Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review April 25, 2000/ 20 Nissan, 5760

Wesley Pruden

Wes Pruden
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Arianna Huffington
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports
Newswatch

Trakdata


Spooked by Castro,
Bubba blinks


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- MAYBE IT TAKES A VILLAGE to raise a child in the Third World, but back here in the real world you can frighten a child half to death with only one ugly trooper and a machine gun.

If Hillary, who is a mother after all, had not been AWOL from her job as first lady she could have told her husband that big guns and little children can be a deadly mixture.

The charade at the White House, trying to absolve the president of responsibility for the assault on the house where Elian lay sleeping, doesn't fool anyone who pays attention.

Janet Reno makes a superficially believable scapegoat. She's not only experienced at harming children, but she's locked in a permanent embrace with the president, as with those tiny lovebugs splattering the windshields of cars all over Florida. He needs someone at Justice to stand between justice — that's justice with a small "J" — and the Oval Office.

In return, the attorney general has the safest job in town until next Jan. 20. There's nothing that either of them could do — rape, murder, mayhem, treason or even smoke a cigarette — that would provoke the slightest judgment of the other.

But why would the president of the United States, even this president, stoop to being a surrogate for Fidel Castro?

"The Clinton haters," as the Clinton apologists derisively call the millions of Americans who can't forgive what the man from Hot Springs has done to the national institution they cherish above all others, may mark it down to just something a man with no character and no core would do to an innocent child.

"Look," they say. "Any man who would hold his wife up to pervasive humiliation, scarring his daughter for life with the recitation of the rape, ridicule and abuse of women left in his wake, wouldn't flinch at inflicting middle-of-the-night terror on a 6-year-old boy trying to recover from the ordeal at sea that claimed his mother before his very eyes."

Perhaps. Everything is politics for Bill Clinton, and he is still spooked by the prospect that Fidel could do it to him again. When Fidel emptied his prisons in 1979, sending thousands of drug dealers, rapists, murderers and petty thieves to America on the Mariel Boatlift, many of them were interned at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, in Arkansas, where Mr. Clinton was the governor. They eventually rioted, trashing the neighborhood, and public outrage cost Mr. Clinton a second term as governor. He thought it had ruined his career. He knows what a repeat of that would do to Al Gore. He is determined to do anything to appease Fidel now, and the maximum leader knows it.

When he told the attorney general to make Fidel happy, she saluted smartly. Since then the president and his tokens at the Justice Department, Miss Reno and Eric Holder, the deputy for carrying Miss Reno's purse, have been furiously demonizing the Cuban-Americans. It's a labor of love. Lawyers at Justice can't bear the idea that anyone, particularly the mouthy Cubans in Miami, would dare stand up to challenge the might of the United States.

Bubba the brave
Once the Cuban community of Miami was effectively demonized, the president was free to do anything he wanted, secure in the expectation that the American public, fed up with Spanish-speaking immigrants, would quietly acquiesce.

The president not only had the cover of the public-opinion polls indicating a majority in favor of returning Elian to his father even if it meant returning him to Cuba, he had the cover of the demands of black politicians to send the boy home. Reps. Maxine Waters of California is never happy about anything and Charles Rangel of New York keeps his lip at the ready. Fidel is the only Cuban they have a kind word for.

All the president has to worry about now are the Republicans. (No giggling, please.) Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott ordered Miss Reno to come in today to explain why her agents stormed Elian's house in Miami as if it were D-Day and they were trying to save Private Ryan.

"We don't want to politicize this. . . . We don't want to make public speeches," Mr. Lott's spokesman tells reporters. "We are there to ask tough bipartisan questions."

Well, we can hope so, but the track record of Republicans is not good. They bluster splendidly, but usually retreat when a Democrat says boo. This time, however, some Democrats are angry, and are honorable enough to say so even if they make Bill Clinton squirm.

So far there haven't been any heroes in this sordid drama, but the Republicans — and Democrats — demanding an accounting have an unusual opportunity to be heroic. They'll have to stand up like men. Maybe some of the women will show them how.


JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up

04/14/00: One flag down and two memorials to go
04/11/00: Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno
04/07/00: Here's the good word (and it's in English)
04/04/00: When bureaucrats mock the courts
03/28/00: How Hollywood sets the virtual table
03/24/00: Dissing a president can ruin a whole day
03/20/00: When shame begets the painful insult
03/14/00: The risky business of making an apology
03/10/00: The pouters bugging a weary John McCain
03/07/00: When all good things (sob) come to an end

© 2000 Wes Pruden