Nixon off the record by Monica Crowley

Author:Monica Crowley
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Nixon, Richard M. 1913-, Presidents -- United States -- Election -- 1992, Political leadership -- United States -- History -- 20th century, United States -- Politics and government -- 1989-1993
ISBN: 0375751351
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1996-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Press coverage of the vote the next day further horrified him."They have gone hog-wild. And for Clinton to bash the pressproves he's a whiner. He has faced nothing like I faced. My God!But did you notice that he didn't thank any of the Republicans?And now he's back pandering to labor. He just gets out there andemotes all over the place, telling each audience what they want tohear."

Vice President Al Gore called Nixon on December 2 tothank him for the note he'd sent praising him on his debatewith Ross Perot over NAFTA. "It was good of him to call," hetold me immediately after the conversation. "I got along wellwith his father. He wanted advice for his upcoming trip toRussia. I told him that what he will not hear from the StateDepartment people is to see the opposition. And Yeltsin's peo-ple won't like it either, but he must do it because oppositiontoday could be leadership tomorrow. I didn't tell him that Ithought it was a mistake for him to go only three weeks beforeClinton is to go, but what the hell. Gore is pretty responsible.His ideas on the environment go overboard, but overall he's agood man."

He turned his attention to Gore's boss and showed me a re-cent poll. "Clinton's polls haven't moved at all, despite all ofthese so-called victories. Nothing will help if the guy isn't moredecisive."

In late December, an issue returned with a vengeance to hauntthe Clintons and make them even more indecisive: Whitewater.Some details had emerged during the campaign and more wereexposed after Foster's suicide, but with congressional hearingsset to begin, Whitewater commanded a greater share of the pub-lic's attention. The complex situation involving the infamousland-development deal in the Ozarks, Arkansas savings andloan scandals, and Clinton's gubernatorial war chest entered anew and more treacherous phase.

Although we had discussed Whitewater previously, Nixon'sfirst remark about it as a serious presidential issue came on De-cember 15. "This is a mess. There is so much corruption in-volved here that they are all up to their eyeballs in it, particularlyHillary, since she handled all of their finances. The Foster suicide

smells to high heaven, but they probably won't reopen that in-vestigation. The taking of his files was definitely obstructing jus-tice. Look at what they did to us! My attorneys—[Jack] Millerand [Stan] Mortenson—have been fighting Watergate-relatedcrap for twenty years now. I've spent over two million dollars inlegal fees. None of it was worth it. Do you think that in twentyyears the Clintons will still be fighting Whitewater?" He shookhis head sadly and pointed a finger down on his desk. "Anythingthe Clintons turn over now will have been totally sanitized." Helowered his eyebrows. "If our people don't step up to this, sohelp me—" He made a fist. "Of course I can't say anything, forobvious reasons, but they had better go after them on this."

Nixon implied that if the Republicans did not investigate,they would be just as responsible for the double standard theyalways complained about. Whitewater was a serious enoughissue with grave enough implications to warrant a full investi-gation of the president's and first lady's activities.

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