Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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It's In His Kiss

Wednesday September 20, 2000

George W. goes on daytime TV and does Gore one better - he plants one on Oprah! And his eyes were closed. To see a photo of The Kiss II (and to listen to the Shoop Shoop Song), go here.

When the post-election stories of this campaign are written, the date Thursday September 14, 2000 will go down as the day this election turned around for good.

Here's a partial list of negative stories for the Gores and the Clintons in the past week: Tort Reform veto fund raising memos; Clinton makes his lawyer tell Hillary he lied; Wen Ho Lee; Hypocritical fund raising with show biz types; Hillary and the Lincoln bedroom; Mother-in-law prescription drug hyperbole; Saddam Hussein and oil prices; Senate easily passes China trade bill, Lieberman misses vote.

None of these, in and of themselves is deadly to the Gore or the Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham campaign, but it does show that the long, national honeymoon between the press corps and Gore-Clintons is over.

While everyone in America has been focused on the Presidental race a couple of people within sight of the Capitol have been zeroed in on keeping control of the Congress.

Terry Nelson, Sam Dawson and the staff at the National Republican Congressional committee had a lunch-time iced tea yesterday to celebrate the Suffolk County Elections Commission announcement they had certified the primary victory of Regina Seltzer over one-time Republican, turned Democrat and soon-to-be-ex-Member of Congress Michael Forbes.

The NRCC devoted a great amount of effort to making sure Forbes paid the highest possible professional price for deserting the GOP: Losing his seat. Outside groups, such as Americans for Tax Reform, weighed in by pointing out that, as a Republican, Forbes had signed a pledge not to raise taxes. But as a Democrat he happily voted for higher taxes along with his new pals on that side of the aisle.

The Republican in the race, Brookhaven town supervisor Felix Grucci is heavily favored to return this seat to the Republican column. The GOP looks like it goes into election day in decent shape.

The growing scandal that Hillary and the White House staff are complicit in using the Lincoln bedroom and Camp David as thank you notes from American taxpayers in return for donations to her campaign for U.S. Senate drew the following from NBC's Andrea Mitchell on the Imus radio program yesterday:
"Wait until they find out that the New York fat cats have spent more
nights in the White House than Hillary Clinton has spent there."

Next door, in the New Jersey Senate race, the Democratic candidate gazillionaire Jon Corzine, finally disclosed donations that his tax-exempt foundation has made over the past few years. Surprise! Some donations actually had political overtones. As an example. Corzine's foundation gave $25,000 to a Black church in New Jersey. Corzine said the money was for after-school programs and computers.

The minister of the church said, according to a NY Times article, said the money went to open a "new political office" for the ministers' council in Trenton. The connection? According to the Times, the minister, "Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, is the executive director of the Black Ministers Council, which has long been important in delivering black political support to Democratic candidates."

So, we found out this week we have all helped subsidize both Hillary's and Corzine's Democratic campaigns for Senate. I'm about to do the Walter Huston dance of joy.

Remember, if you will, December 19, 1998. The U.S. House of Representatives is involved in voting on the articles of impeachment brought against William J. Clinton.

Clinton, eager to provide some alternative programming, is dropping bombs on Baghdad.

Speaker designate Bob Livingston declines the Speakership and announces his retirement from Congress.

Nearly two years later where are we? Iraq is: Threatening Kuwait (again); Driving oil prices to 10-year highs (nearly $35 per barrel on Monday); and, Producing 3 million barrels of oil per day. The Clinton foreign policy legacy is very close to being declared an abject failure. Dennis Hastert, by the way, is likely to be re-elected Speaker next January.

News Alert: The Opening ceremonies at the Sydney Olympics have now officially concluded. This was the first Olympic ceremony to be measured in epochs rather than hours.

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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