explanations the Times despaired of, and the candor it demanded, did not have to do with the condition in which Mr. Clinton left the nation's federal fish hatcheries. I'd also like to cast my ballot for candor but of a different sort than the Times intended. There are quite a few topics on which I'd love to see Mr. Clinton give his candid, post-incumbency opinion. And they do not have to do with a certain former intern and current purveyor of handbags. I'd like to know what he really thinks of, say, the New York Times editorial page. In 1998, the page's then-editor, Howell Raines, defenestrated a noble tradition of supporting due process rights and instead argued that the world-wide release of Mr. Clinton's un-cross-examined, videotaped testimony before Kenneth Starr's grand jury was an "event [that] has served a healthy civic purpose." I'd savor knowing what Mr. Clinton thought when he read that. And while on the topic of editorial pages, it would probably be remiss of me, for politeness' sake, to gloss over the stance of this newspaper's editorial page with respect to the suicide of Vincent Foster. In a note written before he died, Foster said: "The WSJ editors lie without consequence." Then, after Foster's body was found, the Journal demanded an investigation to lift the "cloud of mystery" so that Foster could be "appropriately mourned." I can't recall having seen Foster "appropriately mourned" on these pages. Love to get Mr. Clinton's take on that. [link to] Foster Footnote [see above] Just one more: Virtually everyone seems to agree now that Louis B. Freeh bumbled his way through his years as director of the FBI. But back when Mr. Freeh was pushing former Attorney General Janet Reno to name an independent counsel on Democratic fund-raising, and when undisclosed "law enforcement officials" continued to leak internal memos to keep up the pressure, the general opinion of Mr. Freeh in Washington was, as you might guess, much higher. A candid passage from Mr. Clinton on his FBI director is something I'd find very interesting. In addition to hearing Mr. Clinton's opinions of the harlequinade of haters, harpies and hustlers that he managed to stare down for eight doleful years, I'd like to read, for example, about how he massaged the economy. Did he even come close to getting any Republican senators to vote for the 1993 budget reconciliation, the bill generally credited with sparking the economic turnaround? I'd like to read his account of Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Middle East -- all places where success rode alongside failure. And what about politics inside the White House? I've never lost my curiosity about why he and our new senator here in New York brushed off their old friend Lani Guinier so quickly, and whether it's true that they still haven't called her. So put me down as totally in the candor camp. They say that $10 million (and it may be more) is one heapin' helpin' a' nickels, and that there's only one way for him to earn it back for his publisher -- namely, to come clean on impeachment. But every time you hear a pundit scream for Monica-dish, I urge you to bear two things in mind. First, Alfred A. Knopf, the book's publisher, is likely to make back anywhere from $3 million to fully one-half the advance through the sale of foreign rights. This is not a number that materializes spontaneously. It is a reflection of the fascination with Mr. Clinton overseas, some of it undoubtedly because of his more rakish labors, but mostly because of the esteem in which he is held around the world. With the possible exception of Franklin Roosevelt, no American president has been more popular abroad since -- well, since it mattered what they thought of us abroad. The advance is predicated in no small part on this expected foreign-rights lollapalooza, which is proof not of the publishing industry as a vast liberal conspiracy, but merely of capitalism going about its efficient business. (What do we suppose George W. Bush's foreign rights will go for?) Second: I'm confident I'm not the only American who'd like to hear Mr. Clinton's perspective on the matters I iterated above. Millions voted for the man, and two-thirds of the country, even during his most humiliating hours, wanted him left alone. Clinton supporters and hard-shell liberals, in other words, exist. One assumes they are far more interested in my little list than in more Monica news. But do they buy books? It's become a confounding fact of our current age, what with conservative activists having been (I must admit it) so successful at reshaping the terms of the nation's discourse, that many of the old redoubts of liberal expression are now utterly bipartisan, or at least washed of their former ideological coloration. This is clearly true of the bestseller lists, which, if anything, lean to the right these days. Aggressively liberal books do well enough -- Vincent Bugliosi, with his call to try five Supreme Court justices for treason, has been on the paperback list for five weeks now -- but conservatives organize to buy books in a way that liberals just don't. Meanwhile, there isn't a liberal Bill O'Reilly in sight (well . . . one's enough). But if ever there was an author who can reverse that trend, it's a former president in whom everyone is still interested and always will be. And let's not forget Hillary's book -- as I saw first-hand over and over on the campaign trail in New York, she has tons of admirers, though they tend to forego the Tourette-ish hyperventilation that is the stock-in-trade of her camera-seeking detractors. The Clintons should write their books for history, themselves, their supporters and the impartially curious. They should not try to write books that satisfy the haters or the pundits. Experience shows that neither of those groups will ever be satisfied. ================================================================ 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. 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