An editorial in today's New York Times calls Hillary Clinton's $8 million book deal "an affront to common sense." The real "affront to common sense," though, is the Times' editorial position, which holds public servants to such an absurd standard that it prevents them from making any money, even honestly. The Times editorial cites no evidence that Mrs. Clinton has intervened in any government policy disputes in favor of the interests of her book publisher or its parent company. It cites no evidence that such interventions, if there are any, are inconsistent with Mrs. Clinton's treatment of other, similar companies. The whole fuss is about no real conflict of interest, but merely the appearance of a conflict. The fact of the deal has been disclosed to the public, so everyone is going to be watching very closely to make sure Mrs. Clinton doesn't do anything on Capitol Hill to help her publisher. The scrutiny if anything will probably redound negatively for the publisher's owner, Viacom, which, as a big New York employer, otherwise might reasonably be expected to get some help from Senator Clinton on policy matters. What's probably going on here is that the Times has been shamed into criticizing Mrs. Clinton because it was so unjustifiably harsh on Rep. Newt Gingrich for his book deal a few years ago. Rather than holding all politicians to unreasonably strict standards that amount to vows of poverty, the Times would do better just to admit it was wrong to criticize Mr. Gingrich at the time. Smartertimes.com has differences with Mrs. Clinton on policy matters such as the Middle East and health care, but no senator deserves to have to forgo an $8 million book deal as a condition of public service. It's an affront to common sense. If the Times thinks Mrs. Clinton is so easily corrupted, it shouldn't have endorsed her in the first place. Maybe the Times is afraid that if Mrs. Clinton starts making some serious money, eventually she will start to see the merits of tax cuts.
Avoiding the Recount: The New York Times still apparently hasn't gotten over Al Gore's loss in Florida, to judge by the long article labeled "Resisting the Recount" that runs on today's front page. The Times article reports that James A. Baker III and his aides "moved into the state party headquarters, which is named after the first president named Bush, and seized on the goal that would govern their actions in the courts and the political arena: To block a recount." The article later refers to the "single, shared goal of preventing recounts."
This is nonsense. The Bush team made no effort to "block a recount." In fact, a machine recount was mandated by Florida law because of the close margin of the original count. The Bush team made no effort to block that recount. What the Bush team was trying to prevent was standardless, chaotic manual re-recounts of ballots that had already been rejected by machine counts as spoiled because voters failed to follow the clear instructions they were given.
The Times article also refers in an odd manner to a potential intervention by the Florida State Legislature, saying that the Bush lawyers discovered language that "might allow the Legislature to, in effect, supersede the election and appoint its own slate of electors." But the Legislature wasn't trying to "supersede the election"; it was trying to prevent Gore and the Florida Supreme Court from superseding the election on the basis of flawed manual re-re-recounts of "dimpled" chads. The Times doesn't have to agree with this view of things, but it would be nice if the newspaper acknowledged the existence of other points of view regarding the recounts and the role of the legislature.
Rocky on Rockefellers: A front-page story in today's New York Times reports on the sale of Rockefeller Center. "The deal severs the Rockefellers' remaining links to the historic complex that bears the family's name. For the first time since the family built the center 70 years ago, in the midst of the Depression, the Rockefellers will have no involvement with the 10 landmarked office buildings, Radio City Music Hall or the Rainbow Room," the Times reports.
That overstates it and is not, strictly speaking, accurate. Rockefeller & Co., the firm that manages the family's investments, has offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and no apparent plans to move; that certainly qualifies as a "link" or an "involvement."