The Nation; Is the Press Being Too Hard On the Clintons -- or on Itself?
Date: 10 April 1994
By Michael Wines
Michael Wines
THE President had a roving eye, and that was the least of his troubles. The First Lady commandeered a Secret Service man to keep tabs on him. Party leaders dispatched one especially brazen mistress off to study the Asian silk trade during his campaign. He larded his domestic-affairs staff with back-home cronies who caused endless mischief, and he left foreign affairs utterly adrift. His preferred presidential pastimes included hosting show-biz celebrities, golfing and poker. A lot of this comes from historians, not journalists, because until Teapot Dome, investigative reporters pretty much left Warren G. Harding alone. They pretty much left all Presidents alone until 1972 and Watergate, when reporters abandoned a tradition of indulgence for a new principle: that Presidents, given such power and such tempting opportunities to abuse it, deserve neither trust nor privacy.