Mullings by Rich Galen | Issue for December 6, 1999

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Stop! In the Name of Love.

Monday, December 6, 1999

Bill Clinton's sprint to the finish line of his Presidency is centered on creating an image of "Clinton-as-World-Leader." The Seattle Round of trade talks was supposed to be a major part of that image-building.

When Clinton was in Europe last month, he tried to convince the other Liberal-Turned-Centrist national leaders to join him in Seattle. They all - ALL - sent diplomatic messages which translated to, "we'll be washing our hair that day." The only national leader in Seattle was Clinton, who couldn't find Al Gore and so had to attend himself to oversee an embarrassing policy, political, and public relations failure.

There is a tie, this week, for the "Standing Tall in the Face of Turmoil" award between Al Gore and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. Gore, who last week invented toxic waste, stayed as far away from Seattle as he could get and still be on the North American continent, while remaining unavailable for calls from the White House.

Dick Gephardt (who wants both the Clintons AND the Gores to go as far away as possible, as fast as possible) said in a hard-hitting statement (this is true): "I look forward to working with the Clinton administration with the goal of fostering a progressive trade agenda that enhances global living standards and quality of life while opening markets for U.S. exports."

Going back to the Gore campaign and toxic waste (which might, upon reflection, be a redundancy), he got in hyperbolic trouble again for saying he had held the hearings which brought the Love Canal issue to light and led to getting the funds to move the residents out. His hearings were held well after the issue had become public and two months after President Jimmy Carter had authorized the use of Federal funds.

The next day the Gore campaign had to issue a statement saying that on the small, tiny, miniscule, atomic, neutrino-sized chance anyone had misinterpreted what he had said and thought he was taking credit for anything having to do with cleaning up the Love Canal, they were wrong. It was really Senator Bill Bradley's fault who (a) comes from New Jersey and we know all about New Jersey and at least bad smells if not toxic waste; and, (b) wants to do away with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Then Gore pointed to a stain on the elbow of his newest Naomi-Wolf-Approved-Man-'O-The-People-Lands' End corduroy (not lambskin which would have occasioned the killing of little baby lambs) jacket, and said it was "halogenated organics, pesticides, chlororbenzenes and dioxin just like at the Love Canal and Bill Bradley's State of New Jersey." The campaign later identified it as coffee - organically grown coffee picked by union farm workers who are healthy adults, in safe conditions, being paid a living wage.

Real Reporting: Ken Kachigian, a terrific guy and long-time advisor to senior Republicans, recently signed on with McCain in California. Mullings asked him - on the record - (a) how much it would cost to win in California, and (b) where it would come from. Kachigian wrote back, "my judgment is that to compete with GW, we'll need about 30-35% of his resources, the rest being made up by the slingshot coming out of some combination of NH, South Carolina, Michigan and Arizona.

"I think folks are going to be very surprised as to the financial viability of the McCain campaign as of March 1 -- largely because of the buzz that will begin after New Hampshire," Kachigian said.

A Washington Post story by the Associated Press deals with the Bank of Israel's preparations for the amount of cash it will put into circulation in anticipation of any Y2K problems. This is the year 5760 on the Hebrew calendar so wouldn't the Bank of Israel already have worked all this out in 1760 BC?

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