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Will Gore Be Held Accountable?

4.06.00
Turning on Greenspan

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Two Cheers for W.'s Environmental Message

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A Well Endowed Democracy

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An Unsettling Antitrust Case

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The Ph.D. with the Lamp

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Elian, Still in the Middle of the Ocean

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The Clintonization of America

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A Real Shipwreck

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The Dead Baby Thing is So Over

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Are Gun Locks Like Aspirin Caps?

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Putin Together A Government

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The Dangers of Mandatory Gun Locks

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What Hath Ward Wrought?

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Leave E-commerce Alone

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E-mailgate

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Senator, You're No Ronald Reagan

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Against Microsoft: A Primer For Conservatives

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Kessler Control

4/06/00 1:40 p.m.
Will Gore Be Held Accountable?
Chances are slim to nun.

By Stephen Hayes
Mr. Hayes is a writer based in Washington D.C.

r. Hayes, How many wrong?" asked my seventh-grade math teacher, Miss Zwiefel.

"None!" I shouted, eagerly awaiting the not-so-stifled chuckles of my classmates.

Poor Miss Zwiefel. On one of my first forays into investigative reporting, I discovered that Miss Zwiefel had been a Catholic nun before she began her career at Longfellow Junior High in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. From that point forward, each time she asked any of my rambunctious friends a question for which the correct answer was "zero," we answered "none."

Miss Zwiefel's trip from a local convent to Longfellow was a good deal shorter than the trip Yi Chu and Man Ho recently took from the United States to Taiwan. There is another important difference: Miss Zwiefel, an American citizen, could have contributed legally to a political campaign. (Zwiefel also presumably had renounced her vow of poverty, and had money to give.)

Yi Chu and Man Ho were charged yesterday by a federal grand jury with contempt of court in connection with the infamous April 1996 Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple fundraiser headlined by campaign-finance-reform crusader Al Gore. The government granted immunity to the nuns in an attempt to elicit testimony for its case against now-convicted Gore supporter and friend, Maria Hsia, who arranged the temple visit. The temple "venerables" were subpoenaed in May of 1998 and, when a federal judge ordered them to testify in the Hsia case earlier this year, it is believed they fled to Taiwan. The indictments were numbers 23 and 24 in the Justice Department's investigation of improprieties in the 1996 Clinton-Gore reelection campaign.

The indictments offer the Bush campaign the perfect opportunity to highlight the Buddhist temple event. Many of the scandals that have involved Gore are just too confusing for average voters to grasp, what with the no-controlling-legal-authorities, Pendleton acts, hard money vs. soft money, and iced-tea-induced bathroom breaks.

Campaign contributions from penniless nuns are different. If Bush follows the Zwiefel strategy — say "none" each time he would normally say "zero" — he can subtly remind voters of the temple scandal. A similar strategy worked for his Dad in the Gulf War, and helped turn the American public against the Iraqi leader. Bush's father insisted on calling Saddam Hussein "Sadd-em" rather than "Saa-daam," reportedly because the former sounded more like "Satan." (OK, it might have had something to do with the fact that the bloody dictator invaded Kuwait and threatened our oil supply, but still...)

Reporter: "Governor Bush, how many times do you anticipate raising taxes if you are elected?" Bush: "None."

Reporter: "Governor Bush, what kind of concessions are you willing to make on campaign-finance reform in order to win John McCain's endorsement?" Bush: "None."

Reporter: "Governor Bush, how much time will you spend giving on-the-record interviews in the back of your campaign plane?" Bush: "None."

Unfortunately, this may be the only way Bush can draw the networks' attention to the scandals. According to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, when Hsia — whom Gore has called "a friend and political supporter" — was convicted, the networks collectively gave the story less than a minute on the evening news.

Without the Zwiefel strategy, yesterday's indictments will receive, at best, a brief media acknowledgement and nothing more. The story does not have legs. "We do not have an extradition treaty with Taiwan," said Justice Department spokesman John Russell. "But we will make every effort to return them to the U.S. for prosecution."

What are the chances that Yi Chu and Man Ho will be convicted in the infamous Hsi Lai Buddhist temple scandal?

None.

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