It has convinced itself that Bill Clinton did bad things in Arkansas and should not have been elected president. I have heard Max Frankel advance the theory that the Times had uncovered the Whitewater story in the spring of 92. And that the Clintons, the Clinton campaign, had come up with some accounting information that, in fact, they had lost money, and put out a set of figures which quieted the story, so that it never became a major election issue. Well, if he really believes that there is something dishonest or unethical about the financial explanation that the Clintons put out, he might feel that goes to the character of the now President Clinton. I suppose this is a perfectly legitimate thing for a journalist to do.
Whitewater becomes a metaphor for the president.
But are you saying that, since it's trivial, it's not . . . What I'm saying is that while there may be some small collateral, civil cases, which the independent counsel might bring against the Clintons, I can't imagine him bringing any kind of criminal charges such as fraud against the president or Mrs. Clinton. Well, in the first place, I think that while the accounting reports were done very hastily, and they were imperfect, they were essentially correct in that the disputable items affect only the size of the actual loss. But compare this with how Lyndon Johnson acquired his TV stations, to the California businessmen that helped Ronald Reagan buy his house, to the other businessmen who helped Dwight Eisenhower buy his place up in Gettysburg, to how Joe Kennedy financed the 1960 presidential campaign for his son. Compared to those, which went generally unreported . . . and certainly did not attract major newspaper investigations, this is really trivial.