IT REALLY is time to move on. A former president who attracts controversy like honey attracts bees is certainly front page material for The National Enquirer, but even juicy gossip can get dry after it's been repeatedly beaten to a dead pulp. The controversies surrounding former President Bill Clinton even after he has left office are so pointless and redundant they make the whole Monica Lewinsky affair seem like a fresh, new story.
So what is it this time? It's quite a mix of things, actually, ranging from renting office space in New York City to speculation over the pardon of a multi-billionaire, international financier fugitive from justice. Of course, no one is forgetting the rumor that the Clintons allegedly took some personal "gifts" from Air Force One before leaving office, and the pranks they played on their successors, such as taking the "W" off of most of the keyboards in the White House.
The big stuff, however, continues to keep Clinton's name reverberating around the darkest halls of the White House, as a haunting reminder to President George W. Bush that it will be a while before his name is used with such frequency.
For example, the controversy surrounding Clinton's latest attempts to purchase office space in Carnegie Hall Tower should herald the title, "Democrat troublemaker rents expensive office space, angers half the world; Republicans threaten to launch nuclear weapons." The bare bones of the story is that Clinton decided to go a little too extravagant, $700,000-a-year-extravagant, for renting his new office, which is funded by the government's General Services Administration agency and generally paid for by taxpayers. Former presidents have usually stayed around the $200,000 a year range for their respective offices, but as we all know, Clinton likes to live a little. The price for his office is well below the limit set by the GSA, and Clinton has even offered to pay for a substantial portion of the rent himself. That, however, has not stopped Republicans from creating a storm out of a few raindrops.
The story of the international fugitive is a bit more interesting. Leave it to Clinton to befriend an endowed member of the Justice Departments' Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives club. Marc Rich, who apparently made his billions making illegal arms and oil deals with Libya, Iran and Iraq, is wanted by the U.S. government for tax evasion and fraud, and has been living in Switzerland after escaping criminal prosecution in 1983.
Rich was officially pardoned of his criminal accusations in the final hours of Clinton's presidency, as Clinton exercised one of the executive privileges the Constitution grants him. What makes this pardon different from others, besides the fact that Rich is not exactly a saint, is that Rich's wife has been an extremely generous donor to the Democratic party and even to Clinton. This obviously has raised some eyebrows in Washington, as people are wondering if Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich is legitimate.
The right to pardon is one of the few presidential powers explicitly granted in the Constitution, a power which is meant to be absolute. It is one of the few areas where the president is not obligated to justify his actions to annoying challengers, and furthermore, is mostly based on his own judgment. According to Clinton, his pardons were based on the principle that these particular people had paid their debt to society and were ready to have their rights fully restored. The bottom line is the presidential pardon is meant to be an exercise of the president's own judgment.
This particular pardon, however, insinuates that Clinton used his political power for his own personal benefit because of the alleged contributions of Rich's wife to the Democratic party. A politician using political power to extend a personal favor? What an unbelievably shocking concept.
The Republicans and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Clinton's pardon of Rich need to realize that playing out this controversy is only needlessly hurting the country. It should come as no surprise that there have been more front-page stories about Clinton since the inauguration than there have been about the current president.
While Bush is trying hard to push reforms on education, tax cuts and debated issues such as faith-based charities, people can't stop talking about the past. At a time when the Bush administration needs people to focus on issues that may affect their near future, the country still is entangled in the Clinton gossip stories. Needless to say, this only benefits Clinton himself, as he continues to draw more attention to himself and away from the new administration.
Clinton's shadow still looms over the White House, and probably will be for a while. It's time to move on, however, and focus our scrutiny on the man in the White House, rather than the man who currently owns it.
(Faraz Rana's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at far2r@virginia.edu.)
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