Insight

For 12 years the Democratic Congress showed no mercy in its relentless hounding of officials from the Reagan and Bush administrations on matters great and small. Every day, the office of this and the bureau of that received letters from Democratic members of Congress demanding thousands of pages of documents. And Ronald Reagan himself directed in an executive order that all officials in the executive branch comply promptly with all requests from any member of Congress – with a couple of exceptions relating to national security and ongoing executive-branch investigations.

So off went the Reagan-Bush documents by the truckload. And off marched the officials by the score, each to his lonely place under the klieg lights at a small table facing an amphitheater of dour members of Congress – many of whom hoped to derive not only political gain but also personal satisfaction from the torture they were about to inflict.

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Insight

Shortly after the fulfillment of the Republican “Contract With America,” I spoke on a panel assessing the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. The gathering was a Washington meeting of charter members of GOPAC, the Republican candidate-recruitment and training organization closely associated with House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The charter members, as you might expect, are heavy contributors to the organization, which deserves a substantial measure of credit for the success over the years not only of GOP congressional candidates but also of Republican candidates at the state level. The GOP has done an extraordinary job of recruiting more and better-qualified candidates for office in recent years and providing them with ammunition on how best to get their message out; GOPAC has been central to that effort.

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Insight

Dear Dad,

I have no special insight into the question of what’s inherited vs. what’s acquired by virtue of environment, but I note with interest that one of the major traits you and I share is a reticence, bordering on uncommunicativeness, about ourselves.

This is perhaps odd, given that I make my living putting my views on paper, and given your second career, so to speak, as an epistolarian. About those letters, memoirs, notes and more: I can think of nothing I’d rather have from Abby and Molly’s grandfather for them in the years to come – nothing, that is, except for Grandpa himself. But, as you said on the phone a couple of days ago, when you were having a better day than the one before, “there’s nowhere to go.”

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Insight

Curse the Whitewater investigation of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, curse and fie. Starr apparently has contrived to ensure that his prosecutors do not leak any details of the inquiry to the press. It reminds me of one of the great moments during the briefings of the Persian Gulf War. A reporter asked Pete Williams, the Pentagon spokesman, about the use of air-launched cruise missiles. Coolly leaving no possibility of reporters’ misunderstanding just how secret they are, Williams said that the Pentagon did not discuss the use of air-launched cruise missiles. The reporter asked why the Pentagon wouldn’t discuss it. Williams explained that he couldn’t say, because that would be discussing it.

Something like that. It all seems rather unfair. The Iran-Contra investigation of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh leaked like a sieve, for example. One of the lawyers, after leaving the team, even wrote a book about his exploits while Walsh’s investigation was still going on. The Friday before the 1992 presidential election, the Walsh team filed court papers describing a supposedly damning diary entry by President Bush, and the Democratic National Committee had a press release out denouncing the president faster than you could say, “We were tipped off yesterday.” Walsh’s final report is chockablock full of quotations from supposedly secret grand-jury testimony – a highly tendentious use of that testimony, of course, not that we have been allowed to see the rest of it to assess how badly it was wrenched out of context in the service of Walsh’s conspiracy theories.

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Insight

The Clinton administration seems poised for a bid for the title of “Most Concurrently Running Investigations by Independent Counsels.” Given President-elect Clinton’s boast that his was going to be the most honest and ethical administration in history – and thus stand in sharp contrast to the heinous ethics of the Reagan and Bush administrations, as well as the generally heinous displays of avarice during the Decade of Greed – the Clinton follies are rather amusing. Especially the extent to which money, the mere grubbing for filthy lucre, is at the center of them.

Now, of the seven deadly sins – pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth – I have generally found “lust” to be the one that provokes the funniest behavior.

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Insight

“Its prospects in the Senate are uncertain, however.”

How many times do you suppose you’ve heard that phrase, or some variation, from one journalist or another since the House of Representatives started cranking out the legislation composing the Republican “Contract With America”? It has been ubiquitous and nearly universally applied to contract items, from the line-item veto to welfare reform to tort reform to regulatory reform to tax cuts.

I would go so far as to say that it has been the single most common analytical observation offered by the chin-stroking, thumb-sucking Washington weenie pundit class since the start of the Republican 104th Congress in January. These days, it is almost beginning to rival the greatest pomposity of all time: “One thing is certain: Only time will tell.”

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Insight

Republicans in Congress, especially in the House, reacted to the arrival of the Mexican peso crisis like a bridegroom would welcome an ex-boyfriend of his bride crashing the wedding reception. Call it stunned incomprehension. Why is this happening?

Let’s put this into context: Here are the Republicans, busily and happily running the country. A few distractions along the way, to be sure – a book-deal flap here, a House-historian flap there. In addition, professional conservatives in town are cranky about the balanced-budget amendment and its tax-limitation provision as detailed in the GOP’s “Contract With America.”

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Insight

I had a meeting to go to in the Capitol shortly after the Nov. 8 election. On previous occasions, I’ve greeted the prospect of a visit there much the way a vegetarian would look forward to a trip to the stockyards. The problem is here.

The imperial Congress, the growth of government and of its intrusiveness into American life, the disingenuousness bordering on fraud in the legislative process – the whole catastrophe. In my darker moments, I could imagine the place as the center of evil in the universe, complete with demons such as Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio.

This view is, of course, nuts: In fact, the monumental political achievement of constitutional, representative government, in which a free people manage their own affairs, will be a light unto the ages, and anyway, the real center of evil in the universe is 1111 Constitution Ave., headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service.

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Insight

The holiday season is upon us, a time to gather with family and friends in the spirit of fellowship, to look back at the past year with thanks, to look forward to the promise a new year brings – and to plot revenge against our political enemies.

Unfortunately for such right-wing types as myself, in holiday seasons past, plotting was about as far as we got. This year, however, looks to be different. Thanks to the change in power in Washington, we actually may be able to make the leap from plotting revenge to exacting it.  It is, of course, an awesome responsibility, one not to be taken lightly. If we seem like we are in any way enjoying this task, well, it’s probably just the Christmas eggnog.

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Insight

I have decided that I should open a one-room schoolhouse. In my little schoolhouse, I will have a desk, a lectern, an old-fashioned chalkboard and a pointer. There will be an American flag in the corner of the classroom. In neat little rows in front of my desk will be desks for my pupils – little wooden desks with inkwells. And the desks will be hinged so that my pupils can store their school supplies inside. The little wooden chairs for my pupils will be attached to the little wooden desks, forming little wooden units that my pupils will have to slide into from the side.

And into the little desk units in my one-room schoolhouse, I will put the entirety of the
Washington press corps, minus the tiny number of its members who already have mastered the subject matter that I will teach.

And I will commence the lesson: “Republicans for Beginners.”

I also probably am going to need a lot of dunce caps.

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