Playing D&D with Senator HRC
Hillary meets the press.

Mr. George is an editorial page writer for the New York Post
February 22, 2001 8:30 a.m.

f there is one word that came to mind while listening to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's news conference Thursday, it would have to be "disappointed."

If there is one phrase that fully encapsulates how I feel about my junior senator, it would have to be, um, "don't know."

That doesn't really tell you much now, does it? But, hey, sorry to disappoint you.

Quick digression: What do you think? Consider: This was the first time that Cabal Clinton and Team Bush found themselves going head-to-head with dueling news conferences within hours of one another. Did Hillary Rodham Clinton call her news conference together because she knew that George W. Bush was going to have his first one and that the pack mentality of the Washington press corps would be enough to have her "tell-all-about-brother-Hugh" be completely obscured? Or did the Bush White House, noting that Hillary had hastily scheduled a press conference quickly add their first news conference, recognizing that the press corps obsession for all things Clinton would cause any possible flub by Dubya to be totally ignored? Who's fooling whom here?

Meanwhile, is Al Gore thinking about what his first 100 days would have been like with all this Clinton mess coming to light? Might he perhaps be thinking that he's fortunate that he dodged a major bullet? Would the press be giving him the easy pass that it's giving Bush? How could they? After all, Gore had enabled Clinton all this time. Al and Bill are still members of the same party. We've seen already how Democrats are twisting themselves in knots dealing with the pent-up hangover guilt incurred from an eight-year binge-lying bender. Al Gore's administration would be DOA right about now.

"Disappointed." "Disappointment." Variations of those words appeared ten times during Hillary Clinton's news conference.

"Don't know." Another ten-spot of that phrase was tossed out. So, we've gotten a complete snapshot of Senator Clinton's emotional state in relation to her brother. She's "disappointed" that he took money from a client to use his influence to attain a pardon. Or is she just disappointed that the news came to light? Don't know.

In one sense, Hillary is proving herself the bolder of the Clinton duo. Bill has been in something of hiding holding pattern over the issue of the pardons the last couple of weeks. He had a friendly walk down 125th street last week to unveil his new office building. He then drafted the wonderful Sunday New York Times op-ed — which promptly blew up in his face. He left it to John Podesta and Joe Lockhart to try and bail him out of that one. He reappeared to pass "go" and collect $100,000 from the Oracle shareholders conference. Then, just as the Marc Rich stories seemed to subside for a day or two, the National Enquirer has to go and bring up the fact that Hugh Rodham collected $400,000 to help pardon Carlos Vignali and Glenn Braswell. Hillary and Bill send out separate press releases underscoring that neither knew what Hugh was up to. And who steps out front to, ahem, "meet the press"? Nope, not Mr. Warmth, but it's Senator Ice Queen instead.

Where can Bill be? Oh, yeah, right. He must be out doing the work of the American people! Just like always. Speaking of just like always, there was one another word that popped up a couple of times in Hillary's chat: "context." Let's take a look at that: "[T]here is a context for all of this, and it's important to put these things into context. And there have been controversial pardons in our country's past going back, you know, hundreds of years, 100 years. And what goes into the mind of the person who makes the decision is something that is very hard to determine." Now, why does that sound familiar? Hmm…couldn't have anything to do with a certain Today Show interview from three years ago now, could it?

Compare Hillary Rodham Clinton's words from January 27, 1998: "I think when all of this is put into context, and we really look at the people involved here, look at their motivations, look at their backgrounds, look at their past behavior, some folks are going to have a lot to answer for." (Emphasis added) There's that little word, "context," again. At one time, Mrs. Clinton felt that once everything was looked at in context, all would be explained. We all know how that little venture turned out, right? Any guesses as to where this particular train might be heading?

So basically, that's it. "Disappointment" and "Don't know"--with a little bit of context to give it some substance. Come to think of it, that's about all you've gotten from this column today, right? You somehow feel almost cheated, right? You've invested a certain amount of faith in me; you've come to trust me. And here, I'm giving you--nothing!

Geez, the way things are going, I'll be eminently qualified to run for Senate someday real soon!