9/05/00 5:05 p.m.
Anti-Social Clymer
Bush goes negative — against the Fourth Estate.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

o we have the first great debate of the 2000 presidential race: Is Adam Clymer of the New York Times a "major-league a**hole," as George W. Bush was overhead saying to Dick Cheney?

The comment — spoken into a live mike but meant for Cheney's ears only — was a misstep by Bush, whose campaign has been busy calling Al Gore unpresidential for using the words "put up or shut up." Now Bush sounds like he would have felt at home with the dialogue on the Nixon tapes.

But what about Clymer? Bush is apparently steamed at him for a recent series of less-than-flattering stories, including a Bush ad critique several days ago that Mickey Kaus has labeled "heavily biased against Bush."

The GOP nominee isn't the only one who's been irritated with the Timesman: Three years ago, the Capitol Police complained to the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which oversees the press galleries, about Clymer's behavior. The cops "charged that Clymer became belligerent and profane when an officer prevented him from walking through an area that had been roped off in anticipation of the arrival of the prime minister of Spain," according to a report in The Hill. The committee wound up admonishing Clymer for his behavior — something that nobody had remembered happening before.

Conservatives generally lodge a different kind of complaint about Clymer: They say he's one of Sen. Ted Kennedy's media pets. This became transparently obvious last fall with the release of Clymer's Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography — a hagiography, really, that declares Chappaquiddick Man "a lawmaker of skill, experience, and purpose rarely surpassed since 1789" and someone who "deserves recognition not just as the leading Senator of his time, but as one of the greats in history." He also said that Kennedy's "achievements as a Senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne."

Move over, Daniel Webster!

Clymer also was involved in the 1997 controversy over Democratic congressman Jim McDermott's leak of an illegally taped cell-phone conversation among Newt Gingrich and other Republicans. Clymer was more interesting in nailing Gingrich than in probing the ethics of the House ethics committee's ranking Democrat, especially one who shared ill-begotten recordings with a reliably liberal member of the media.

A reporter's professional reputation should rely, of course, primarily on the quality of his work and not on his personality. Now Clymer's, which Bush finds wanting, will have more readers than ever before.

And there may also be one less GOP voter in November. According to The Hotline, Clymer told C-SPAN viewers three years ago that he cast his last presidential ballot for Bob Dole.

Drug War
For months, Gov. Bush has said that he favors expanding Medicare to cover prescription drugs, as part of a larger reform of the program. Under pressure from Al Gore for not being specific enough, Bush addressed the subject in more detail today in a speech in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Basically, Bush is sticking with the same approach but 1) being somewhat more generous with taxpayer dollars and 2) adding a transitional program to provide immediate help to low-income seniors while Congress considers comprehensive reform. (Bush rationalizes this second step by claiming that there is "a short-term crisis, demanding an immediate response." No doubt this is a reference to the polls.)

Some of us will persist in the quaint belief that the federal government shouldn't be offering prescription drug benefits at all. But it's long been clear that this campaign was not going to be fought on that terrain. And Bush's drug benefit is designed pretty well, in terms of both policy and politics.

For one thing, Bush moves faster than Gore. Gore's plan would not be fully implemented until 2008. Bush also gives seniors more options. As Bush put it, "Some seniors may want different options — a higher deductible on drugs, say, in exchange for vision coverage. Under the Gore plan,you're out of luck. You have only one choice — the one that government makes for you. The Gore plan gives seniors just one chance to buy into drug coverage — at age 64 and a half. If you want coverage at age 67, or you change your mind, you're again, out of luck. It's the Gore plan for life, or nothing at all."

Bush isn't going to win the election because he has an attractive prescription-drug plan, of course. But having one will allow him to attack the Gore plan more effectively. Bush pointed out in his speech that Gore's plan would be a bad deal for most seniors ("the combination of additional premiums and a high co-pay will force you to pay more than you get back in benefits"), and that it assaults one of the most successful industries in the country. He's right, and he should keep on the attack.

(Special thanks to the Media Research Center.)