Low-Road Politics
Clinton Grand Jury Leak Carefully Orchestrated By CBS
News Anchor Dan Rather
LOS
ANGELES, Aug. 17, 2000
(CBS)
For all the talk by both parties and major candidates about keeping
this presidential campaign on the high road, it seems low-road
politics remain very much in fashion. Once again, we are reminded
that with politicians, especially, you need to watch their feet as
you listen to their words.
All of
which comes to mind in light of the leak revealing that Ken Starr's
successor, Independent Counsel Robert Ray, has empaneled a new grand
jury to look at evidence that President Clinton broke the law while
giving testimony on his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the
Paula Jones lawsuit.
You don't
have to be a cynic to note that this has all the earmarks of a
carefully orchestrated, politically motivated leak. The
Republican-backed Robert Ray is sponsored by a three-judge panel
that must periodically decide whether Ray's investigation should
continue. This panel features two federal judges backed by the Jesse
Helms wing of the Republican Party.
Any
reporter who's spent time on the police beat learns to look for
motive. So you ask yourself - what group has the motive to see that
such a leak would occur at such a time, hours before Gore is set to
accept his party's nomination in the most important speech of his
political life?
None of
which is to say that George W. Bush is behind the leak, directly or
indirectly. We certainly have no information that he is. But
candidates themselves hardly ever are, as their hands must remain
clean and their deniability plausible. (You may want to review some
of the more unpleasant tactics used by Bush backers against John
McCain in South Carolina earlier this year.)
The Gore
campaign, of course, is trying to shrug off this latest maneuver -
and may even harbor hopes that the leak will engender a backlash
against the Republicans. But well-timed leaks and revelations have
recently become especially effective weapons for backroom political
strategists because they work. And regardless of backlash, they
plant seeds of doubts about candidates and their parties. Most of us
hope and like to think that they don't work. The record indicates
otherwise. They do.
