10/27/00 12:40 p.m.
Drizzle on the Left
Gore's Nader problems.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

alph Nader's campaign is making it impossible for Al Gore to stick to a message or even an ideological position. Gore's trying to move back to the center. But he spent yesterday on global warming, which is a politically puzzling choice unless he's trying to stop the hemorrhaging on the left. Gore's "not comfortable" with the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. But his ads are making the argument.

The New York Times devoted another editorial yesterday to squashing the Nader candidacy. But for a full measure of the apoplexy of Gore supporters, check out the editorial in the latest New Republic. The magazine has unearthed an article by Nader that appeared in the March 1960 issue of American Mercury, the anti-Semitic magazine. TNR editorializes: "The youthful mistake of the saint? Perhaps; but neither Gore nor Bush ever made quite such a mistake."

But there is also a note of resignation in the latest TNR. John B. Judis has an article manfully arguing that even if Bush wins, the Democrats will "almost certainly" consolidate a national majority "[b]y 2004 or 2008."

Poor Little Bill
Let's not let the controversy over Gore's fibs make us forget about the Liar-in-Chief. We're reminded of his casual relationship with the truth by Joe Klein's recent essay on him in the New Yorker. Though characteristically interesting, it's also interminable, and we've just gotten around to reading it. Here's a passage that shows that Clinton is, contrary to Bob Kerrey's famous suggestion, a really bad liar.

Clinton: "I had a fascinating conversation with one of the Republican senators in the middle of the D'Amato hearings [on Whitewater] when they were impugning Hillary, and I asked this guy, who was pretty candid, 'Do you really think my wife and I did anything wrong in this Whitewater thing?' He just started laughing. . . . He said, 'Of course you didn't do anything wrong. That's not the point. The point of this is to make people think you did something wrong.'

"That same senator. . . also said the Republicans had learned a lot from my presidency. He said that before they thought the press was liberal, but, 'Now we have a different view. We think they are liberal and they vote like you, but they think like us and that's more important.' I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'Well, we just don't believe in government very much, but we love power, and, you know, the press wants to be powerful and we both get it the same way — by hurting you.'"

Clinton modestly adds, "I mean, there could be something to that." Does anyone — ok, anyone besides Sidney Blumenthal and Gene Lyons — believe that any such conversation ever actually happened?