The financial elements of Whitewater are less murky, but still not clear. Conceived as a way to turn scrub forest with river frontage into gold, the development never panned out. Blood Sport shows the Clintons' "passive investor" mantra, begun in 1992, to be a fiction.
Bill Clinton wasn't passive--he was negligent. His attention was plainly not on Whitewater, which adds up to a sort of defense, one could suppose. But Hillary was anything but passive. In 1985, Hillary resisted overtures from the Clintons' partners, Jim an d Susan McDougal, to sell the Clintons' Whitewater stake. At one point Stewart says Hillary was defiantly refusing to sell because the sour deal was supposed to pay for Chelsea's college.
Jim McDougal further complicated the pictu re by buying a savings and loan. McDougal's Madison Guaranty, federally insured deposits and all, soon become tied to Whitewater. McDougal also hired the Rose Firm and put Hillary on a $2,000-a-month retainer. Here Stewart follows the well-trod path of fe deral investigations on the topic.
Following the break-up of the McDougals' marriage, and Jim McDougal's illness in 1986, Hillary stepped up to manage the messy partnership. From talking to the McDougals and bank officers, Stewart portrays Hillary resistin g every effort to obtain financial information for a series of loans on Whitewater.
In 1987, a loan from 1st Ozark National Bank was particularly troubling. The bank was about to be sold and wanted a complete set of files for examiners. Some officers wanted the loan called. But Stewart notes the bank also wanted Gov. Clinton to sign a branch banking bill which would help it expand.
Stewart turns up notes which appear to link the Clintons' outstanding loan to the banking bill, but at least one bank official denies ever discussing such a thing with Hillary. As it turns out, the loan was extended and the bill became law.
Other documents Stewart obtained show the Clintons, with Hillary presumably calling the shots, to be very generous in how they valued their assets on these loan applications. That could be counted as loan fraud by a zealous prosecutor.
How the Clintons handled their loans throughout the 1980s and right up to the 1992 campaign also has important tax implications. Some of the Clintons' payments w ere deductible and some of the payments made on behalf of the Clintons could be construed as loan forgiveness. That is income which must be reported. These details help Stewart implicitly connect Foster's anguish over Whitewater to his handling of the Clin tons' tax returns.
At the outset, Stewart confesses a lack of political reporting experience. That lack of experience shows in his acceptance of the conventional wisdom on Bill Clinton's decision not to run for president in 1988. Stewart notes Gov. Clinto n had gone so far as to rent out a hotel to make the announcement before backing down. Blood Sport also details Gov. Clinton's relationships with the women of Little Rock during this period. From this Stewart concludes that the decision not to run was motivated by a fear of "bimbo eruptions," as campaign aide Betsey Wright described them for posterity.
This view is the same as that found in First in His Class, the Clinton biography by David Maraniss. Maraniss's account was based on an explosive anecdote, relayed and later recanted by Wright, that she went over a list of women with Gov. Clinton and urged him not to run. Relying on any one person's account of anything in Arkansas, especially so skilled an operator as Wright, is fraught with peril.
This explanation simply ignores the political firestorm the Samp;&L issue had become. Early in 1987, the General Accounting Office declared the Samp;&L insurance fund bankrupt. Multimillion-dollar bailouts had become routine, as had congressional special pleading on behalf of well-connected Samp;&L owners. Both political parties played the game. And notable Democrats like Jim Wright and Tony Coelho had to explain away connections to high-flying Samp;&L "kingpins."
In short, it was not a good time for a governor with close ties to a wobbly Samp;&L and outstanding loans to a handful of others to jump onto the national stage. Bad loans had to figure as large as bimbos in Clinton's political calculus. Clearly, the Whitewater affair would have to be buried a little deeper before the Clintons could make their move.
Stewart does recover to recount that burial process. McDougal's 1990 acquittal on charges arising from Madison's collapse was the first spade. Stewart notes just how fortunate McDougal was: "Of the 247 Samp;&L defendants indicted that year, Jim McDougal and (his in-laws) were the only ones who were acquitted."
Clinton's reelection in 1990 further insulated him. By the time 1991 rolled around, George Bush was stuck with the Samp;&L tar baby. Bush-led Republicans would not be eager to bring up failed thrifts. The coast was as clear as it was going to get.
The last third of Blood Sportis given over to what Stewart calls "Shrouding the Truth." During the 1992 campaign and throughout Clinton's presidency, a Whitewater damage-control operation has been in place. From the outset Foster, Thomases, and Rose Firm alum Webb Hubbell were involv ed in managing documents and the flow of information on Hillary's work for Rose and Madison.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.16.10 @ 9:30PM|#
jghdgf