The irony that many politicians love to loathe the campaign finance system was vivid Tuesday as Senate Republicans bashed President Clinton’s fundraising practices, then voted to block reform legislation.
The controversy over campaign funding took clearly divergent paths as a Senate panel battled over the belated disclosure of videotapes of White House coffees and GOP members suggested that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Clinton might be involved in a cover-up.
Then, after separate party lunches, the full Senate convened and, with two procedural votes, apparently doomed a bill to curtail the big-money contributions now driving an election system many members describe as expensive, exhausting and demeaning.
“This legislation is not going to pass this year. Period,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who organized opposition to a watered-down reform bill written by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).
The day began with the Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigation turning vitriolic, forcing former Clinton aide Harold Ickes to cool his heels for hours before delivering a long-awaited, combative defense of the boss who dumped him.
The panel had planned a blockbuster showdown with Ickes, the former White House deputy chief of staff who had an intimate knowledge of the Clinton campaign operation. Instead, it was sidetracked for hours by feuding over the coffee tapes, whose existence was disclosed only after Reno last week indicated that the small sessions with big Democratic donors were legal.
Republicans questioned how Reno’s ongoing investigation into the 1996 campaign could have missed the tapes and called for her firing. Even Clinton suffered a rare direct rebuke from the generally measured committee chairman.
“Mr. President, I would suggest this was your campaign. These were your supporters, these were your friends,” said Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who played several of the coffee tapes.
“This is your White House. This is your Department of Justice. And these are your tapes. And you have a responsibility.”
As the GOP berated Reno and Clinton for what Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.) declared to be “the greatest scandal in the history of the Republic,” what should have been one of the prime showdowns of the campaign finance hearings turned into an anti-climactic example of poor political stage management.
The hearing was to have started with the GOP grilling Ickes. Instead, a frustrated Thompson declared that Clinton was “trying to run out the clock” on the committee by withholding evidence. Whether such was the case will be broached by a federal grand jury Wednesday when it asks White House lawyer Lanny Breuer to explain the belated release of the coffee tapes.
Thompson’s statement inspired two hours of partisan bickering. The committee then broke for lunch, went to the Senate chamber for the reform bill votes and returned, only to recess after letting Ickes give a spirited opening statement and thus get the day’s last word.
“I am and will forever be proud to have been associated with the first re-election of a Democratic president in over 50 years,” said Ickes, remaining publicly loyal to Clinton despite a bitter parting when he was spurned for the chief of staff’s post in Clinton’s second term.
Having asserted that the access and attention given big donors by Clinton mirrors Republican practices in the Bush and Reagan White Houses, Ickes noted that, “Many of you on the committee don’t like the current system.”
“I respectfully suggest, your complaint is with the law, not with us. We played by the rules. You, and only you, have the power to change the law, to change the rules.”
His 23-page statement, like his prehearing depositions and previous testimony before Congress on other matters, was unrepentant and, at times, acidic.
Ickes even found wry vindication from comedian Jay Leno as he contended that White House fundraising activities were legal, pointedly reciting the precedent of White House oversight of campaign strategy and financing during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
The “wisdom of permitting the president” to support his campaign from the White House was underscored by Leno, who said, “The guy lives in the White House. Works in the White House. He’s the president. What’s he supposed to do? Go to the pay phone at the 7-Eleven?”
However, as legal analyst, Leno is open to dispute. Indeed, both the congressional debate and Justice Department considerations reflect divided views on exactly what laws say about soliciting contributions in the White House.
Republicans tend to regard Clinton’s practice of inviting donors to coffees and Lincoln Bedroom overnights as violating an 1883 statute originally meant to prevent shakedowns of federal workers on government property. Reno, however, has taken the position that giving access to donors is not in and of itself illegal.
What aggravates Clinton critics is that the coffee tapes surfaced only after Reno last Friday gave him a virtually clean bill of health on many fundraising allegations, including direct campaign solicitations inside the White House.
Several GOP senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, called for Reno’s removal. Domenici charged that the tapes prove a “clear-cut obstruction of justice in the White House.” Specter said a judicial panel, not Clinton, should choose a new attorney general.
Democrats largely stood by Clinton and Reno, labeling her a straight-shooter who was not acting out of ulterior political motives.
“I only wish the majority would rise to the same level of indignation” over failures by GOP-related groups to hand over requested documents to either the committee or Justice Department, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Ickes was correct in noting that many senators claim not to like the campaign system and have the power to change it. But when finished with lunch Tuesday, the lawmakers chose the status quo.
Given Senate rules, McCain and Feingold needed 60 votes to cut off debate on a Lott-inspired amendment to derail their bill. They got 53 votes, or seven short, in one test, and just 48 in a second procedural challenge.
“It is simply not possible to deny this effort,” said a still-hopeful Feingold. He and co-sponsors will seek to attach their measure to unrelated bills, but the gambit has little hope of succeeding.
