Come February, the tongues of congressmen will be folding themselves around such names as Arief Wiriadinata, Jim Riady, Grigory Loutchansky, Samir Danou, Jorge Cabrera, George Psaltis, and Tai-Ying. These are, of course, the donors of the shady contributions to the Clinton campaign that have been the focus of daily revelations for a month and more. The Republican Congress is going to convene hearings on the matter to find out what happened and what exactly American officials — John Huang, Mark Grobmyer, Mark Middleton, and the late commerce secretary, Ron Brown — did to solicit the money.

President Clinton, in the spirit of nonpartisan comity, is ready to help. The president has expressed his high hopes that there will finally be movement toward far-reaching campaign-finance reform. The White House hopes to drum up public distaste for the “politics of personal destruction” and to browbeat zealous House investigators into relinquishing the reins to a bipartisan campaign-finance-reform committee.