Tuesday, February 13, 2001 11:46 A.M. EST

Clinton Heads Uptown
We suppose it was inevitable that Bill Clinton wouldn't twist in the wind forever, and would eventually do something smart. Yesterday, for the first time since Clinton left office, we found ourselves feeling that familiar grudging admiration for the man's political skills. What prompted it was Clinton's floating the idea of abandoning his $800,000-a-year penthouse office in midtown Manhattan and setting up his office in cheaper digs--in Harlem.

Jonah Goldberg anticipated this move in an eerily prescient column yesterday morning. He offered what he described as "a wacky suggestion":

Bill Clinton should move his office--and his home--to Harlem.

First of all, the press would love it. Second, the black caucus of the Democratic Party would be ecstatic. Third, it would be great for Harlem and Clinton. He is the youngest ex-president since Teddy Roosevelt. With the combination of his celebrity, energy and senator wife, Clinton could help spark a second Harlem renaissance.

By hanging his hat in Harlem, America's most famous and storied black neighborhood, he could solve its enduring economic problems almost overnight and do much to close the racial divide he insists is his life's work. The power of presidents, even ex-presidents, to create trends is immense. After all, JFK is credited for destroying the hat industry because he went topless to his inaugural.

As an ex-president, Jimmy Carter led by example by personally helping to build houses for the rural poor. Bill Clinton could lead by example by helping the urban black poor north of 125th street. In minutes Clinton would erase all memory of the mini-scandals that have plagued him during the last few weeks and would launch himself into an honorable post-presidential career. More importantly, he'd be doing the right thing.

Hillary's Gifts
Well, maybe not all memory of the postpresidential scandals. Dick Morris fires back at Hillary's defense of her White House gift-taking, accusing her of using the National Archives "as nothing more than a gift-laundering service." Mrs. Clinton may have learned her lesson; a Washington Post profile of the senator reports, "The staff has clearly been sensitized on matters relating to ethics. One afternoon recently, an intern fielded a call from an ambassador's aide wanting to know why Clinton's office had returned a gift sent by the embassy. 'She says the retail value was only $45,' the intern told a colleague."

The New York Post's Jack Newfield suggests a way for "the grifter Clintons" to make restitution: turn all the loot--"the millions from Denise Rich, the $8 million book advance, the inflated office rent, the bloated speaking fees, the parting house gifts from the Omaha registry, the tainted $100,000 from Hillary's commodities trades, and--above all--the millions in secret, non-public pledges for the Clinton Library"--over to "a rehab clinic and foundation devoted to finding a cure for kleptomania."

The Most Ridiculous Thing We've Read All Month
Clinton's leading lickspittle, Joe Conason, briefly wandered off the reservation a couple of weeks ago, criticizing the ex-president's pardon of Marc Rich in a New York Observer column that has mysteriously disappeared from the Observer's archives. Conason couldn't actually bring himself to say Clinton is corrupt, instead accusing him of being "stupid"--one thing Bill Clinton most certainly is not.

Now Conason has another explanation. In Salon, he writes that the Rich pardon was actually--get ready for this--"an effort to cut a last-minute peace deal in the Middle East." Right, and when he lied under oath about Monica Lewinsky, he was actually reforming Social Security.

"Evidence that has emerged so far strongly suggests that the context of the peace negotiations was important and perhaps even decisive" in Clinton's decision to grant the pardons, Conason writes. And that makes the pardon, if not excusable, at least not so terrible: "A pardon given for reasons of state, in pursuit of peace, ought to be regarded as wholly different from a pardon awarded for political and charitable contributions."

Conason writes: "At a time when Clinton was urging Barak to make critical concessions to the Palestinians, the then-prime minister and various important figures in Israel were asking him for . . . a pardon for Rich, their generous benefactor and intelligence asset."

This much is true, but Conason's theory still makes no logical sense. How would a Rich pardon further the cause of peace? After all, it wasn't the Israelis who were standing in the way of a settlement. They made all the concessions Clinton asked for, and the Palestinian Arabs answered with obstruction and violence.

What makes Conason's theory most risible, though, is the timing of the Rich pardon, which Clinton signed at about 10 a.m. on Jan. 20. President Bush took office at noon the same day. Can even as fervent a Clinton admirer as Conason really believe the ex-president was going to negotiate a comprehensive Mideast peace settlement in his last two hours in office?

In today's New York Post, James Higgins offers a primer on the charges against Rich.

Cruz-ing for a Bruising
California's Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante "referred to African Americans by a racial slur at a Black History Month speech, a word he characterized as a "slip" and said he regretted," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "This word comes out my mouth, and I didn't know what to do," Bustamante tells the Chronicle. "I kept on going with the speech--when I got done, I just stood there. I couldn't believe what came out of my mouth. I tried to apologize--I told folks there in the room that I can't let you leave and think somehow this is me. I know it came out of my mouth, but it is not how I was taught, it is not how I teach my children."

How can a word just "slip out" like that? Turns out Bustamante's speech dealt with early civil-rights leaders, and the lieutenant governor was using the word "Negro," which of course has fallen into disuse. In one case he misspoke and said what the paper delicately describes as "the n-word."

Chinese Torture
A new report from Amnesty International documents a pattern of torture by Chinese Communist authorities. In one case, Zhuo Xiaojun, a 34 year-old Hong Kong citizen, was, for his first 33 hours in police custody, "suspended from handcuffs attached to the bars of a door with his feet locked in 50kg [110-pound] shackles, and was kicked, beaten and attacked with electric batons whenever he failed to follow the script of the 'confession' prepared by his interrogators."

In another case cited by the human-rights organization, "Zhou Jianxiong, a 30 year-old agricultural worker from Chunhua township in Hunan province, died under torture on 15 May 1998. Detained on 13 May, he was tortured by officials from the township birth control office to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission. Zhou was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs, burned with cigarette butts, branded with soldering irons, and had his genitals ripped off."

Big-Government Republicans
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial page featured an article by Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski, authors of the latest Cato Institute biennial Fiscal Report Card of the Governors. The report finds fault with many Republicans. Declares the executive summary: "The Republican governors tend to be touted as the GOP's policy stars, but our report card suggests that, although there are a number of tax-cutting fiscal conservatives among the group, far too many of those top state executives have become big-government Republicans." The report itself names names:

In the face of giant budget reserves in recent years, many Republican governors have proposed net tax increases. Those governors include George Pataki (N.Y.), who signed a huge 55 cents a pack increase in the cigarette tax; Don Sundquist (Tenn.), who is lobbying for a state income tax; Jane Hull (Ariz.), who supported an increase in the sales tax to pay for more school spending; George Ryan (Ill.), who raised taxes by more than $300 million in 1999; Louisiana's Mike Foster, who won an extension of the 3 percent sales tax on food and utilities; and Bob Taft of Ohio, who raised several taxes his first year in office and proposed a $200 million environmental bond initiative. Mike Leavitt (Utah) is leading the charge in the states for an Internet taxing scheme.

Want to check up on your governor? The full, 72-page policy analysis is available in PDF format.

Welcome to Police Work
An officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who is a regular contributor to National Review Online offers his perspective on the debate over racial profiling. To clarify the issues, he uses a thought experiment involving a perp with a chessboard and a Yale sweatshirt.

Bush and the Gay Vote
A lesbian explains why George W. Bush took an unexpectedly healthy 25% share of the gay and lesbian vote. "An uneasy peace between conservatives and freedom-loving gay men and lesbians could help tip the scales further away from statism," she writes. One issue that may have helped the Republican ticket with gay and lesbian voters: privatized Social Security accounts, which Bush backs, could be transferred to gay partners.

Dull Sheen
Actor Martin Sheen of "West Wing" fame sounds off to a British magazine. "George W. Bush is like a bad comic working the crowd, a moron, if you'll pardon the expression," he tells the Radio Times. According to the BBC, "he went on to also criticise the US, saying 'Alcoholics Anonymous and jazz are the only original things of importance' it has exported to the rest of the world." We'd like to export Martin Sheen.