ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 24, 1995                   TAG: 9505250006
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


CLINTON'S OWN `SLEAZE FACTOR'

THE APPOINTMENT by Attorney General Janet Reno of an independent counsel to investigate how Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown made nearly $500,000 in a business venture in which he invested no money brings to four the number of top Clinton administration officials whose ethics are under official scrutiny. In addition to Brown and the president, who remains the primary subject of a lengthy inquiry known collectively as Whitewater, there are two others being probed.

Former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy is being investigated because of allegations he may have violated criminal law in accepting gifts from companies and individuals with business before his department. The investigation was broadened to include whether Espy illegally accepted gifts from an Arkansas poultry company with ties to Clinton. And HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros is being investigated to determine whether he lied about making payments to a former mistress.

During the 1992 campaign, candidate Bill Clinton regularly referred to the ``sleaze factor'' in the Bush and Reagan administrations. ``For 12 years of this Reagan-Bush era,'' said Clinton, ``the Republicans have let S&L crooks and self-serving CEOs try to build an economy out of paper and perks. It's the Republican way: Every man for himself, and get it while you can.''

More and more, though, this looks like a description of the Clinton administration. In my growing files on the Clinton presidency and its own proclivities for questionable ethics, I am amazed at the number of stories, columns and commentaries, from liberals and conservatives, that have focused on this administration's lapses. Clinton pledged to enact the toughest ethical standards for government office there had ever been, signing an executive order to that end on Inauguration Day. Properly being held accountable to standards he set, he is increasingly found wanting.

From Travelgate to backdated payrolls, White House passes for cronies and political consultants, failure to make required disclosures on Mrs. Clinton's health-care task force, conflicts of interest and a president and three Cabinet members under investigation, this is an administration that knows sleaze.

There are as many critics from the left (perhaps more because they see their window of opportunity to restore liberal government failing) as from the right, and many spotted the problems early. Five days before the Inauguration, The Washington Post headlined an editorial ``Ethics and Ron Brown,'' noting that ``Mr. Clinton exacerbated [the ethics issue] by claiming ... that his administration would somehow be different from its predecessors in this regard and be squeaky-clean.''

One month into the new administration, columnist David Broder wrote that the president was ``fudging the truth'' about taxes. and that he was ``up to his old tricks.'' In May 1993, The New York Times editorialized about the administration's ``scrambled ethics'' and called a fund-raising breakfast scheduled by the Democratic National Committee to put the bite on lobbyists and big corporate donors ``a tawdry affair.'' Contributors didn't get breakfast, but they got briefings by top officials and tickets to a gala called The President's Dinner. Cost? Fifteen thousand dollars a couple. ``So much for setting a higher moral tone,'' said the editorial.

``Clinton's distortions are brazen, unrelenting and unusually specific,'' wrote columnist Robert Samuelson in the June 9, 1993, Washington Post. ``Clinton lies. I could put it more delicately, but that would miss the point. Sometimes the lies are blatant untruths. Sometimes they are artful distortions, technically true but misleading. ... Clinton practices the politics of overpromise. Tell people what they want to hear, regardless of whether it's true.''

In March 1993, The New Republic called the administration's plan to cut 100,000 jobs from the federal work force ``a sham.''

Why haven't the Clinton administration's ethical and veracity problems had a greater impact? Because the big media have failed to link all the transgressions into a single, defining label.

But that may change. With the start next month of Whitewater hearings in the Senate and later in the House, the cover will be lifted and the extent of the sleaziness will be exposed.

- Los Angeles Times Syndicate



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