Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton Read Online Free Page A

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    Through the final days of January, massive waves of negative coverage were washing over Clinton and his meager staff, leaving them virtually drowned and demoralized. Former Clinton press secretaries would clock in for temporary duty on what they all privately called “the shit-show,” but they had other commitments and were hardly in any position to push back effectively. When Jack Quinn finally appeared in the press to defend the Rich pardon on legal grounds—including an op-ed essay under his byline in the Washington Post —scarcely anyone noticed, and almost nobody cared.
    What drew far more attention was the spectacle promised by the House Republicans who had seized upon the Rich case, apparently still eager to vindicate impeachment. Representative Dan Burton, chair of the House Government Reform Committee, announced on January 25that he would soon open an investigation of the Rich case, because the former president “has not given an adequate explanation as to why Mr. Rich deserved a pardon.” Burton released a letter he had sent to the Justice Department seeking documents and promised to subpoena “a host of different groups that may have played some kind of a part in this pardon.”
    Burton’s announcements excited the Washington press corps, many of whom had once ridiculed his committee’s clownish and ineffectual probes of Democratic fundraising and other alleged scandals. The Indiana Republican was probably best known for inviting reporters to his own backyard, where he had blasted a watermelon with a pistol to dramatize his suspicions about the death of Vincent Foster, the White House counsel whose 1993 suicide aroused right-wing conspiracy theorists.
    Suddenly, Burton was a figure to reckon with again in Washington, where the network news and cable shows all wanted him to discuss the pardon investigation, and in certain circles he even became a potential hero. “I just wish one of these times you would catch them, Congressman,” cried Chris Matthews when he interviewed the eccentric Burton on Hardball . “You’ve been in pursuit. You’ve been like Smokey the Bear trying to catch this guy,” meaning Clinton, as if Burton were a dogged state trooper tirelessly hunting a career criminal.
    Unwilling to cede the glaring scandal spotlight to the House, Senator Orrin Hatch, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, soon announced that he, too, would convene pardon hearings—evidently with the eager support of Senate Democrats, several of whom had publicly denounced Clinton’s pardon of Rich, including their leader, Senator Tom Daschle.
    Among the most voluble grandstanders, rather predictably, was Senator Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat and longtime Clinton friend from Yale days, who had vaulted onto the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000 because of his moralistic scourging of Clinton during the impeachment crisis. Lieberman had even pushed himself forward to comment on the White House vandalism, while admitting that he had no idea what had actually happened.
    But Lieberman’s irrepressible urge to promote himself was merely the least attractive expression of a basic Washington reality: Almostevery prominent Democrat felt obliged to express disappointment if not disgust over the Rich pardon. Those who had always disliked Clinton could barely conceal their satisfaction, while those who had been close sought a safe distance from him, sadly shaking their heads.
    In those early days, Clinton rarely left the house in Chappaqua. When Hillary came up from Washington on weekends, she saw that he was “out of sorts” and angry, indeed often “madder than hell.” What made him especially furious were the stories about the furniture that he and Hillary had supposedly purloined, portraying him and his wife as some kind of low-class thieves.
    Worried friends noticed that no matter how many times they urged him to turn off the TV and stop reading the newspapers, he couldn’t help