Bob Novak reminded us yesterday why it’s hopeless — I mean it; literally impossible — to argue with some conservatives, especially when it comes to Clinton. The truth is, they just don’t care about logic or reason, making informed debate not just unfeasible, but downright unbearable.
Meet the Press spent (read: wasted) an interminable length of time yesterday rehashing tired arguments about alleged Clinton scandals. When it comes to Whitewater, conservatives should be anxious to change the subject. They turned a meaningless land deal into one of the longest, most expensive federal investigation in U.S. history. Everything they said turned out to be false. The Clintons were fully exonerated; their right-wing critics were pushing a fraud.
To his credit, Time’s Joe Klein had the wisdom to argue that the media was irresponsible throughout the ordeal.
We never reported — why didn’t we report that in 1995 Jay Stevens, a Republican, a conservative Republican, working for the Resolution Trust company, reviewed the Whitewater allegations and found that the Clintons were completely exonerated. We never reported it. Our coverage — and I’m speaking about myself as well as everybody else — was unbalanced and unfair with regard to Whitewater.
Then Bob Novak piped up. His exchange with Klein was par for the course, but astonishing nevertheless.
Novak: Well, with all due respect, that’s exactly what the Clintonistas want to put out right now, that he was more sinned against than sinning…. I don’t believe that the Whitewater case was ever fully investigated. People died. The judge that was going to get information out was not questioned.
Klein: People died?
Novak: And as a matter of fact, Joe, I believe that Bill Clinton beat the rap on Whitewater and I think Ken Starr failed on that.
Breathtaking.
Surprise, surprise — when it comes to the Clintons, Novak has no standards. No charges are too irresponsible, no attack is too absurd. There’s no point in even discussing the matter, because facts are irrelevant.
Just for the record, Joe Conason explained the Whitewater investigation nicely a couple of years ago, for those of us who have tried to block it out of our minds.
It is likely by now that most Americans have forgotten what, exactly, Kenneth Starr and his persistent assistants were attempting to prove. The Whitewater allegations were vague and constantly shifting, as each headlined accusation quietly evaporated. The few clear and pertinent questions about the defunct development deal were answered with finality at least seven years ago.
Did the Clintons abuse their political authority to help their real-estate partner James McDougal keep afloat Madison Guaranty, his insolvent savings and loan, as the original Times article suggested? No. The investigation quickly revealed that then-Governor Clinton ordered his appointees to treat McDougal no differently than anyone else. Did the Clintons profit illicitly from McDougal’s manipulations? No. Investigators learned within a year after the probe began that the president and first lady were swindled by McDougal and had lost about $40,000. Did Bill Clinton play any part in obtaining an illegal loan from the crooked businessman David Hale? No. The only testimony to that effect came from Hale and McDougal, both sources that the OIC knew were bereft of credibility.
There was never, in short, a plausible case that the Clintons had committed a single illegal act, or that they even had the slightest idea what McDougal had done. The footnotes to the final report show that the OIC failed to uncover any significant information about Whitewater beyond what the lawyers at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro had found when they completed an exhaustive and exculpatory report on the land deal “and related matters” in late 1995.