THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407010036
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
For those who remember the summer of 1978, the feeling is eerie. That was the year President Jimmy Carter faced a sinking dollar and a stalling economy. A year after that came runaway inflation, ``malaise'' and a Cabinet shake-up. For the country's sake, it is to be hoped the past is not prologue.
The president's shake-up of his White House staff last week came as the chief executive was displaying unmistakable signs of irritation at, er, public perceptions of his administration. In a remarkable outburst the president whined about how radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh had ``three hours to say whatever he wants, and I won't have any opportunity to respond, and there is no truth detector.''
Well, maybe the problem is not that the president doesn't have the opportunity to respond - he has plenty - but that he wouldn't know what to say. Clinton hasn't, after all, had much to cheer about recently. Health care is in a holding pattern in Congress. The stock market is lurching mostly downward and the dollar last week sank to depths against the Japanese yen not seen since V-J Day. The president and first lady also established a fund to pay their mounting legal defense bills from the Whitewater and Paula Jones cases.
And above it all hovers Bob Woodward's new book, The Agenda, which is selling as fast as copies tumble off the presses. The book paints a highly unflattering portrait of the Clinton White House. It reveals the president saying (several times, in fact) that the economic plan he moved heaven and earth to get through Congress by a single vote is ``a turkey.'' The market's tumble and the dollar's slide began in earnest just after the book was published. Could the markets be reacting to the news that the emperor has no clothes?
Perhaps Leon Panetta (who comes off badly in the Woodward book) can bring order out of the chaos as the new chief of staff. But the markets may be fearful that the management problems in the Clinton White House go higher than the staff. And the markets may be right. by CNB